THE LIBRARY OF
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELESThe BOOK OF ROBO
Being a collection of Verses and Prose Writings by
ROUBAIX DeL’ABRIE RICHEY
WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY HIS WIFE TINA MODOTTI RICHEY AND AN INTRODUCTION BY JOHN COWPER POWYS
LOS ANGELES
MCMXXIIIThere were printed of this book two hundred and ten copies, of which two hundred are for sale to subscribers.
This is Number
157Introduction
No one can glance over this small volume without experiencing that peculiar and especial sort of sadness which the untimely cutting off of some delicate human growth, full of gracious promise, stirs up within us.
The little book is evocative of many curious meditations. The struggle of youth is in it, the wistful impatience of youth, to find its method, to find itself in its method, to break the opaque crust of traditional response to life which covers like an awkward alien skin the personal response of the wakening living creature.
And then, just as this young classic snake, in our rank modern grass, is sloughing off the old skin for the tender new one, ecco! the dark Interrupter strides up and the game is finished.
It is difficult for a literary critic turning over these slim pages not to be arrested by one very curious psychological fact, a fact that surely throws much pathetic light upon the great problem.
It would seem that the self-expression of immature talent finds itself more quickly, more easily, in cynical and satirical ways, in destructive ways, than in positive creation. It also appears that the traditional voices are more treacherous and seductive in the form of poetry than in the form of prose; the old hauntingrhythms waylaying us so and the task proving so hard to fill the old bottles with the new wine. Here doubtless there will be, in regard to this present volume, a poignant dividing of opinion. Those who respond easily to the familiar strings will, and indeed must, prefer the verse-experiments to the prose-experiments of this young neophyte in the great temple.
I cannot myself confess to sharing this choice. I feel as though in the more cynical pages, in the aphorisms, as well as in the fragmentary prose-tale where the cynicism has dissolved into a sophisticated and wistful sadness, there is a nearer approach to that difficult “self-finding” than in the more fluent lyrical measures.
But whichever way one’s personal preference may react, it does seem that even to the most hardened gardener of letters there is something intriguing about the blossoming of a new talent on the classic tree. And there is something more than intriguing, there is something sadder than one cares to realize, about the cutting off of such blossoming by the heedless frost.
San Francisco December, 1922
John Cowper Powys.When, where, and under what circumstances, Roubaix de V Abrie Richey (better known as "Robo” among his friends) was born, will be of little importance to the reader of this book. Nor will the tragic details of his early death in Mexico City arouse half the interest that a description of his personality and aspirations in life will. Perhaps the ancestor, of generations ago, sent out to the Louisianas from France by one of the Louises lived again the romance of life in this young poet. Who can say?
Among the simple surroundings of a country life he spent his childhood and early youth, with only a younger sister for companion and playmate. Lonely and desolate as such a life proved to be to a boy precociously awakened to the subtle shades of existence, yet it helped to develop his inborn gift for refinement and beauty and his understanding for those rare substances which are realities only to the dreamers and visionaries.
One can easily picture him—a young boy with eyes dimmed by drea?ns, standing on tiptoe gazing through an old window at the gray sky of a winter twilight, overwhelmed by that vague "something” which is present at all times for the soul sensitive enough to perceive it. And it was no doubt the overpowering force of his sensitive emotions and sensibilities that made him turn to art and pursue it as an outlet and a means of expression.
As he grew up his artistic fervor pervaded his whole being and personality. All of himself was in his personality. Tall, slender, with rarely fine aristocratic features, he always attracted attention for his simple charm and gentle manners. Never part of a crowd, nor happy amid one, he was at his best in the company of a few intimate and sympathetic friends.
Like all persons of sensitive and tender perceptions, he would withdraw within himself if the least feeling of antagonism was manifested, but his heart would melt with tenderness and joy and the best of him would come to the surface when he encountered a kindred spirit.
With Life he was never friendly. He faced it with hostility, and was forever endeavoring to escape its realities, and to livefrom the heart regardless of the common conception of things. Perhaps it was the realization of Life's unconscious cruelty and indifference and his impotence to conquer Life that turned him against it.
By voluntarily renouncing life at its best, he gave vent to ill-luck by accepting the worst. It was a negative way of defending himself—his art, his soul—from the commonplace.
One critic in commenting on his literary work said to him: "I love your sardonic sadness—the ironic wistfulness and weakness. All young writers,” he added, "try to be robust and strong and praise and glorify. I note that there is in your work always a minor key of something unattained, weak, shadowy, longing and hesitating, and which passes away without desires ever being filled or gratified, but which, after all—laughs! It may be the laughter of ‘beyond despair,' but it laughs!”
"But man cannot get away from facts,” he lamented in a letter to a friend, quoting from Sadakichi Hartman, poet and friend, whom he greatly admired. "Man cannot get away from facts,” he wrote. "There is a terrible threat there—facts must be faced and conquered lest they conquer us—yet I am irresolute and wavering and filled with shadows. Too long have I dreamed and hesitated—too long my soul shrank from those cold heights where nothing is concealed. Facts are not always beautiful, and I wish only to be beautiful. It is tenderness that melts my spirit. But to be free—to be clear and unstained, one must have iron in his soul. Oh, the curse of shadowy, dreaming, hesitating souls!”
Love was the greatest necessity in his life. Of a sanguine and ardent nature, he craved love and affection, and he himself loved intensely and deeply, but not always wisely—therefore he suffered much and was often misunderstood. The people whom he loved made an indelible mark on his life, and for them he never relented his interest even after circumstances, or other reasons, caused a final parting. Instead, whatsoever belonged to the past acquired for him a deeper meaning. The past always held for him a fascination that the future could never equal.“I cannot lift a finger that the ghosts and dreams of yesterday do not walk into my mind and whisper. There is a vague and terrible beauty in their asking eyes and a shadowy touch upon my hands that will not let them move.”
Roubaix de. I’Abrie Richey's favorite theme of conversation luas that old subject which has always haunted poets: “The way to live beautifully.” In another letter to a friend he writes on the subject:
“And suddenly I conceived the beautiful life as never before. It appeared to me not as a thing in itself which required ease and wealth, but as a matter of selection—yes, a matter of selection,—and I came to realize that I too live beautifully, live as beautifully as my present soul will permit. Some day, although I may be poorer and more miserable, I shall live more beautifully, because my sense of selection will be keener and my soul deeper and my craving more insatiable. A vagabond on the highway may live beautifully. If he gives his crust to the birds rather than eat it, he has already begun to live beautifully—not from any point of sacrifice, but because birds delight him. He may feed only the bright feathered birds, though they may need and deserve it least of all, because they please his eyes. And yet there will be times when to live with beauty one must deny the eyes all. The man who spends his money to buy flowers for the buttonhole of his old coat rather than buy a new coat and renounce the flowers, understands the beautiful life. In the depth of squalor—in the hidden and forgotten places without so much as a penny in one’s pocket, it is still possible to make beautiful selections and cast our lot with beauty. I am obsessed by the thought of a book I want to write on the subject, ‘The Art to Live Beautifully.’”
But alas! he never wrote the book, nor the many others he had in mind to write and which he planned for years.
In his periods of buoyant enthusiasm he would talk by the hour about the plots of his books and the characters in them, which were more real to him than real people. They were all there in his mind, living and breathing his own breath; in his own mind he elaborated and polished them, he made them talkand livej but all this only in his own mind. Alas, they were fated never to pass that borderland! And here is just where the greatest tragedy of his life came in—the difficulty to express himself.
All beings with deep feelings and emotions, all artists in particular (for what is an artist’s work, after all, if not the expression of his innermost feelings and emotions, the reactions to his sensibilities and passions)—all artists in particular who, each in his own way, face the same struggle—will realize the tragedy of these words—"the difficulty to express himself.” A nd Roubaix de I’Abrie Richey, consummate dreamer and visionary, suffered bitterly the tragedy of his unexpressed emotions.
Equally interested in writing and painting, he passed from one phase to the other at different periods of his life, unable to decide which of the two was his best medium of expression.
In another letter (I quote much from his letters, for in their unpretentious way they contain real bits of beauty, and besides, what could describe his struggles better than his own cries of regret and impotence?)—"The desire to paint and write has taken hold of me. There are innumerable ideas haunting me and crying for birth—my brain is throbbing to give life to those images—vague, bright-colored images. I wish to run home and seize my palette and brushes, to hammer away on the typewriter, but suddenly all becomes dim and unreal—a fear, a doubt, takes hold of me, and I stand abashed before my canvas—the paper on my machine is blank, wide and pitiless as the desert—my dreams have become intangible. A moment ago they were right here within reach, breathing with life—I stretch out my hand, and they are gone!”
"Then the failures, the wrecks I meet on the street, seem to stare at me as if to convince me of the uselessness of all my efforts. Ah, if only we could reach up to the sky and tear away the smothering canopy of blue! But we only quietly put on our clothes every morning so that we can take them off again when night comes!”
With an intentional disregard for the modern spirit of this age, and of this country in particular—in which he never feltat home but had to live, being too weak or too unlucky to attain what he desired—he finally went to Mexico, attracted by the beauty and the charm of the past still lingering there.
There he found an environment better suited to his temperament. He found sympathy and romance—but only for a little while. Death came, swift and inexorable, and he vanished, February 9, 1922, from a world in which he did not belong. Only the few of us who knew and loved him wish that he had remained.
“Many die too late, and some die too early,” yet strange soundeth the precept—“Die at the right time”—so teacheth Zarathustra.
And one wonders! Did this tireless pursuer of beauty and romance, this ardent lover of beautiful sounding words and luxurious colors—did “this weaver of thin dreams,” which were to him both his life and his burden, die at the right time?
Tina Modotti-Richey
Los Angeles,
December, 1922.Contents
The Poet.......................................17
Silently, At The Candle Hour...................18
Your Young Face................................18
Ghosts ......................................  19
Rondel ........................................20
A Wanderer’s Song..............................21
Why? ..........................................22
Each Night, Apart..............................25
I Stand Above The City’s Tumultuous Sea .......25
I am As One....................................26
Dusk ..........................................26
Feet That Should Have Strayed..................27
Portrait of a Poet.............................28
Generation.....................................29
The Poet Sings To His Lost Love................30
I Wept To Think The Rose..................,....30
Streetscape ...................................31
San Francisco..................................32
We Are The Hewers of Wood......................33
The Bohemians..................................35
Little Will Earth Reck.........................37
Urge ..........................................38
“To A Fallen Soldier”...................  .....41
Fragments......................................42
Vers Libre.....................................44
Some Went Through The World..................  45
A Discord......................................45
Rouge et Noir..................................46
Vermouth and Orange Juice......................47
Fragments Of A Novel.........................  51
Words..........................................57The Poet
THE poet knows there is no knowing Why all things are so fair;
The waves are only the wind a-blowing
The mermaids emerald hair;
The clouds but faery galleons going
To islands in the air,
And the silver threads of streams a-flowing Are things for queens to wear.
H7JSilently, At The Candle Hour
SILENTLY, at the candle hour, there came
A shadowy figure stealing from the wood
To my threshold, with face half shrouded and stood Awhispering softly your silver name.
The dusk was heavy with no other sound;
The tapers were all ayellow in the dim . . . With my dream-dulled eyes, sadly I asked of him Where in all the world your love could be found.
“Her love,” he answered me, “you will not find “Either in the hills, the sea or the meadows, “Until you twain are only two dim shadows, “Wafted, as I, upon the twilight wind.”
YOUR young face is a fragile flower Blown on the years no breath recalls;
Day on day and hour on hour,
Some leaflet sears, some petal falls.
Some day—so soon—when all are flown,
And I shall miss them from their place,
Shall I, for the bright flower blown,
Still press a kiss upon your face ?
[18]Ghosts
*? I KIS not your studied image on my walls,
A	Which comes and calls
Your mem’ry back to me
Through all the labyrinthes of Time and Space;
’Tis some low voice of tired violins,
When soft, at morn, the last slow waltz begins; Some haunting stream of melody, Where floats the phantom of your face.
’Tis not the poem of your name
That brings again
The old sad pain;
’Tis some faint hint of long-forgot perfume, Wafted through open windows of my room, Of Spring’s young violets, glimmering through the rain.
[19]Rondel
THE Spring still chants her same gay song Of love, of flowers and of rain;
She lays the same bright snares again, The same gay lures she’s used so long.
I walk the glimmering fields, among
The dripping forest and the plain:
The Spring still chants her same gay song Of love, of flowers and of rain.
The yearning wonder and the wrong That deep within my breast have lain, Awake once more and move the pain The silent winter stilled so long.
The Spring still chants her same gay song.
[20]A Wanderer's Song
I HAVE slept me a sleep,
And dreamed me a dream,
And tramped me a tramp With the heart of a rover;
But never a glint nor ever a Gleam
Has warmed my heart
The whole world over;
Though I sought me
And sang
With the voice of a lover. . .
O, that which I dreamed
And that which I sought,
Can never be found, nor wooed, Nor bought,
By the weary tramping of
Weary feet—
Two deep eyes that looked in Mine
From under the ardent arbour vine
That first mad day, when I
Swung me away, through the dust Of my native village street!
[21]Why?
I DID as you bid me—I departed Forever.
I went from you and returned
No more.
Now
Your face is dimmer than a
Dim dream;
Your name within my memory is Fainter than a breath.
Why do you come then
And sit at my table
When the guests are gathered Together?
Why do you come and sit under
The bright lamps at my table,
Shaking your shadowy hair about you When the feast is high with wine, And I would be merry?
Why do you fix your unforgotten Eyes upon me with their still Untarnished laughter?
Forever is a long time.
Why have you come so soon then
To search me out and
Haunt me?EACH night, apart by some low manger side,
Some Saviour is conceived, some Christ is born Each day upon some Calvary, is crucified Some god; some Son of Man who dies in scorn. But still no stars foretell; no prophet prophesies; No wise men come with wond’rous gifts at morn; No temple veil is rent asunder when he dies.
Each eve some young Madonna of the Street (For whom there was no refuge at the inn) Seeks some low bed with wandering weary feet And bears in pain some son to perish for our sin.
I STAND above the city’s tumultuous sea,
When soft, the sun flees out the smoky skies,
Watching , the waking windows open their bright eyes
To join the mad night’s joyous revelry.
I know that down those stone-walled channels of the streets,
Tide-borne, some soul is wafted, seeking me,
That in some steel-bound cavern, glad, expectantly, For me some soft hand waits; some dear heart beats.I AM as one who wounded in the fray,
Turns backward from the battle’s clash and din To some green woodland still, and enters in, Casting the shield and broken sword away, And seeks some grassy spot where he may lay His scarred head down, while soft begin The leaves low sound, and yet more soft than they A small bird’s song that echoes sweet and thin. As one who lies thus ’neath a summer’s tree Drinks greedily in each gay trilled sound That pours from out that little feathered throat Who stares into the blue, and dreams, and he Forgetful lies of war and strife and wound— Heedless of all, save that low-warbled note.
Dusk
DUSK, and there looms but one pale star Over the bluff, and the beat of the surf Answers the gull’s dissenting call.
Sand dunes, eternally moving, stand
Sentinels grim, to guard my rest.
My thoughts are expressed by the monotone Of the sad salt sea in its seething sleep,
And the roar of the onward rushing tide.
[26]FEET that should have strayed
By sylvan wildernesses;
Pale cheeks that were made
For the warm sun’s caresses;
How did you find your way
Unto these aching walls,
From where, a happy child,
In airy country lanes you played—
A thing so young, so pure, so wild?
And why did you leave your play
To wander where the scarlet lamplight falls, To wait so calm; so bold; so unafraid?
And when your little, broken form is laid Back into the arms of the Dark Mother
O fear not that she deny another.
Some Urge Eternal will seek you out
And sift you
From the old deep calumny that clings;
Earth in her arms will bear your being
And lift you
From out the ruinous wrath of things.Portrait of a Poet
SOFTLY,
over your Pan-like forehead
—blossom-p ale—
the purple shadows of your dim hair fall. . .
Upon the whitened, half-hid
oval of your quiet face
the ardent colouring of your red mouth gleams . . .
bright as scarlet-painted poppies blowing before the west wind
under the August sky;
or the emblazoned leaves of autumn quivering,
stained with the life-blood of the sinking year.
Under the arching
of your dream-drooped eyelids,
fired by the flame of unborn fantasies, your deep eyes burn
like altar tapers dimly seen glimmering through the lofty portals of some ancient shrine
—at twilight.
There,
beside the ledge that frames the swiftly-darkening sky
[28]of the yellow evening,
I see you stand—
your slender fingers like white flames tapping the cold pane ceaselessly.
I feel what shadows of dreams must hover near . . .
fluttering like silver moths about you in the shrill silence of the unlit room.
Generation


I WHO have never loved this life,
Who had reproached father and mother, To have given this unwelcome gift of life— This so great sorrow;
Once in a hot moment,
To her whose arms were about me
Gave the miracle of progeny—
The core of my being and breath.
And so again was dragged a soul
From that so sweet Elysium of the Unborn— I, who had reproached father and mother, Who had never loved this life,
Condemned in a hot moment to suffer,
The core of my being and breath.The Poet Sings To His Lost Love Of The Web Woven Of Dreams
BEING but a weaver of thin dreams,
It was denied me to look into your face, So I have taken the thin threads of my dreams, And woven an image of your face With the shuttles of my invisible loom.
Look you through the dim web of my dreams, And you will behold the image of your face, Woven of the thin threads of my dreams.
I WEPT to think the rose would perish with the hour;
That leaves, once life, and beauty and perfume Would fall away, and in the garden gloom Make musty mould the worms would wind through and devour.
But when I thought of thee, one fairer than a rose, Deeper my grief than shallow streams of tears— Knowing the deathly fingers of the years
Would leave thee naught but dust for the dark tomb to enclose.
[30]Streetscape
THE scarlet rear lamps
Of the myriad fleeting cars
Make pools of blood
Upon the glimmering black pavement
The futile drops of rain cannot wash out. .
A line of street lights stamps The long vista with bluish Opalescent stars. . .
Wrapped in sleep
A house leans heavily upon its shadows Like an old man leaning on a staff. . .
The dark windows running with the rain
Are like blind eyes that weep. . .
And the wind as it lurches through the street Makes a sound
Like a cold, hard laugh.San Francisco
OCITY of Sea
And Ships:
You shall always be
The memory of deep midnights, And a tramp
Through spectral streets;
And the damp,
Warm pressure of lips
Under a yellow lamp.
Alone . . .
And the sound of rain
Striking the dumb stone;
White faces and asking eyes That seek my own . . .
And seek for once . . . In vain.WE are the hewers of wood and the drawers of water,
Who with bowed backs and with heads out-thrust,
Have borne the weight of empires on our shoulders— made them totter;
And reared new palaces amid their dust.
Ay, the imperishable pyramids that dot Sahara’s sands
Are not a puny king’s proud monument,
But ours—to the mighty labour of our unnumbered hands;
Broad backs that bowed and perished as they bent.
Nay, the mighty Caesar’s imperial, despotic lips
Could not dominate an empire from a throne
Had not we, in fields and mines and down in hulls of ships,
Have fashioned wealth and given him of our own.
The engine’s throb, the piston’s beat,
The song the flywheel hums
Is like the forward march of drums
On factory floor and sooty street.
The drone of a thousand thousand feet
Tells our army comes.
The wine that sparkles in our cups tonight
May be the gall of future years.
The steel that cleaves, the iron that clings
Is the harp within our hands,
[33]The singing rails, the cable strands,
The steel-girt walls are strings
The earth resounds; the welkin rings,
With sound of song uproarous,
The strokes of staggering hammer swings
Chant the endless chorus.
Yea, we are the drawers of water and the hewers of wood, who made new kings, new empires rise
And melt away like mist before the sun; but still we stood
Always with Light Eternal in our eyes.The Bohemians
(Invocation)
OMUSE, who are we to invoke you, Who last night pawned your lyre
For a few odd pennies!
We are the same tatterdemalions
Who have begged your bread this many a year.
I
Jove does not hurl his bolts at beggars;
The winter’s snowflakes will suffice— And so will serve the double purpose Of staunching our blasphemous lips, And of turning old Earth pure and still; All without arresting the celestial scheme.
II
To answer a taunt is to acknowledge equality; Silence is the reply which majesty gives the knave.
Ill
Come, let us chase our bubbles, friends; We have only a little way to run;
Yesterday, in their shops, they told us That we should quickly perish.
They are busy with their weights and their dollars, And will not miss our small number.IV
Leave us to our crusts and our mutton bones, And we will not ask for the very fine coat with the fur collar.
Wine has a hundred tongues;
So lest we tell all our secrets We shall drink water
While gazing into the eyes of our loves.
V
From our attic windows we saw the swallows Cutting the new air of spring With their swift wings, And we told our loves Of April’s green gladness, And sang them sonnets of the flowers.
VI
(L’Envoi)
Her eyes were greener than my once-black coat, And I wondered what trick of the dyer’s art Had burned her hair that deep orange hue.
But I shall never forget her, For the sake of a little word she uttered A long time ago, under the eaves.
VII
(Epilogue)
They knew that they had twice five fingers; So one day they discovered you were not amongst them.
[36]But it chanced one saw your name
New ’graved in marble in the market place
And remembered that you had drunk coffee at his tables;
So he proclaimed the fact abroad,
And it fell out that many came to imitate you,
—So that one died a wealthy man.
(Epitaph)
Lichas has beaten Hercules at dice.
LITTLE will Earth reck if you have been
' A goodly wife or a harlot—
Whether you have worn the golden or the green, The purple or the scarlet.
E’en have you sinned, she will forgive,
In all your life eternal,
One little crimson hour.
And in some warm season vernal,
She will make you live,
Blowing in country fields agreen,
A crimson flower.
[37]Urge
VOLUMES unwritten; pictures unpainted;
Idle days wasted in dreaming and pleasure. Ghosts of my brain-children, phantoms of seekings, Into my chambers come creeping at eve’n; Creaking the floor boards, rattling the curtains, Thumping the windows with dream-fabric fingers, Whispering thought-prayers in weak unborn voices— Wild supplications for long-delayed birthrights, Mad implorations to walk in the sunlight, Cravings to breathe in the World of Existence. They catch at my coat sleeves; they hang on my mantle,
They drink of my breathing; they drink of my sweat drops
In vain hope of finding the way of expression. On low-bended knee-bones of dream-fabrication They grovel and pray me—I, their Jehovah! I, who can free them! And how they revile me! Deep-burning curses because I delay them.
They mock at my waiting with weary, pinched faces; They scoff at my fingers grown stiff in delay;
They laugh at my pleasures and spit in my wine cup—
I would flee from their midst but my feet cannot flee them.
[38]“To A Fallen Soldier"
A BLADE of grass has fallen upon the breast Of one who went into the battle.
Once he broke horseshoes with his bare hands;
His strength was greater than that of all the rest; He lifted often a young ox,
To show to men the strength of his arms.
A blade of grass has fallen upon the breast
Of you, who went into the battle,
You who broke horseshoes with your bare hands!
O tell me, why do you not now lift
The blade of grass that has fallen upon your breast, You, who often lifted a young ox?
[41]Fragments
THE world was dead,
The sky swung wearily like a shroud,
And the moon was only a frightened face that fled On ghostly feet from cloud to cloud.
♦ * *
Over the gray grass the wind is blowing,
While the pale weakly willows are whimpering And weeping their leaves under a dead sky.
In the depths of the dark plain the pale houses Are hushed and huddled like snow-driven sheep; Over the marshy meadows the black roads bend At the shrine of a wayside saint.
* * *
I was a fool and jested among fools.
Methinks that oft my mimicry and word
Were naught but pebbles cast in shallow pools.THE unsleeping ocean
Upward flings
A white arm
To the overbending sullen sky . . .
The sea birds cry;
There is a charm
In the slow rhythmic motion
Of their wings.
* * *
You are the sea.
You wash the shores of all the world, The storied coasts of India and Spain, And the glimmering coral strands Of the outermost Islands of Dream.
* * *
Never to make another know—
Never to make another feel—
How the heaving breast of the emerald sea Booms up to meet the keel.
[43]Vers Libre
(After reading Carl Sandburg)
NEW songs have welled up in the mouths of men
Filled with a new and unspeakable beauty;
I am overcome by the unending wonder of them, They obsess me beyond belief,
They haunt me for whole days together,
Words in them have become so tangible—terrible.
Their music is like the thunder of hammers;
It beats upon the brain. The beauty of them
Is like steel girders seen gleaming against the sky.
Like mighty engines their verses throb. Swift as An express train their meaning rushes upon you, Their idea overwhelms as an army.
They are filled with strange and wonderful words, Words like scimiters, gleaming keen
They cleave the heart; they pierce through the soul; Orange and purple words that mirror the colour of Life.
Red words that startle the eye like new-spilt blood, Green and lavender words that lull the senses, Words like mailed fists striking you full in the face, Forty centimeter phrases that bombard your being.
I am overcome by the unending wonder of them; They obsess me beyond belief;
They haunt me for whole days together,
Have they become so tangible—terrible.
[44]SOME went through the world saying of the lilies, “They toil not, neither do they spin, yet naught under Heaven is arrayed like them.” And the sea, and the streams and the earth, and man and the birds and the beasts—all that travail and labour were sore wroth.
And they came unto the Lord of Creation saying: We have travailed and laboured, yet are we not as the lilies who toil not nor travail not.
And the Lord of Creation said: “Surely the lilies have contributed their alloted share. Moreover have they suffered more greatly than you—having been born into the world, beautiful.
A Discord
We are often ashamed of, and take great pains to conceal the truth concerning the most trivial and innocent things of life; our name, our relatives, our environments and our sincere thoughts. At the same time we often admit—nay, boast, even, of disgraceful scenes, crimes and petty meannesses—-all depending on their harmony with the character-part which we decided to play in the world. What is out of key we reject. That is man’s primal instinct for art.
[45]Rouge Et Noir
Red and black. Black and red. First it’s red and then it’s black, and then it’s red and black, and then the wheel begins to turn very slowly at first, and then faster and faster until I see only a blackish red blur, the colour of clotted blood, which grows darker and darker and darker until it’s all black, and there is not a spot of colour to be seen nor any light, and people are crowding me so closely I cannot get through nor get my breath. I fight and shove with my elbows and cry out, but before I can get to the table I hear the croupier’s voice saying that the play is closed, and then I hear him again and this time it seems that he is a long ways off announcing the winning number, but I can never make out quite just what number it is nor which colour won, whether it was the red or the black.Vermouth and Orange Juice
Definition for an Idealist: a Cynic in embryo.
* * *
Shun the appearance of evil—and you will be called a sly rogue.
* * *
A woman may jeopardize her virtue but never her complexion.
* * *
Women should abandon their resentment toward the great philosophers. They never seem so charming as when one has been reading Schopenhauer.
* * *
’Tis true that men often owe much of their success and fame to the part which their wives play in their lives—a part for which they do not always receive credit. Whoever has thought to attribute to Xantippe her due for making Socrates the great philosopher he was.
* * *
The home is called the “Modern Temple.” If we remember rightly it was at the doorway of the ancient temple that men removed their sandals and entered with fear and trembling.
* * *
People marry for what they believe and divorce for what they know.
* * *
The good die young—having found, possibly, no incentive for living.
♦ * *
Every pleasure has its Puritan.
Every wise man keeps a memorandum of what to forget.
[47]A cynic is a man who has received the confidences of many women.
* * *
Marriage: one of life’s little examples of compensatory justice.
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Man is the only animal that reforms.
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A coquette is a woman who realizes that the enticements of love lie in their uncertainty.
♦ ♦ ♦
That divorcees are soon remarried is due to man’s pride in achievement. He wishes to succeed where others have failed.
* * *
The Naked Truth might win a larger male following in a modem gown.
* * *
The unpardonable sins are those unbecoming to us.
* * *
Men marry for the same reason for which women divorce—ennui.
* * *
The unhappiest are those who have no regrets.
* * *
A Fiancee: a compromise with the Ideal.
* * *
Fiance: a compromise with Hope.
* * *
To have one’s husband fall in love with one all over again.... to be served with blanc mange twice on the same afternoon.... how the little repetitions of life annoy one!
[48]All things come to him who waits—even the realization of the futility of waiting.
* * *
When we have run the gamut of dissipations; when we have exhausted all experiences and they no longer tempt, there is still one avenue of escape from ennui— reform.
* * *
Definition for Immorality: the realization that one is a mammal.
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One of the discouragements of the virtuous life is that in old age we shall have nothing to confess.
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Democracy: the theory that a sufficient number of wrongs can make a right.
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Some day women will strive for the lost art of being feminine as much as they now strive for the vote.
*	*	4
Marriage: the act of Neophytes or Supercynics.
*	* *
Definition for Respect: the manner we accord a man through fear, force of habit, hope of gain, or to please our own vanity.
* * *
We can, and often do, forgive those injuries committed against us from avowed malice, but never on any account those acts done “for our own good.”
* * *
If we live long enough we live to see our successful rival pay the prices of his conquest.
* * *
Women repent of one folly by committing another.
[49]Virtue and many other things are their own reward. Unfortunately it is not always so with that greatest of human emotions—love. Too often it ends in marriage.
* * *
When a man has turned sixty he no longer has any illusions regarding life—also, he no longer needs them.
* * *
All wives mistrust the husband who was an ardent lover. And since all wives imagine that their husbands wooed them ardently all husbands are mistrusted.
* * *
It is often said that the most beautiful women are seldom clever. It may be remembered that they do not find cleverness necessary.
* * *
A woman secretly never quite forgives her husband for poverty; a man secretly never quite forgives his wife for her age.
* * *
Whatever may be said against the muchly married, they cannot be accused of misanthropy.
* * *
It is recorded that once a man in the basket of a captive balloon became frightened at the altitude and jumped out. Another man feared that he was losing his life to women and married.
* * *
When a woman thinks of a hero she always thinks of the particular man with whom she is in love at the moment. Oftimes she is right.
[50]Fragments of a Novel
(The following notes are all that could be found of a novel Roubaix de L’Abrie Richey had for years intended to write. The hero of it (if such he can be called) was to be one of that tragic type of persons so often found in life: The “near genius” who come to this world with an over-abundance of visions and capacity for feeling—but who lack the ability to express themselves and evolve for themselves a clear vision of life—“superfluous beings” they are, who not finding themselves mentally equal to the world in which they live—fail—and carry the bitterness of their failures throughout life.
And it was a sympathetic book which could convey all the pathos—the struggles and the agonies of such a being that the dead poet wanted to write. He planned it for years, but only these few preliminary notes were found—too few, alas, they are—to give even a fair idea of what the book might have been; but we publish them for their intrinsic merit regardless of what they were meant to be.)	T. M. R.
All of Vincent’s life seemed to have been a preparation for something which never happened.
First he was a little boy.
Vincent was his name. It was a yellow name. Just why he could not tell, but it pleased him immensely. And when he squinted up his eyes and thought about it, repeating the syllables over and over, he saw his name there all glittering and golden like honey in the sun, or the golden charm on grandfather’s watch chain. Perhaps this was all because V was a bright, golden yellow letter. All the names and words he could think of that began with V were yellow.
His name was in the bean field beyond the lane. He always saw it there in his mind’s eye, the initial letter large as the inverted roof of a house standing just at
[51]the edge of the eucalyptus grove. And then it trailed away, growing smaller, letter by letter until the last one rested on the bank of the Jamul where it shone like a tiny spark. The sun seemed to always shine in that spot. Perhaps that was what made his name so golden. Anyway he was glad.
Chester and Bob were the boys who sometimes came from a neighbouring ranch to play with him. Those were brown names and depressed him. He felt sorry for them. How fortunate he was to have a glittering bright name. He liked it better than any other in the world except Aprila’s. But that belonged to her. He could not have that. Besides it was a girl’s name. Aprila was a green name and he loved it. Anything green was lovely. It made you feel all empty inside and that you wanted to fill yourself with it but not like when you were hungry and ate food. You only wanted to put your lips upon it and breathe it in like air.... only different. All green things were beautiful. You could not help loving them. One day he had pressed his lips to Aprila’s cheek. She was very beautiful. He wondered if her beautiful green name made her like that. He felt very strangely when he was near her just as if there were little hot wires wriggling in his back and cheeks and it was difficult to breathe. But strangely enough it was a pleasant feeling. Someday he and Aprila were going away together in a country where there was no one else and everything was all golden and green. She had promised that she would go. That would be just like having the name himself to have her with him there, forever and forever.
[52]Mama’s name was Rose. That made you think of the flowers, pink and scarlet and perfumed, but not quite like that, either. It was bigger and softer than flowers and wrapped you round like a tinted silk shawl. When you thought about that name it made you want to be hidden away and sleep while tears came into your eyes.
There were so many colours in the world. Everything that one could think of had a colour, good and bad, and sorrow and joy, and names and places. Love and hatred. There were different kinds of love, each with its different colour. Love for Mamma was pink and scarlet like her name. That was not the way you love God and the Holy Virgin Mary. That kind of love was white. It made one cold to think about it, like touching the bed sheets in winter time on damp evenings.
Every Sunday morning Vincent went with his grandfather to mass. They always drove there in the old-fashioned cart with the high wheels. In summer time the dust whirled up and about Vincent as he sat watching the yellow ribbon of road which seemed to slowly float past, and listened to the almost inaudible clicking of the spokes. In winter the hoofs of the young horse, Dodo, made a sound in the mud as though someone had given a smacking kiss. Vincent sat huddled in a great coat just able to peer out beneath the brim of his hat. Sometimes the rain came down and he liked to see how it was driven by the wind. It looked as though slanting lines had been drawn across the horizon and there were ever so many of them.
Vincent liked the church. It was always solemn and still there and he felt as though he had something
[53]sweet in his mouth as soon as he entered. And then there was sin. On Sundays the good father talked to the people about sin. Vincent sat very still in the big pew beside his grandfather and listened to the priest’s words. Sin was black; not like the dull black of his grandfather’s coat but hard and shining like some beads a neighbour woman wore around her neck, and was like a mighty serpent which wound itself through everything: the woods and hills, and even into the sky. Sin was beautiful like black beads and moved through the world with a tinkling sound.
It would be wonderful and strange to touch sin and feel how hard and smooth it was, only the good Jesus would be sad to know he thought that. Jesus had died to save his soul from sin. His soul was white and thin and shaped like a leaf, and when he died would float away to paradise. It was inside of him now, only no one could see it, even could they have looked in him, for the soul was invisible.
Vincent had long wished to paint a scene of the Avenue with the Countryman Building rising behind in the middle distance. The movement of that great street fascinated him. As he passed to and fro he became obsessed by the idea of putting the whole thing upon canvas. It appealed to Vincent as an impressive and moving scene. He would put into it something of that hot, surging energy which seemed to be the life of the city.
After due consideration he decided that the most interesting period was a little after five o’clock in the evening when the great homeward movement of the
[54]traffic began. The golden haze of evening rose then and bathed the whole scene in a romantic dusty light as though a powder of gold filtered through the air. The dark, glistening ribbon of the street stretched away like pitiless blue steel, while over it surged a never ending wave of vehicles with a dull clangour and noise.
Behind, the four wooden stories of the Countryman Building rose unsteadily and presented a dirty greyish mass of wall from which looked out great warped windows which seemed to stare upon the world like gaunt, hungry eyes. Faces appeared there and then disappeared. Curtains flapped idly out and in at the whim of the breeze. Children craned their necks and looked down while their shrill laughter and cries filled the air and mingled with the dull roar below.
He lay upon the cot in his little room and looked up at the stained rafters overhead. The morning wind moved the roses outside the white curtained window and they seemed to beckon him with a gentle thumping sound. From far and far away was borne to him the faintly muffled tolling of a bell. No doubt it was from the steeple of San Zacarias. Thoughts of his past life came to Vincent’s mind. One after another the scenes opened themselves before him; some bright and jewellike, some somber and dim.
It seemed strange to him that he should lie there thinking of the past, in that room, upon that cot where he had so often dreamed of the future. More than ten years had passed away. Ten years! Or had he only
[55]dreamed it over night ? The thought agitated strangely his disordered mind. He started up suddenly, catching his breath, leaning upon his elbow. No, scattered there about the room, hanging from the walls, overflowing from a trunk were the evidences of those days and those years, papers, canvasses, bits of manuscripts, all in frightful disorder.	,
And Vincent resting his head within his hands felt a slight nervous tremor twitch his frail body as in a terrible lucid moment the realization came upon him that those dreams, those hopes were now lost to him forever—utterly.
Somewhere upon oblivion’s sea the tall and stately ship of life was sinking. So soon above those streaming pennants brave and gay, those fluttering flags that gleamed from the topmost pinnacles of the masts the darks would close; the heedless waters roll about those sails once filled with the breath of the world.To Roubaix de I’Abrie Richey "words” had personal and unexpected significances apart from their obvious meaning. He also sensed color in them. Whenever a word or name was mentioned, or seen written, he instinctively saw the color and the movement of it.
This is not a new subject any longer, for now even scientists uphold the theory of color in words and music, but after reading these few examples left by Roubaix de V A brie Richey one only regrets that no better advantage was taken of this exceptional sense in him. Even in his early youth words fascinated him and at the age of twelve he invented a language all his own which he called Ziziquiyana. He coined new words, giving them meanings according to their sound. And having only English to rely upon at that early period of his life, the supposition that he might have been influenced by foreign words in compiling his language must be excluded.
Not the word itself, but the idea of the word—the synthesis of the meaning of the word—is what he tried to build up. So in Prostermozarumtarencmo (kitchen) he conveys the "spirit” of the kitchen, all its smells, noise of tin pans, its sink full of dirty dishes and so on.
From the well arranged dictionary of the poet's language we select a few words which may prove of interest to the readers of this book.
Ziziquiyana English
Adorno, n.—that which is done, a job, a piece of work. Bejansky, v.—to come.
Cabaczna, n.—candy, sweets, confectionery.
Czz/nie, adj.—some.
[57]Dujae, v.—to write, to sign.
Enswanya, v.—to learn.
Frozny, v.—to spoil, to ruin.
Gujensky, n.—to know.
Froznimo, n.—a botch, a blunder.
Icshay, n.—stuff, rubbish.
Jiker, v.—to show, to point out.
Jikerimo, n.—something which points out.
Jimpsy, adj.—weak, without strength.
Kushto, v.—to toss, to sling, to throw.
Kuyat, n.—company, a visitor.
Nimsk—no.
Otkapobita—a mystery, something not plain to be seen. Otravasky, v.—to trespass, to go over.
Oya, adv.—quiet, still.
Povasku, v.—to be gone.
Prezepislozony, n.—breakfast.
Prostremozat, n.—cook.
Prostremo zaru m tarencm o—ki tchen.
Papaloi, adv.—perhaps, maybe.
Sdowlozony, n.—dinner, second meal.
Smootzig, adj.—dirty.
Spidiwitz, v.—to speak, to tell, to say.
Uba, adv.—too, over much.
Uczna, adv.—much.
Vasky, v.—to go.
Xevaci, n.—tobacco.
Xorsrta, v.—to teach, to instruct.
Yalenka, v.—to put in.
Ybejansky, v.—to come in.
Yvasky, v.—to go in.
[58]Zabejansky, v.—to come away.
Zablau, n.—drink.
Zablat, n.—a drinker, a drunkard.
Zadria, v.—to drive away.
Zacarrade, v.—to dash away, to blaze away.
Zee, n.—money, coin.
Zotolosky, v.—to play.
Zowkliachi, v.—to bespatter, to cover with mud. Zouska, n.—a man.
Zouskaronna, n.—a woman.
Myrto is red, wine red, and someone who passes a thin silk, cloudy-like cloth over a cloudy glass as if to polish it.
Dorothea is also wine red, as someone slips a thin piece of silver into a pocket as if to secrete it.
Childs is someone holding a bowl, or a curved sensation, as one who cups the hands under a chin.
Tina is wine red, and something very precious that one puts gently down to become more precious as they carefully put it down.
Robo is a rolling motion, as the waves in the ocean or the curved back of a brush.
San Francisco is a bearded man who thoughtfully strokes his chin.
Europe is yellow, and a noisy wheel spinning round and round with ever increasing speed.
[59]