Book description
THE ROAD TO XANADU. PREFACE: THE story which this book essays to tell
was not of the tellers choosing. I t simply came, with supreme
indifference to other plans, and autocratically demanded right of way. A
glittering eye and a skinny hand and a long gray beard could not have
done more summary execution, nor, for that matter, could the
Wedding-Guest himself who also had other fish to fry have been, at the
outset, a more reluctant auditor. But the reluctance swiftly passed into
absorbing interest, as the meaning of the chance glimpse which did the
business was disclosed. For the agency which cast the spell was not, as
it happened, a pair of marvellous fairy-tales at all, nor even the
provocative and baffling personality of their creator. It was the
imaginative energy itself, surprised as it seemed to me at work behind
these fabrics of its weaving. If I Gas right, and if I could make clear
to others what I thought I saw myself, I had no alternative. That the
aperpi, such as it was, should come through The Ancient Mariner, when I
wasintent at the moment upon Chaucers rich humanity, was, to be sure,
more than a little disconcerting. It was so, however, that it chose to
come, and Wyrd goeth as she will. Once started on, however, the story
has been written in its present form I fear I. must confess quite
frankly for the writers own enjoyment - in part for the sheer pleasure
of following into unfamiliar regions an almost untrodden path not a
little for that fearful joy one snatches from the effort to exhibit,
with something that approaches clarity, the order which gives meaning to
a chaos of details. It would have been easy in comparison to
communicate, for the edification of a narrow circle only, a mass of
observations to the pages of some learned journal, and let it go at
that. But the subject in itself was far too interesting, and the light
it seemed to throw upon a wider field far too significant, to warrant
any but the broadest treatment I could give it. I am not sure, indeed,
that one of the chief services which literary scholarship can render is
not precisely the attempt, at least, to make its findings available and
interesting, if that may be beyond the precincts of its own solemn
troops and sweet societies. At all events, that is the adventurous
enterprise of this volume. Its facts I think I can safely vouch for. As
for the interpretation thereof, that is the core of the book...
