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27 April 1922
Dearest Brett,
Many many thanks for your letter. Ill answer it first. About Joyce. Don't read it unless you are going to really worry about it. Its no joke. Its fearfully difficult and obscure and one needs to have a really vivid memory of The Odyssey and of English literature to make it out at all. It is wheels within wheels within wheels. Joyce certainly had not one grain of a desire that one should read it for the sake of the coarseness, though I confess I find many a "ripple of laughter" in it. But that's because (although I dont approve of what he has done) I do think Marian Bloom & Bloom are superbly seen at times. Marian is the complete complete female. There's no denying it. But one has to remember she's also Penelope, she is also the night and the day, she is also an image of the teeming earth - full of seed, rolling round and round. And so on and so on. I am very surprised to hear a Russian has written a book like this [Andrei Bely's Petersburg]. Its most queer that its never been heard of. But has Kot read Ulysses? Its not the faintest use considering the coarseness except purely critically.
[To Dorothy Brett, 29 April 1922.]