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Title: The letters of Hart Crane: 1916-1932
Author: Hart Crane
Editor: Brom Weber
Release date: August 3, 2025 [eBook #76626]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Hermitage House, 1952
Credits: Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LETTERS OF HART CRANE: 1916-1932 ***
THE LETTERS OF HART CRANE
_By Brom Weber_
HART CRANE: A BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL STUDY, 1948
[Illustration:
_H. W. Minns_
HART CRANE
(_Taken c. 1921_)]
THE LETTERS OF
HART CRANE
1916-1932
EDITED BY BROM WEBER
_The imaged Word, it is, that holds
Hushed willows anchored in its glow.
It is the unbetrayable reply
Whose accent no farewell can know._
HERMITAGE HOUSE · NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1952, BY BROM WEBER
_All rights reserved_
_First Edition_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PREFACE
“Of the poets who came into prominence during the 1930’s in America,
none is more likely to achieve an immortality than Harold Hart Crane.”
So write Horace Gregory and Marya Zaturenska in their recent,
authoritative _History of American Poetry_. The extraordinary quality of
Crane’s poetry and the tense drama of his brief life make such an
observation valid and inevitable. It is amply supported in an indirect
sense by the amount of devoted attention which Crane has received in the
twenty years since his death by drowning in 1932. Waldo Frank’s edition
of the _Collected Poems_ appeared in 1933. The first full-length book on
Crane, Philip Horton’s _Hart Crane_, came in 1937. Eleven years later,
in 1948, the editor’s _Hart Crane_ was published. Meanwhile, magazines,
anthologies, and critical volumes have given substantial space and
consideration to the poet.
It seems fitting then, and necessary too, that the correspondence of
this outstanding writer be presented now. Crane’s letters exist in
scattered condition: some in magazines, others in the appendices of
books, still more in libraries and private collections. Many have
already been lost, because of carelessness, wartime events, or other
factors. But apart from such matters as preservation and compilation,
there are the human revelations and literary merits which distinguish
Crane’s letters and make this collection desirable. Seldom has a man
laid his heart bare as does Crane in these documents, seldom with the
passion and skill which he so masterfully infused into his poetry as
well. It seems undoubted that many of these letters will before long
find their way into anthologies of great letters and prose.
The large quantity of letters written by Crane may be ascribed in part
to the geographical gulf which separated him from those to whom he
believed he could honestly announce his thoughts, emotions, and
meaningful experiences. As soon as it became possible to enjoy closer
contact with once-distant friends, he stopped writing to them. Thus
scores of letters were sent to Gorham Munson from November 1919 to the
early spring of 1923, at which time Crane joined Mr. and Mrs. Munson in
New York. Thereafter, few letters were received by Mr. Munson, except in
rare instances when either of the two men had left the city, or when
Crane had an urgent need for communication which could not be satisfied
with speech. In the case of friends like Slater Brown and Malcolm
Cowley, where friendship was initiated and continued with social
intercourse hardly ever broken by physical separation, only a handful of
letters exist as a result.
As happens with some of us, many letters were the perfunctory
expressions of a sense of obligation. An explanation of this character
must often be assigned to a series of letters written to one person, or
to a particular letter. It is as mundane sometimes as insistence by the
poet’s mother that he write her several times a week and make sure to
send her a special delivery letter timed to reach her punctually each
Sunday morning. In this class, too, must be placed those letters
occasioned by Crane’s failure to pay a debt, his desire to make amends
for a squabble, and similar causes.
But far more compelling than distance or propriety as the dominant force
behind Crane’s prolific composition of letters was an emotional impulse
which drove him to discharge so much expressive energy in a non-poetic
form: his acquisitive need for sympathy, pity, understanding, affection
... a need accompanied by the belief that these responses could be
evoked with a persuasive explanation in words. Let us not confuse this
poignant situation with dishonesty or a huckster’s fraudulency. Crane
was, after all, a poet to whom language was paramount. The outcome was
that even those of his letters which had been intended as geographical
bridges, or as duties, speedily found themselves converted into detailed
and uninhibited recitations and exhortations. Examining the letters to
his mother in this light, to choose one instance, we can understand why,
despite the profound mutual misunderstanding of which each was aware,
Crane persisted in alternately cajoling, threatening, and informing a
basically-unresponsive correspondent.
The resultant rich character of Crane’s letters, in terms of factual
data and emotional subtleties, has enveloped them with a completeness
calling for little amplification or clarification in the form of notes.
These have consequently been held to a minimum. When Crane, for example,
announces a decision, he bathes it in such a sea of rationalization and
background that its origins, its validity, and its likely conclusion
are all too evident to the reader. One is, indeed, encouraged to
speculate whether the tremendous amount of energy involved in the
production of so vast a profusion of details for even the most trivial
of communications did not drain away some of the feeling and thought
that might more happily have been incorporated in poems.
Strangely enough, however, it is apparent that the quantity and quality
of Crane’s letters were not negatively, but positively related to his
poetic output. A correlation of the letters with the history of Crane’s
productivity reveals that it was precisely during periods of great
poetic fertility and well-being that his most evocative and profound
letters were composed. An illustration of this symbiotic relationship
between the poetry and the prose, surely a phenomenon which demonstrates
how organic and deep-seated was the urge for literary expression
animating him, is the remarkable series of letters written to Gorham
Munson between 1919 and 1923, when Crane perfected his control of a
mature, individual language and music and composed some of his most
striking lyrics. The highly-charged group of letters which Crane sent
off to Waldo Frank from the Isle of Pines in 1926, while so feverishly
engaged in molding several brilliant sections of _The Bridge_, is
another relevant example.
The self-sufficiency of Crane’s letters has made it less disappointing
for the editor to be unable to include correspondence addressed to him,
or to make extracts from it, as a complementary balance and check.
Because of Crane’s peripatetic career, letters he received were left
behind in the boarding houses, steamship cabins, and hotels wherein he
spent his days. A more drastic reduction in the number of remaining
letters was apparently accomplished by his impetuous habit of destroying
letters from people with whom he had severed relationships on an
unfriendly note. Finally, the irregular and careless storing and
handling of Crane’s papers after his death has had its own inevitable
results.
The responsibility to be exercised in the task of organizing the letters
of a tempestuous and controversial man like Hart Crane, is as much a
matter of human judgment as it is a familiarity with the canons of
scholarship. Crane conformed less, overtly at least, to the dominant
mores of his age than probably any of his contemporaries. The leitmotif
was restless deviation--whether aesthetic, social, religious, or sexual.
The record of his days vibrates with an explosive terror and
repose--elated, wretched, violent, Rabelaisian--which find dynamic
outlet in his letters. Insofar as Crane’s letters will serve to develop
a self-portrait and contribute toward an understanding of three decades
of our American past, no harm can be accomplished by a forthright
presentation.
The editor, therefore, has not suppressed any portions of Crane’s
letters which might disturb the genteel or excite the prurient. Those
who have studied Crane’s poetry with perception know how richly studded
it is with the imagery, symbolism, and themes of love. As this preface
was being put into final form, the editor received a copy of Dr. Paul
Friedman’s “The Bridge: A Study in Symbolism” (_The Psychoanalytic
Quarterly_, Jan. 1952). After discussing such writers as Wilder and
Kafka, Dr. Friedman, one of the few psychoanalysts who displays a
genuine concern for literary values, goes on to say: “It implies no
irreverence toward Crane’s poetic sensibility to introduce these
[psychological] concepts. The sexual imagery in his poetry is overt,
undisguised.” Of the “Voyages” series, Dr. Friedman writes: “Here the
psychoanalyst could hardly be more explicit than Crane himself.” Under
no circumstances could the wealth of background experience and emotion
which produced the alternately-pessimistic and ecstatic love poems of
Crane conscientiously be omitted from a volume of his letters. One of
the great love-poets of our time, few men have been so tyrannically
governed by a chronic need to love and be loved. One need only observe
in these letters how Crane’s disinterest in poetry and his torpid
creativity after 1929 were affected by a new and surprising love
relationship. Miraculously rejuvenated, as it were, he wrote “The Broken
Tower,” one of his best poems.
The course of a man’s life is inextricably linked with his fellows. For
Crane in particular, relationships with other people were among the most
weighty problems with which he had to cope. The letters uncover a
pattern of tragic and repetitive failure which cannot help but influence
our response to his statements about men and women. As one views the
past with the advantage of hindsight, the fact is inescapable that
almost everyone with whom Crane had close contact eventually became
estranged from him in greater or lesser degree, though from a distance
they may have continued to admire certain of his qualities. This held
true for his literary as well as non-literary associates. All too often,
it was Crane’s vigorous egocentricity, his self-destructive behavior,
which impelled a shocked and helpless friend to seek protective cover,
to avoid Crane as gracefully as possible. Yet, far more frequently,
those who drifted within Crane’s orbit became the unwitting centers of
emotional dramas in which fantasy was as powerful a constituent as
reality. The fantastic distortion which blurred some people for Crane
must be attributed to his insecurity, his sexual inversion, his
resentment against those who could or did help him, his alcoholism, his
paranoiac misrepresentation of motives and events, his hysterical
existence ... in short, to the complex of neuroses which finally
burgeoned forth during the last year of his life into what was probably
a full-scale psychopathic state. Of course, this does not deny that
Crane was probably also the victim of envy, misunderstanding, and
distaste for his poetry and personality.
With these considerations as a guide, the editor has not thought it
necessary to delete those of Crane’s comments which reflect unfavorably
upon the works or persons of artists or other public figures, especially
where such comments are balanced elsewhere in the letters by favorable
remarks. History, in any event, does not take kindly to being expurgated
or twisted for special purposes, no matter how laudable the intention.
The editor has been encouraged in his respect for honesty and frankness
by Gorham Munson, Editor of Hermitage House, who has interposed no
stipulations although he figures prominently in a variety of ways in the
letters. The procedure has been different if it seemed that Crane’s
observations would psychologically or socially harm any living person or
the close surviving relatives of a dead man. In such cases, and they
have been few, either the offensive material, or names and data which
might identify an individual, were omitted.
A few words of caution about some of the conclusions to be drawn from
the letters are in place. The editor has expanded space and tried his
publisher’s spirit, in order to include every important letter. But he
has, of course, selected. Therefore, no ultimate conclusions,
particularly those involving the personalities of Crane’s contemporaries
or the nuances of relationships, are implied by the arrangement which
follows.
Further, the poetry of Hart Crane ought not to be hastily judged by his
life or letters, though the latter should no doubt be studied to support
an understanding and appreciation of the poetry. Art is not subservient
to the man; it has a life of its own which may be related but never
subordinated. For example, the Brooklyn Bridge as conception and poem
will be seen to have occupied a compulsive position in Crane’s
experience and thought. Granted that _The Bridge_ was a failure as a
unified, major epic; this should not lead us to conclude that Crane
failed as a poet too, even though he did not succeed as a latter-day
Dante or Virgil. Various sections of _The Bridge_ are individually
magnificent; in addition, Crane wrote other poems before, during, and
after his work on _The Bridge_ which suffice to give him first rank
among contemporary poets. Nor should we, at the same time, assume that
Crane’s poetic gift was gone because he said so, or because he didn’t
write much in his last years. “The Broken Tower” was completed little
more than a month before he died in the Caribbean Sea. With only one
such poem to his credit, a poet would deserve and gain the immortality
predicted for Crane. Finally, Crane was admittedly not a thinker, rather
a creative being who depended on sensation, intuition, taste. It would
be unwise to characterize his poetry as valueless expression simply
because he was neither a logician nor a pundit preoccupied, sensibly or
otherwise, with questions of ideology and systematic knowledge. In his
own valid and fruitful manner, Crane illuminated recesses of the human
mind and heart with pregnant clarity.
The editor has prepared a chronology of Crane’s life and works. The last
chapter in the Crane biography occurred in 1947. On July 30th of that
year, Mrs. Grace Hart Crane, the poet’s mother, died in Teaneck, New
Jersey. Before her death, she told Samuel Loveman that she wished to be
cremated and her ashes to be cast into the East River from the Brooklyn
Bridge. The necessary arrangements were made, and the editor was one of
a small party which proceeded along Brooklyn Bridge on a windy, sunlit
afternoon in Fall 1947. At intervals on the Bridge, there are signs
warning pedestrians not to throw anything from the structure. By the
time the party reached the center of the Bridge, considerable
trepidation existed about the feasibility of respecting Mrs. Crane’s
last wishes. It remained at last for the editor to grasp the small,
undecorated tin can and shake the ashes into the air, where they swirled
about for a few moments and then fell mistily into the water below. Thus
Crane’s mother joined him in the element which had claimed him fifteen
years earlier.
Crane’s father had died in the Summer of 1931, bringing to an end a
similarly complex relationship with his son. Though each bore a great
and genuine love for the other, there is little doubt that the divorce
of his parents in 1917 tended to separate father from son. Mrs. Crane’s
proximity, her emotional nature and her evaluation of her ex-husband’s
motives and actions, made it impossible for Crane to suspend himself
impartially between both parents as he wished. Instead, he swam into the
aura of his mother’s beliefs and reactions. The resulting alienation
from his father was not fully surmounted until almost a decade later,
for it was not until then that each man grew reconciled to the other’s
personality and values. However, it seems unwarranted, if one can say so
on the basis of their extensive correspondence, to perpetuate Crane’s
own misconceptions of the older man’s values and attitudes in relation
to his son prior to 1927. From an early date, the elder Crane was
apparently profoundly interested in his son’s choice of a literary
career and anxious to have him prepare for it. During 1916 and 1917, for
example, he pressed insistently for Hart to enter college, so that the
latter might obtain the educational background expected to assist him in
functioning as a writer. Although the elder Crane had only studied for a
few years at Alleghany College, he had no contempt for education or
culture such as marks some self-made practical men. When Hart refused to
attend college, Mr. Crane recognized no realistic alternative for his
son other than adjustment to the business world and development of his
poetic life as an adjunct of his mercantile life. From a non-romantic
point of view, Mr. Crane was unfortunately justified. Even in our
advanced age, most full-time poets unsupported by private incomes,
relatives, or philanthropic gifts either cease writing poetry at all or
become embittered producers of occasional pieces. Perhaps Mr. Crane
should have supported Hart from his adolescence onward with an allowance
sufficient to enable him to write poetry and do nothing else. The moral
and psychological results of such beneficence are mixed and
problematical. In any event, his young son’s early poetry did not yet
reveal the merit which would have called forth a clamorous and effective
acclaim to which Mr. Crane might have acceded; furthermore, Mr. Crane
did not stem from a wealthy aristocracy to whom a life of cultured
leisure is natural rather than phenomenal. Finally, the immediate
outward signs of Mr. Crane’s success were somewhat illusory; his
business enterprises partook of the overblown quality of 1920-ish
prosperity, and were underlaid with an insecurity not conducive to the
assumption of a unique personal and financial responsibility. Once Mr.
Crane recognized the impossibility of shaping his son’s values, once he
accepted the fact that Hart was (as he not unkindly wrote him) a poetic
“vagabond,” he generously supplied him with money to the best of his
ability and understanding, continually offered him the security of his
home, and ultimately left him a large cash bequest and an annual
allowance that would have sustained his son under normal circumstances.
Crane was in great part responsible for creating the time-worn legend of
a hard-hearted father. During the years from 1917 to 1925, less so
afterward, he wrote or informed countless friends of the brutality of
his father’s behavior, his lack of kindness and generosity, and the
suffering this caused. Yet it was during these years that Crane was
most uncompromising, patronizing, intransigent, prone to distortion of
his father’s image. The correspondence between them, not all of which is
included here, is a tragic record of misunderstanding for which neither
is to be adjudged guilty. It shows that they were temperamentally alike
in many ways: in their humor, their warmth of spirit, their reckless
pride, their strong need for freedom.
* * * * *
The letters have been assembled chiefly from original manuscripts, as
well as microfilm and photostat copies, generously made available by
their recipients, libraries, and collectors. Herbert Weinstock and
William Wright furnished typed copies of letters to them; Samuel Loveman
gave typed letters to William Sommer. The editor has been able to
examine the papers of Crane and his mother; these provided Crane’s own
carbon copies of typewritten letters to his father, Otto H. Kahn, Yvor
Winters, Edgell Rickword, Thomas Seltzer, and his stepmother ... letters
to his mother and grandmother ... typed copies of several letters to his
father and stepmother. Despite the hazards of transcribing manuscript,
the editor has striven to attain maximum faithfulness to the original.
The major portion of the letters were obtained by the editor when he
collected material for his book on Crane. Since then, he has made every
reasonable effort to collect additional letters from people to whom
Crane might have revealed himself fully and uniquely. The result is an
edition which makes available the letters evoked by Crane’s most
important literary and personal relationships.
As a general rule, only those letters which are routine in nature, of
little general interest, or which deal with subjects more intensively
and significantly treated in other letters, were excluded. In this
connection, it is pertinent to note that it was Crane’s habit, when he
wrote several people at about the same time, to write the same things in
almost identical phraseology to each of his correspondents. This has
made it necessary to delete portions of letters as repetitious. Another
feature of Crane’s letter-writing has required some editorial excision.
Though he wrote lengthily and often, his letters were usually prefaced
and closed with excuses for writing briefly and infrequently. These
apologies are corollaries of his insatiable desire for affection and his
fear of hostility. Though he acknowledges their psychological meaning,
the editor has acted on the assumption that an excess of such material
is bound to distract the reader from more valuable sections. He has
accordingly deleted most of it, together with conventional greetings,
regards, and other closes, though a few letters were left intact so
that the flavor of Crane’s apologetics might be communicated.
The editor has strengthened the punctuation, corrected obvious slips of
the pen and the spelling of names and words when there seemed no
advantage to letting them remain as Crane hastily set them down,
supplied dates and addresses for letters which did not bear them or were
incorrectly headed, italicized names of books and periodicals, enclosed
titles of poems, etc., in quotation marks, and made a few insertions to
supply missing words or to explain initials. Brackets indicate the
editor’s insertions; omissions of 1-25 words are shown with -- -- -- --,
omissions of over 25 words with --/--/; names deleted except for
initials are given as J----, though Crane often used initials himself.
Recurrent details were reduced to uniformity by placing address and date
on left and right respectively, allowing no indentations at the opening,
and transferring all postscripts at top or side to the end.
The kindness of the following who assisted in the compilation of letters
or furnished explanations of their contents is gratefully acknowledged:
Eleanor Anderson, Peggy Baird, Slater Brown, Malcolm Cowley, Donald C.
Gallup, Bessie M. Hise, Philip Horton, Philip Kaplan, Samuel Loveman,
David Mann, Newberry Library, Norman Holmes Pearson, Katherine Anne
Porter, Selden Rodman, Edwin Seaver, Isidor Schneider, David Swetland,
F. Swetland, Robert Thompson, University of Chicago Library, Yale
University Library, and Morton Dauwen Zabel. I am indebted to Richard
Rychtarik and the late Charlotte Rychtarik for aid, friendship, and the
1920 photograph of Crane by Hervey Minns which serves as frontispiece,
while to Horace Gregory, Marya Zaturenska, and Henri Peyre I owe
gratitude for moral support of which they may not be aware. The interest
and understanding of Gorham Munson and M. U. Sheldon has stimulated me
to complete what began as a labor of love and was too quickly encumbered
with depressing complications. I reiterate my thanks to those people and
institutions earlier cited in the preface to my _Hart Crane_; their
generous cooperation on that book made this one possible. Joseph Frank’s
name was inadvertently omitted from that group, as was that of Georgia
O’Keeffe, Executrix, Alfred Stieglitz Estate; I thank them now. Martha
Crossen helped with the manuscript at a crucial moment. Some of the
editorial work was done at Yaddo, for which I am grateful to Louis
Kronenberger, Elizabeth Ames, and the Yaddo Corporation. As always, my
wife Nettie has done more than can here be listed.
BROM WEBER
CHRONOLOGY
Harold Hart Crane was born on July 21, 1899, in Garrettsville, Ohio, the
only child of Clarence Arthur and Grace Hart Crane. In 1909, after a few
years in Warren, Ohio, the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio. There Crane
attended public high school, while his father developed a confectionery
manufacturing and sales business. The boy also travelled with his family
to the Isle of Pines, Cuba, and through parts of Western United States
and Canada.
Crane’s interest in writing and art evidenced itself at an early age.
His first published poem (“C 33”) appeared in _Bruno’s Weekly_ (N.Y.),
Sept. 23, 1916, while his first prose, a letter, was printed in _The
Pagan_ (N.Y.), Oct. 1916. Thereafter, his devotion to poetry superseded
any other concerns.
During 1916 and 1917, Crane’s parents separated and were divorced.
Symbolic of the effect on their son was his assumption of the maternal
surname “Hart” as his own first name. In 1916, when the divorce actions
were initiated, Crane left for New York City alone. There he soon became
familiar with writers, artists, and editors. He remained in New York,
despite a few return visits to Cleveland, until the late Fall of 1919.
At that time, he returned to Cleveland to work for his father and to
live with his mother and maternal grandmother, both of whom had been
Christian Scientists for many years. Dissatisfaction with his working
and living arrangements led him, in 1921, to leave his father’s employ
and, in 1923, to move permanently to New York City.
By dint of night-school courses and practical experience, he had been
able to earn his living in Cleveland during 1922 as an advertising
copywriter. After a few months of this in New York, he resigned his job
and left for Woodstock, New York. Thereafter, his periods of employment
grew shorter until eventually he was generally without an income ... his
movements between country and city were frequent.
He had first conceived of his major poem, _The Bridge_, in February
1923, but was unable to work on it as he wished. Accordingly, his first
book of poems, _White Buildings_, appeared late in 1926 without any
sections of that poem. Fortunately, Otto H. Kahn granted him a sum of
money to work on _The Bridge_ during 1926, and Crane wrote much of the
poem in Patterson, New York and on the Isle of Pines, Cuba. With his
father’s help, he wrote more in 1927; finally, in 1929, under the
impetus of publication offered by Caresse and Harry Crosby, he completed
the poem. It appeared early in 1930 in a Paris and a New York edition,
and was generally acclaimed as one of the remarkable poetic achievements
of our time.
In 1927 and 1928, Crane stayed in California as the companion of a
wealthy invalid; in 1928, a bequest made available to him after his
grandmother’s death permitted him to travel in England and France. When
he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for creative writing in 1931, he
left the United States for Mexico, where he hoped to write a
never-initiated poem on Cortez.
With the exception of a brief return to the United States to attend his
father’s funeral, the remainder of his life was spent in Mexico City and
its environs. On April 24th, 1932, he sailed for New York from Vera Cruz
on the _S.S. Orizaba_. Three days later, on the 27th, he either jumped
or fell into the Caribbean Sea and was drowned. His body was not
recovered.
CONTENTS
PREFACE v
CHRONOLOGY xv
PART ONE 1
OHIO (1916-1922)
PART TWO 111
NEW YORK (1923-1925)
PART THREE 229
WEST INDIES-EUROPE (1926-1930)
PART FOUR 361
MEXICO (1931-1932)
LIST OF CORRESPONDENTS 413
INDEX 415
PART ONE
Ohio
(1916-1922)
1916
1: TO HIS GRANDMOTHER
[_Cleveland, Ohio_] _Jan. 26, 1916_
My Dear Grandmother: Examination time is _on_ now and I am kept
completely occupied in the preparation for them. We had _English_ today
and Latin and Geometry are due tomorrow. They are my hoodooes and so I
am not a little worried tonight about the outcome. I am invited over to
G. Crane’s for supper tonight as Aunt Bess is to be there on about a
day’s visit so Dora can go out early. As you already know, Father and
Mother are in New York and I am running things alone now. The store was
doing surprisingly well today when I was there owing perhaps to the
balmy weather (almost summer) which we are having. Alice has been _very
sick_ and in response to my gift of some roses she sent me a beautiful
note as soon as she was able to sit up. Your letters would augur a
fairly favorable winter and good conditions on the island. So you rest
as much as you can and enjoy the care-free feelings while you can whir
around with the Wilcoxs in the machine. It is fine that you have found a
group of such sympathetic thinkers and be sure and carry the
_science_[1] as far as you can. I know of few better places to get a
foothold in the faith than in the quiet and beauty of the island.
Mother left feeling fine for New York and suppose, tho busy, she is
enjoying a splendid time. They will be back Sat. morn.
With the exception of a little sore throat I have felt fine myself
lately. I think it is unnecessary to go to Mr. Ely.[2] My writing has
suffered neglect lately due to study for examinations, but I will soon
resume it with vehemence as I am intensely,--grippingly interested in a
new ballad I am writing of six hundred lines. I have resolved to become
a _good_ student even if I have to sit up all night to become one. You
will undoubtedly wink when you read this state declaration so often made
but this time it is in earnest.
2: TO HIS GRANDMOTHER
_Cleveland Ohio_ _Feb. 10, 1916_
My dear Grandmother: --/--/ I am now a Junior (capital) in high school
and feel quite elated at having so passed my examinations. The present
too, is more encouraging as fine marks have been in the great majority
since my promotion. -- -- -- --
I’ll bet you were glad to be rid of that musty, fusty old preacher! Let
him scramble the Andersons awhile with his talk. It is strange, in view
of the fact that last winter I defended the desirability of northern
winters to the expense of much discomfiture from other arguers, that the
whole illusion has melted away and I have often this winter thought of
the South with longing--yes, even Florida. My blood, I guess, has been
thinner or digestion poorer. Some of these days have cut me thru and
thru so that I have for the most part of the season been exquisitely
uncomfortable, “Once south has spoilt me” as they say.
-- -- -- -- It is surely lonely for me here, eating alone and seldom seeing
any one but in the darkness of morning or night. If you were here it
would be different, but I am consoled amply by knowing of your comfort
and welfare where you now are. I have been working hard lately at my
writing but find it doubly hard with the task of conjoining it to my
school work. They are so shallow over there at school I am more moved to
disdain than anything else. Popularity is not my aim though it were easy
to win it by laughing when they do at nothing and always making a
general ass of oneself. There are about two out of the twelve hundred I
would care to have as friends. --/--/
3: TO HIS FATHER
[_New York City_] _Dec. 31, 1916_
My dear Father: I have just been out for a long ride up Fifth Ave. on an
omnibus. It is very cold but clear, and the marble facades of the
marvelous mansions shone like crystal in the sun. Carl [Schmitt] has
been very good to me, giving hours of time to me, advising, helping me
get a room, etc. The room I have now is a bit too small, so after my
week is up, I shall seek out another place near here, for I like the
neighborhood. The houses are so different here, that it seems most
interesting, for a while at least, to live in one.
It is a great shock, but a good tonic, to come down here as I have and
view the countless multitudes. It seems sometimes almost as though you
had lost yourself, and were trying vainly to find somewhere in this sea
of humanity, your lost identity.
Today, and the remainder of the week, I shall devote to serious efforts
in my writing. If you will help me to the necessities, I think that
within six months I shall be fairly able to stand on my own feet. Work
is much easier here where I can concentrate. My full love to you, dear
father. Write me often and soon.
1917
4: TO HIS FATHER
_N.Y.C._ _Jan. 5, 1917_
My dear Father: -- -- -- -- It does me a great deal of good to hear from
you often, and I hope you will continue to write me as often as you have
lately done. While I am not home-sick, I yet am far from comfortable
without letters, and often, from you.
Nearly every evening since my advent, has been spent in the
companionship of Carl [Schmitt.] Last night we unpacked some furniture
of his which had arrived from his home, and afterward talked until
twelve, or after, behind our pipes. He has some very splendid ideas
about artistic, and psychic balance, analysis, etc. I realize more
entirely every day, that I am preparing for a fine life: that I have
powers, which, if correctly balanced, will enable me to mount to
extraordinary latitudes. There is constantly an inward struggle, but the
time to worry is only when there is no inward debate, and consequently
there is smooth sliding to the devil. There is only one harmony, that is
the equilibrium maintained by two opposite forces, equally strong. When
I perceive one emotion growing overpowering to a fact, or statement of
reason, then the only manly, worthy, sensible thing to do, is build up
the logical side, and attain balance, and in art,--formal expression. I
intend this week to begin my studying--Latin, German, and philosophy,
right here in my room. They will balance my emotional nature, and lead
me to more exact expression. --/--/
5: TO HIS MOTHER
_N.Y.C._ _Jan. 26, 1917_
Dear Mother and Grandma: --/--/ Earl Biggers, the author of _Seven Keys
to Baldpate_, was in for some grub, and I was shocked nearly off my
feet by the quietness and un-worldliness of his behavior. He is a fine
fellow however. I hear only pessimistic lines from Father, and hear from
Erwin[3] (via, rather) that he is very unwell. The travel that he is
planning, will straighten him out into better shape. We all needed to
get away awhile.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Sullivan drop in any day, for his
letters intimate such. He will be darn welcome, I can assure you, and
promise you also that we shall have some fine times. You heard, I
suppose, that I sent him a choice volume of Irish songs autographed by
one of the principal literary figures in America today, Padraic Colum. I
have invited Colum and his wife to dine with me tomorrow night at
Gonfarones, an Italien eating-place, where the table d’hote costs only
60 cents per plate, and where the food is fine. Colum says I should have
a volume of verse out in two years without any difficulty, and has
offered to write a preface for it also. He has seen, as I said before,
all my work,--nearly all, and admires it.
Every day I do my studying, and read a good bit also. The room I have
been occupying has been too dark, and I shall change lodgings as soon as
is possible. Friends of Carl have asked me out to dinners several times,
and I have enjoyed as much of social life as I have ever cared for. When
you move here, there is a fine bunch of friends waiting for you. O this
is the place to live, at least for nine months of the year. --/--/
6: TO HIS MOTHER
_N.Y.C._ _Feb. 19, 1917_
My dear, dear Mother: --/--/ Last night I took dinner with Harold Thomas
and Carl in an Italien restaurant where you have to speak Italien to get
anything at all to eat. They cook everything in olive-oil so that one
has a good cathartic with his meal besides a splendid gratification of
the palate. And this morning, it being Sunday, I took a long ride on an
omnibus out into the Bronx and back, and saw all the fashion on Fifth
Ave. When you see the display of wealth and beauty here, it will make
you crawl. It is the most gorgeous city imaginable, besides being at
present the richest and most active place in the world. The swarms of
humanity of all classes inspire the most diverse of feelings; envy,
hate, admiration and repulsion. But truly it is _the_ place to live.
--/--/
I wish above all other things that you could be here this week, for
there are several big things that I have been invited to. The initial
exhibition of the choicest of Chase’s pictures is to be privately (by
invitation) opened tomorrow afternoon from four until six. The greatest
painters of the day will attend. Carl having given me his invitation, I
am going to take Mr. Colum and perhaps his wife. Then Mr. Colum has
given me a ticket to the reading by Vachel Lindsay of his own poems at
the Princess Theater. Also, on Thursday, I shall attend the meeting of
the Poetry Society of America, which is quite exclusive. By the way, Mr.
Colum intends to suggest me for membership. --/--/
7: TO HIS MOTHER
_N.Y.C._ _Feb. 22, 1917_
My dear Mother: Your good letter I have just read, and it cheered me up
a good deal. You know, I am working hard and see very few people and
even now haven’t had more than a half-hour’s talk with anyone for over a
week. My work, though, is coming along finely, and I shall be published
both in _Others_ and again in _The Pagan_ this next month. Yesterday was
a day of tremendous work. I turned out, in some ways, the finest piece
of work yet, besides writing a shorter poem also.
Mother, you do not appreciate how much I love you. I can tell by your
letters that there exists a slight undercurrent of doubt, and I do not
want it there. If you could know how I long to see you perhaps that
might make some difference.
Now everything is in truth going splendidly, only I get terribly
lonesome often when I am through working. A man _must_ wag his tongue a
little, or he’ll lose his voice. Hurry, so that we can both wag!
8: TO HIS FATHER
_N.Y.C._ _August 8, 1917_
My dear Father: I am very, very sorry that things are going so badly
with Mother. I guess there is nothing for her to do but to get back here
as soon as is possible and try to re-instate herself in poise and
health. I look for her this week. At least I see no reason why she
should linger longer. But I have received no word from her and am
uncertain as to much of the true state of affairs with her. I only hope
you are avoiding any meetings as much as possible, for as I said, it is
now too early,--she is not yet established well enough to endure the
strain which you know any contact causes. --/--/
I have been diabolically nervous ever since that shock out at the
house, but Sunday Carl, Potapovitch and I went out to Long Beach, and
lying in the sun did me some good. If you could shake responsibilities
like this for a week or so, it would work inestimable good upon you. You
cannot worry on such a beautiful beach with the sound of waves in your
ears. We all get to thinking that our heads are really our bodies, and
most of the time go floating around with only our brain conscious,
forgetting that our bodies have requirements also.
I feel so near to you now that I do hope that nothing can ever again
break the foundation of sincerity that has been established beneath our
relations. Never has anyone been kinder than you were when I was last
home. I want you to know that I appreciate it, and also your two fine
letters.
9: TO HIS FATHER
[_New York City_] _Sept. 18, ’17_
My dear Father: Your good letter rec’d yesterday. From what Hazel says I
presume this will find you back in Cleveland, and busy looking over what
has happened while you have been away. I haven’t written more because,
as you can readily perceive, I haven’t known your address most of the
time, but once again you may expect my regular letters. This one thing
though, I am going to ask of you. If, when you write me, you are
thinking of Mother in a distasteful way, please conceal it, remaining
silent on the subject. And if, in thinking of her, one kind thought
should occur (as I know it does) express it. You remember that when I
last was home, I said that I “was through.”--That was possible with me
for but one hour. My heart is still as responsive to both your loves,
and more so, than ever. I have seen more tears than I ever expected in
this world, and I have shed them through others’ eyes, to say nothing of
my own sorrow. And now, when I hear nothing but forgiveness, tenderness,
mercy, and love from one side, how can [I] bear resentment and caustic
words coming from the other without great pain? Happiness may some time
come to me, I am sure it will. But please, my dear Father, do not make
the present too hard,--too painful for one whose fatal weakness is to
love two unfortunate people, by writing barbed words. I don’t know how
long we three shall dwell in purgatory. We may rise above, or sink
below, but either way it may be, the third shall and must follow the
others, and I leave myself in your hands. -- -- -- --
10: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _Sept. 28, ’17_
My dear sweet Mother: I have just read your letter and find it hard to
express my rage and disgust at what you say concerning C. A. Crane’s
conduct. “Forget him,” is all I can say. He is too low for
consideration. I am only quietly waiting,--stifling my feelings in the
realization that I might as well get as much money as possible out of
him. Why be scrupulous in one’s dealings with unscrupulous people,
anyway? --/--/
Maxwell Bodenheim called the other evening, complimented my poetry
excessively, and has taken several pieces to the editor of _The Seven
Arts_, a personal friend of his. Bodenheim is at the top of American
poetry today, and he says that after four years of absolute obscurity,
he [is] succeeding in getting publication only through the adverse
channels of flattery, friendships and “pull.” It is all a strange
business. Editors are generally disappointed writers who stifle any
genius or originality as soon as it is found. They seldom even trouble
to read over the manuscript of a “new man.”
Bodenheim is a first-class critic though, and I am proud to have his
admiration and encouragement. As soon as _Others_ begins again this
winter, he says I shall have an organ for all of my melodies, as he is
one of the editors. Success seems imminent now more than ever. I am very
encouraged, practically, at least. --/--/
11: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] [_October 1, 1917_]
My dear Mother: --/--/ O if you knew how much I am learning! The
realization of true freedom is slowly coming to me, and with it a sense
of poise which is of inestimable value. My life, however it shall
continue, shall have expression and form. Believe me when I tell you
that I am fearless, that I am determined on a valorous future and
something of a realization of life. The smallness of hitherto large
things, and the largeness of hitherto small things is dawning. I am
beginning to see the hope of standing entirely alone and to fathom
Ibsen’s statement that translated is, “The strongest man in the world is
he who stands entirely alone.” --/--/
12: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] [_October 3, 1917_]
My own dear Mother: There is not much to tell you except that I am about
to begin a novel. The plot is already thick in my head and tonight the
first chapter will be written off, at least in rough draft. It is a
story whose setting is to be Havana and the Isle of Pines. Walter Wilcox
is to be the hero, and the heroine a N. Y. society maiden who is
attending the races in Havana. More of this will doubtless bore you, now
at least, so enough![4]
Grandma writes that you are succeeding beautifully. As soon as you found
some active interests I knew you would improve in outlook and
distinguish between a disgusting personality and the world in general.
These delightful autumn days, filled with cool sunshine, make me feel
fine. I am alone a good deal of the time and am glad of it. My work will
always demand solitude to a great extent in creative effort. Your son is
improving every day, so don’t worry one moment about me. -- -- -- --
13: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] [_October 31, 1917_]
Ma chere et charmante mere: Yesterday it poured rain all day, and I
remained sheltered, studying French. But November is less evident now,
and the sun is out again. I suppose that you are all right although I
have had no letter since Sunday. Mrs. Walton[5] went off to the movies
this morning, which makes me think again that it would be agreeable for
you to enter them when you arrive.[6] After I mail this, I am going up
to _The Little Review_ office to have a talk with Margaret Anderson (and
perhaps dispose of a poem). --/--/
1918
14: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT
_Cleveland, O._ _Aug. 12, ’18_
Dear William: Your letter freshly “arriven.” Your reference to ambulance
service arouses me to protest. You will _not_ be drafted--this year
anyway, and I hope you won’t become agitated so much as to rush into any
kind of service. A word in the ear: I tried to enlist this morning and
was not permitted even to enter the office. The guard at the door said
to “look in the paper,” which I did and found that all minors are to be
excluded from “volunteering,” and if drafted at all, will be apprenticed
in machine shops, etc., during the war period. Anyhow, I think by the
way things look at present, ambulance service, after the time necessary
for training, transportation, etc., would be a little superfluous. (Some
would call me a demon of the Huns for whispering this in your ear) I
really believe the war isn’t to last much longer.
Being destined, as you are, for Yale, you won’t be drafted for anything.
But you will have to undergo some discipline, as Mother, who visited no
less than twelve Eastern colleges in her last expedition, states.
Let me clear myself. Heat and conditions at home (both of which you
comprehend, I’m sure) drove me to the deed from which I was frustrated
this morning. I take no credit for patriotism nor bravery. Neither was
it an attempt to get into a uniform before the war is over for certain
effects with the ladies. I am really sorry I couldn’t get in,
principally, I suppose, because I had made my mind up, and disposed of
so many seductive distractions, such as, (well--) love, poetry, career,
etc. Now the damned things come back again, sporting about me with all
too much familiarity.
I may go to New York, I may remain here, I may explode, Lord knows.
Thank your stars that you have a settled course to follow, and write
soon.
15: TO CHARLES C. BUBB
_Cleveland, Ohio_ _November 13, ’18_
Dear Mr. Bubb: I hope I am not guilty of an officious presumption in
approaching you with this meagre sheaf of poems. I am merely offering
them to your consideration as being perhaps of enough interest for you
to publish them at the Church Head Press. As you have published, much to
the gratification of the few really interested in poetry, some recent
war-poems of Mr. Aldington, I know your critical judgment to be of the
highest standard, and while I am certain that you will be the first to
detect any flaws and aberrations in these lyrics, I know that you will
also be alive to whatever beauty they may contain.
These few poems are “gleanings,” as it were, from my work of the last
few years, representing the best that I have done so far.--There is
still hope, as I am yet under twenty. They have been published mostly in
_The Pagan_, one in _The Little Review_ of December last, and while they
are few in number, I thought that they might possibly be equal to the
boundaries of a modest pamphlet. “Six Lyrics,” or some such title might
be used for the booklet. But anon for such matters....
I am at present engaged on the _Plain Dealer_, and am too much occupied
there for much of any personal “business.” So, in lieu of a real call on
you at your residence, I am leaving these with Mr. Laukhuff, as he says
that you are a frequent visitor to his establishment.
May I again express my hope that I have not infringed upon your
generosity, and assure you that I shall welcome any opinion that you
might express regarding the poems themselves, or my suggestions.
1919
16: TO HIS MOTHER
_New York_, _Feb. 24_,
Dear Mother: I have just returned from a dinner and evening with Mrs.
Spencer. After the dishes were cleared away we sat before the wood-fire
and talked Science, and I played the piano while she washed the dishes.
She tells me some astounding stories about the numerous demonstrations
she has made. Pat [Spencer] is very deep in it too, it seems, and has
been twice saved in very dangerous falls from over 500 feet which would
otherwise have meant instant death. It is convincing enough testimony
that he is the only one living of the ten instructors chosen for the
position at the time of his appointment. I am to help Mrs. Spencer move
some things from her rooms over to Claire’s [Spencer] apartment next
Tuesday afternoon. Mrs. Brooks has evaded all my efforts at a meeting
today, but I hope to get to go to church with her tomorrow morning.
--/--/
17: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _March 7th, ’19_
Dear Mother: The landlady has committed enough atrocities since writing
you last to fill a book, and I have found another room which I expect to
move into some time next week. In all truth she is quite insane. Mr.
Brooks called me up three times the other day, and each time he asked
for me was he told that there was no such person as Mr. Crane living
here. Finally one of the roomers came to the rescue and took down his
name and number, so that when I got in I was duly informed. Then in
other ways she has been unbearable, coming up to my room several times,
and vaguely pointing to some unseen object and inquiring, “Is that
yours?” At other times she has come up and announced in a hushed voice,
“It’s down there.” That would be all one could get out of her as to what
was “down there”--letter, caller, or delivery man, and several times it
has been nothing at all. --/--/ It has been very funny and very
unpleasant, and I regret having to incur the expense of moving again.
However, the room I have secured is better than the one I have--on the
first floor, front, and much roomier. One of the fellows in the house
here, a Harvard man and lieutenant just out of service, has roomed there
before and swears to the complete sanity and integrity of the little
Irish woman that runs the place. All these little trials have to be
accepted in true sportsman-like fashion, in fact one might as well take
them that way, or else get out of town.
--/--/ I am not sure, of course, but I feel quite certain that Mrs.
Brooks is afflicted with consumption against which she is doubtless
putting up a strenuous Scientific fight. I have noticed an incessant
little cough that she has had on both my meetings with her since I
arrived in town. She is quite thin, too, and without much colour. It
must be due to a change of disposition within myself, but I find the
Brooks’s much more cordial and agreeable. That I, myself, am largely
responsible is borne out by what Mrs. Spencer told me the other day. She
said that Mr. Brooks had remarked about the astounding change in my
manner and disposition, and said that I was now quite a delightful
personality. I should blush to tell this on myself were it not such an
interesting testimony to the influence of Science. --/--/
18: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _March 11th, ’19_
Dear Mother: Just a word to let you know that I am busy casting about
for a position somewhere. I have several ideas suggested by friends as
to where to find jobs as an ad-writer, etc., and am investigating the
matter. I may make a call on Mr. Kennedy, the friend of Grandmother’s,
if two or three other projects do not turn out well. He runs a
trade-journal, you know. Zell [Hart Deming] writes me that she is to be
here for two weeks next month, and if I am settled by that time, I am
positive that she will be able to get me in somewhere. You have no
conception of the difficulties here in finding work of any description
just now. Every day a couple of troop-ships dump a few thousand more
unemployed men in the town, and there really is danger of a general
panic and much poverty as a result unless the government takes a hand to
assist in the matter. I know you are not worrying about me. As it
happens, I am very fortunately situated in comparison with the rest. I
wrote Mr. Ely yesterday, and so that is off my conscience. I would
prefer that you discontinued his treatment of me, as I feel quite able
to stand on my own feet and demonstrate the truth without assistance
from without. I shall probably not move from here for some time. I have
decided to make a demonstration over the landlady, and already have
noticed an improvement.
19: TO HIS MOTHER
_N.Y.C._ _March 26th ’19_
Dear Mother: --/--/ At the recommendation of Colum, I am going to
interview the publishing house of Boni and Liveright tomorrow in the
effort to secure a job as proofreader, etc., with them. I have been
around to several Sunday Feature Syndicates today but have found nothing
there. I hope you aren’t worrying,--for you must realize that one cannot
continue looking and looking as I am doing without finding something in
time. I have some interesting news for you. I phoned up Alice Calhoun
last night and find that she is working in a newly-organized
moving-picture production company here.--She is now engaged in her first
big picture, and is very busy, she tells me. How about writing a
movie-story for her? It looks as though there might be a chance for some
of my work to get an attentive reading after all. She can’t see me this
week, but we are going to have a visit soon and I imagine it will be
interesting. Alice certainly is pretty enough for success in the
movies, and young enough (only 18) to develop a good deal of dramatic
talent. A telephone conversation is rather a slight thing to offer
judgment from, but I was rather impressed with a decided improvement in
Alice, both in manner and character. Byron’s [Madden] letter arrived
this morning. I think he is certainly a sincere well-wisher of mine. I
hope to get into some sort of position in time to write him about it
when I do write, because it “makes more to say,” as it were. I’ll write
again in time for a Sunday delivery. The days are amazingly beautiful
and the nights superb. Last night I took a long walk up Riverside Drive
which is just around the corner from my room, and the Hudson was
beautiful with the millions of tiny lights on the opposite shore.
-- -- -- --
20: TO HIS MOTHER
_New York City_ _April 2nd, ’19_
My dearest Mother: -- -- -- -- Yes, you do seem to be quite occupied with
various engagements, pleasant and painful, as in the case of the
dentistry, although I am very glad to hear of your having that duty
performed as you have needed work and attention expended on your teeth
for a long while back. I think you are holding the wrong and
un-Scientific thought concerning me and my attitude toward Science. The
fact that I do not talk and write about it continually is no sort of
testimony that I am not as much interested as ever in it. You know that
I am not and probably never will be one of those who make the matter a
complete obsession, reducing every subject and thought and description
to the technical language of the textbooks. I have met a number of
Scientists who by such proceedure managed not only to bore me and others
quite dreadfully, but also to leave one with the impression that they
were scared to death about everything and found it necessary to maintain
a continual combat against every aspect and manifestation of life in
general. Perhaps it may serve as sufficient testimony to the efficacy of
right thought, etc., that I am finding far less problems and fears that
demand denial. I certainly have not felt quite so well or quite so
clear-headed for several years, and that is, or ought to be enough to
reassure you and alterate your somewhat morbidly anxious fears for me
which have leaked into your last few letters. I again beg you to relax
from such fears, etc., which seem to have you in their power enough to
prompt you to such seemingly strenuous conflicts of resistance and
denials. Your letters seem to be prompted by some fear (I mean certain
references in them) that seems to me entirely un-Scientific. Please do
not mistake me and become hurt or offended. I only feel that you have
not overcome, not quite, what might be called “the fear of fear” which
is an ultimate Scientific triumph. --/--/
21: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT
_New York, New York_ _May 2, 1919_
Dear William: Your letter came this morning, so you can’t deny my
promptitude. Dash haberdashery! I hope you have more freedom in writing
your next letter,--the note of pain caused by the watchful eye of the
floor-walker was too evident. It was like a hurried lunch. I felt your
situation and rushed from line to line in trepidation of the next
moment. And then you asked such very vital questions that you have set
me thinking a good deal. No:--at present I am not a Christian Scientist.
I try to make my Mother think so because she seems to depend on that
hypocrisy as an additional support for her own faith in it. So,--mum’s
the word to her. If it weren’t very evident how very much good it has
done her I should not persist in such conduct,--lying to both Lord and
Devil is no pleasure,--but as I frankly was very much interested in
Christian Science at the time of my exit from home, I have not made any
distinct denial of it to her since, and for the aforementioned reasons.
However, Bill, I have unbounded faith in its efficacy. Not that a normal
optimism will not accomplish the same wonders,--it is a psychological
attitude which will prevail over almost anything, but as a religion,
there is where I balk. I recommend it to you if you are nervous, etc.,
though, as a cure, and the best and only one to my knowledge. What it
says in regard to mental and nervous ailments is absolutely true. It is
only the total denial of the animal and organic world which I cannot
swallow.
I don’t quite understand your criticism toward my “attitude of mind,”
and sincerely wish you would particularize more in detail. We have had
so many good talks that I wish you were here right now to tell me. But
when you come to New York next autumn we shall have an opportunity. I am
laying many plans for your coming, and you will enjoy meeting some of my
friends here, I am sure. My advertising work for _The Little Review_ is
coming a little slower than I expected. You have no idea how hard it is
to even break into some of these huge and ominous mechanisms, New York
offices. It ought to toughen me a little and perhaps that it what I
need. It is a very different matter when one approaches with the intent
of selling, and selling the appealing article,--space. However, _The
Little Review_ has the possibility of affording me over four thousand
per year on commissions if I can fill up the allowable space, and
perhaps I am not wasting my time after all. --/--/
22: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT
_New York, New York_ _May 14, 1919_
Dear William: --/--/ At present I am under the spell of the first wave
of rose fever! My reading lately has been rather diverse as is evident
from any such list as Chaucer, D. H. Lawrence, Cervantes, Henry James,
Plato, and Mark Twain.
Oh, by the way, I met Robert Frost’s daughter at a theatre party the
other evening, and had the pleasure of taking the very interesting and
handsome young lady back to her Columbia dormitory. I am hoping to see
more of her at a near date, as she is worth looking at.
23: TO HIS MOTHER
_New York City_ _Decoration Day, ’19_
My dear Mother: I received your letter with check enclosed
night-before-last, and hasten to thank you for them. Your letter was
filled with the customary complaints about my not writing oftener. Now I
admit that the last two weeks have been poorer in letters from me than
usual, but you seem never to have realized, Mother, that there is
absolutely nothing to fill up the three-or-four-letter-a-week program
which I have been trying to conduct,--even were my days filled with
tremendous action. A couple of letters a week will contain all the news
worth telling, and whether you have appreciated that fact or not, the
truth remains.
I see you are displeased at my having changed rooms, but I would like to
ask you what you would have done faced with a like situation at the time
I was. I felt indeed very fortunate to have located so successful a
bargain as the two rooms here on the top floor of 24 West 16th St., for
ten dollars per month. It only costs me that because Hal Smith uses one
of the rooms as a study separate from his apartment to come to for his
writing, and so I have the use of his room as well as my bedroom. When I
told Hal and Claire of my predicament, Claire rushed to the cupboard and
the result was that a bed was bought for me and temporary bedding
loaned. Hal also sent over other furnishings, etc., which has made the
place livable and even comfortable for me. I see no reason for
returning now to a rooming house, and shall probably remain here for
sometime to come. I asked for the rugs because they would be simply an
additional comfort, but if it’s too much trouble for you to send them,
or against your principles, it’s all right with me to do without them.
What I wrote you about sending money still holds good. I have cashed the
checks you sent as there is no use in my being foolish about such
matters when I have only fifteen cents in my pocket and a very empty
stomach. I do ask you for more, however. I am very much against your
sending me money from your personal allowance. It seems to me that it
would not be very much trouble to go down and see Sullivan for a half an
hour for a few days and get sufficient results from the enactment of a
perfectly just and practical contract so that I would not be due to hear
within a few years the accusation of having made you economize and
scrimp your own pleasures for my assistance during this trying time when
I am making every possible effort to get started in something. You know,
Mother, I have not yet forgotten your twitting me last summer at my not
paying my board expenses when I was at home, and I don’t welcome your
generosity quite so much now on the possibility of a recurrence of such
words at some future time. I don’t want to fling accusations, etc., at
anybody, but I think it’s time you realized that for the last eight
years my youth has been a rather bloody battleground for yours and
father’s sex life and troubles. With a smoother current around me I
would now be well along in some college taking probably some course of
study which would enable me upon leaving to light upon, far more readily
than otherwise, some decent sort of employment. Do you realize that it’s
hard for me to find any work at all better than some manual labor, or
literary work, which, as you understand, is not a very paying pursuit?
My present job in connection with _The Little Review_ possibly offers me
an opportunity for experience in the advertising world, which is a good
field for money,--but it’s the hardest thing in the world to get worked
up, especially with my complete inexperience in the work. I am looking
for something else now every day,--anything that comes along,--with the
intention of one way or another, establishing my independence from all
outside assistance. In the meantime I am carrying on with this job, and
should it give enough promise, will continue in it. I have found out
recently what it is to be like a beggar in the streets, and also what
good friends one occasionally runs across in this tangle of a world. For
some time after your letter I was determined not to write rather than
compromise with hypocrisy or hurt your feelings. If this letter has
wounded you, then I am ready to beg your pardon in apology with the
understanding that I write no more, for I have discovered that the only
way to be true to others in the long run, is to be true to one’s self.
24: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT
_New York, New York_ _June 17, 1919_
My dear William: I’ve just returned from several days in the country
with Hal Smith and wife (Claire). They rent a little cottage out in New
Jersey that is perfection itself and we go canoeing and play tennis and
eat amazingly every time we go out there. I am, unfortunately, badly
sunburned today,--rather a sight,--and am remaining in my room rather
than shock my friends and enemies by exposing myself. It is fine
(though) to get out of this crowded metropolis once in a while, and see
the moon and stars and hear the frogs croak. We intend to go out again
next Friday and stay until Monday, living in our bathing suits most of
the time. From your last letter, you’re in for quite a pleasant summer.
I wish I could be in Cleveland when you are there. Hope you’ll go out
and see my mother if you get time,--she likes you very much and always
asks about you in her letters. We have had some differences of late, but
my fundamental feelings toward her are not in the least altered. If I
can get enough money together I intend to take a short course in
business and advertising out at Columbia this summer,--which might
possibly be continued next fall when you will be there. I agree with you
that for such as ourselves business life is not to be scorned. The
commercial aspect is the most prominent characteristic of America and we
all must bow to it sooner or later. I do not think, though, that this of
necessity involves our complete surrender of everything else nobler and
better in our aspirations. Illusions are falling away from everything I
look at lately. At present the world takes on the look of a desert,--a
devastation to my eyes, and I am finding it rather hard at best. Still
there is something of a satisfaction in the development of one’s
consciousness even though it is painful. There is a certain freedom
gained,--a lot of things pass out of one’s concern that before mattered
a great deal. One feels more freedom and the result is not by any means
predominantly negative. To one in my situation N. Y. is a series of
exposures intense and rather savage which never would be quite as
available in Cleveland, etc. New York handles one roughly but presents
also more remedial recess,--more entrancing vistas than any other
American location I know of. When you come to Columbia you will not be
apt to feel it because any college (less Col. than any other) enforces
its own cloistral limitations which are the best things in the world
while one is there. It will only be after you have left the place and
lived and worked in the city (should you do so) that you will begin to
feel what I mentioned. May I venture a personal criticism on your last
letter? It’s out of my habit to do so, and if I didn’t care for you so
much I wouldn’t. Your remarks “about the ladies” really hurt me with a
kind of ragtime vulgarity. It’s hard to say in the limitations of a
letter what I mean. You know I am very free from Puritanical
preoccupations,--as much as from excessive elegance. What I lament is
that gross attitude of the crowd that is really degrading and which is
so easily forced upon us before we know it. You are far too sensitive to
harbour it long, I know. It is only because I hate to see the slightest
tarnish at all in you that I run the risk of offending you. I do hope
you won’t resent it. -- -- -- --
25: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _July 10, ’19_
My dear Mother: Your nice letter arrived this morning just a few minutes
before the books, and I must thank you much for them and the check
enclosed in the letter, which I have certainly sufficient use for as I
need a haircut badly and a new set of razor blades besides being much in
debt to Hal for this last week’s meals. It has been rather humiliating
to have to come to one person for absolutely everything, rent, food, and
minute sundries and rather than do it I have several times gone for long
periods without food. But Hal and Claire have been wonderfully
thoughtful and I haven’t had to ask,--evidences seemed to be enough and
better than words. At last now, things seem to have lightened a little.
I leave with them tomorrow for Brookhaven, Long Island, where Hal has
rented a beautiful establishment for the rest of the summer. I am going
along as their guest, although Hal lightened any embarrassment I might
have felt at receiving such endless munificence at their hands by
suggest[ing] an office for me as handy man about the place,--gardener,
chauffeur, etc. --/--/ I can always find work in the machine shop and
shipyard but cannot help avoiding them as a last resort, as they would
merely suffice to keep breath in the body and get me nowhere in
particular. I made no requests for assistance from C. A. [Crane] in
regard to the Columbia summer course which began day before yesterday.
In answer to his letter which announced his intention and _promise_ to
take an advertisement in _The Little Review_, I thanked him and told him
that his payment would help me in taking a course in business
advertising which I was hoping to take at Columbia this summer. That
was all there was said about it. He didn’t mention the matter in his
next (and last) letter and has not even paid for the advertisement which
he said he would do, as long as I was associated with the magazine, and
he has heard nothing to the contrary, I am positive. Of course all my
friends think his treatment of me is disgraceful and unaccountable. My
own opinion is hardly less reserved, as you know, but I try my best to
turn my thoughts to other channels as much as possible. It is only when
hunger and humiliation are upon me that suddenly I feel outraged. --/--/
26: TO HIS MOTHER
_Brookhaven_, [_Long Island_] _July 30th, ’19_
My dear Mother: Your letter dated the 8th has just come, and in answer,
I of course will not need to repeat the contents of yesterday’s note. At
best I think your words are a little unkind and very inconsiderate. I
will not attempt again to reckon with your misunderstanding, etc., of
the part you and I together, and as individuals, have played in relation
to C.A. You either have a very poor memory, or are very confused when
you think you have a right to accuse me of either a wrong or a right
attitude toward him,--an unfriendly or a friendly one,--after the
continually opposite statements and accusations you have made to me for
the last four years yourself. At one time you have recommended a course
of diplomacy toward a veritable devil, and five minutes later a blow in
the face and scorn of any relationship whatever. And now you suggest a
wily and conniving attitude toward a character which you claim as
fundamentally good. With such inconsistencies in memory I fail to see
how you have adequate reasons for “accusing” me of a “wrong” attitude
toward him, whatever position I might have taken. It has all been very
hard, I know. Probably the truth consists more moderately in the
estimate of him as a person of as many good inclinations as bad ones.
Your feelings as a woman lover were bound to be dangerous in diverting
you from an impersonal justice, and, however much I may have been
blinded by my own relationship with him, I cannot deny having been
influenced by your sufferings and outcries. There are reasons for acts
and prejudices which cannot always be justified at the turn of the
moment, but look hard enough, and substantial roots will be found.
I returned to Brookhaven last night after a very satisfactory interview
with Mr. Rheinthal, of the firm of Rheinthal and Newman, which handles
the Parrish prints. I shall begin work there in the order department
early in September, until which time I’ll be out here with Hal and
Claire. My note of yesterday was expressive enough of the satisfaction I
am feeling about the matter without repetition here. Everything is
pointing toward very friendly relations with C. A. in the future, which
good turn is greatly due to the interest of the New York office. People
change in their attitude either from enlightenment of the understanding
or change of impulse. In the case of father toward me I think a revival
of interest was seconded by a more adequate understanding of my motives,
interests, character and position which the office supplied. Also, a
certain pride (now that his wealth begins to assume rather large
dimensions) in the position of his only son, was equally responsible.
--/--/
27: TO GORHAM MUNSON[7]
[_New York City_] [_August 22, 1919_]
Have been back in town for last 2 weeks very busy at my new job. Glad to
know you are enjoying yourself. Look me up as soon as you return!
Haven’t been over to see _The Modernist_ but suppose it is racing along
as usual.
28: TO CHARMION WIEGAND
_N.Y.C._ _Nov. 5th, ’19_
Dear Charmion: Here are the rest of your poems; I think they are all
there. _The Modernist_ took one of the Egyptian sonnets, I cannot
remember the exact name of it, and hopes you will send more soon.
I leave for Cleveland tomorrow night, and am very anxious to get off.
Packing all the truck I have accumulated here has proved a delirious
task. Let me thank you and Hermann [Habicht] again for the evening last
week and the many other treats of the summer.
Let’s write occasionally and be as metropolitan as possible. You know
I’m now out in those great expanses of cornfields so much talked about
and sung, and you can’t very well dispense with me even though you do
live “in the big city.” I am beginning something in an entirely new vein
with the luscious title: “My Grandmother’s Love Letters.” I don’t want
to make the dear old lady too sweet or too naughty, and balancing on the
fine line between these two qualities is going to be fun. I hope that
living close to her in the same house won’t spoil it all.
P.S. Much to my surprise I got yesterday a very friendly letter from
Sherwood Anderson thanking me for the _Pagan_ art[ic]le.
29: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Nov. 13, 1919_
My dear Gorham: It begins to look as though my work was to be confined
to the hours between midnight and dawn,--that is, in writing. I go to
Akron, O., next week to take up a position in my father’s new store
there and my own hours are to be from six in the morning until eleven at
night. I was down there with him yesterday, and find that he has a
wonderful establishment,--better than anything of its kind in New York.
It’s too bad to waste it all on Akron, but there seems to be a lot of
money there that the rubber tire people have made. The place [is full
of] fresh growth. A hell of a place. The streets are full of the debris
from old buildings that are being torn down to replace [with] factories,
etc. It looks, I imagine, something like the western scenes of some of
Bret Harte’s stories. I saw about as many Slavs and Jews on the streets
as on Sixth Ave. Indeed the main and show street of the place looks
something like Sixth Ave. without the elevated.
The size of my father’s business has surprised me much. Things are
whizzing, and I don’t know how many millions he will be worth before he
gets through growing. If I work hard enough I suppose I am due to get a
goodly share of it, and as I told you, it seems to me the wisest thing
to do just now to join him. He is much pleasanter than I expected him to
be, and perhaps will get around after awhile to be truly magnanimous.
You evidently were not consulted about the Josephson mss., as I saw one
of them returned the day I left N. Y. I haven’t been able to locate a
single copy of _The Modernist_ anywhere in Cleveland, and I suggest that
Richard Laukhuff, 40 Taylor Arcade, would be a good one to send it to.
He handles most of the radical stuff, and _The Pagan_, he tells me, is
getting too tame. He also says that _The Little Review_ has suffered
neglect since the last Baroness [Freytag-Loringhoven] contribution. The
B. is a little strong for Cleveland.
I don’t know when I shall get time or the proper mood to work more on
the Grandame poem. Contact with the dear lady, as I told you I feared,
has made all progress in it at present impossible.
Rec’d a letter from Sherwood Anderson this morning in which he tells me
about early business experiences in Cleveland and Elyria. The latter is
about as unpleasant as Akron, so I guess I needn’t despair. My mother
and grandmother are going to Cuba this winter and close up the house, so
I fear that our visiting plans will have to be postponed a while. I
won’t be in Akron long. After that it may be Kansas City, Frisco, or
even New York. The business is simply enormous now and growing so that I
expect I will have a real job in time. I like to think that I can keep
on writing a little, at least, of good quality, until,--someday when I
shall start up a magazine that will be an eye-opener. I feel in a Billy
Sunday mood this evening, and am very much in haste, so I hope you will
not consider this letter as anything other than a scrap-heap of petty
news. -- -- -- --
30: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Akron, Ohio_] _Nov. 22nd_
My dear Gorham: --/--/ If business were to continue so slow behind my
counter at the drug store as it has thus far, I could get a good deal of
reading done. As it _has_ been, _Pavannes & Divisions_, T. S. Eliot,
Maupassant and _The L. R._ have been my steady companions. I have to be
on the job about 14 hours every day, and when the Christmas rush begins
I fancy I will be indeed well tired out at night. However, I don’t
expect to remain here very long after that date on account of a probable
promotion, when my evenings, at least, will be free. And, after all,
that is about all I ask for.
Josephson wrote me a fascinating letter last week enclosing a poem of
his own and two translations from Jules Romains. If you two continue to
keep me warm, I am not at all pessimistic about my interest waning in
les arts. Josephson’s opinions of _The Modernist_ will more than match
your own, I think. Fawcett sent me a copy of _The Modernist_, and having
time to peruse it, I was quite astonished by the amount of literary
rubbish he had managed to get into its confines. There was hardly a
gleam of promise through it all. Your three poems were practically the
best things in it, and I am not complimenting you thereby. For a time I
was sorry for you and for me. I wanted to write a letter withdrawing my
contributions. But a certain resignation to fatality dissuaded me from
the effort.... -- -- -- -- is a poor ignorant bastard of some kind. His
comments on history and government are not even in a class with the
_Evening Journal_. The rest of the sheet seems like a confused,
indiscriminate jelly-like mass.... But, ah, well-a-day, the time must
come when we can do more than groan and hoot.
I have thought for some time that your connection with it resulted
mostly in a waste of time. I may send them more stuff simply to have it
published and also on account of a kind of dumb-animal affection that I
have for Waldo [Fawcett]. How furious he would be to hear this!!
I am liable to break forth in song about any time, but nothing has
happened as yet. I wrote a short affair last night that I may hammer
into shape. Grandma and her love letters are too steep climbing for
hurried moments, so I don’t know when I shall work on that again. As it
is, I have a good beginning, and I don’t want any anti-climax effect. If
I cannot carry it any further, I may simply add a few finishing lines
and leave it simply as a mood touched upon. New theories are filling my
head every day.--Have you given the poems of Wallace Stevens in the Oct.
_Poetry_ any attention. There is a man whose work makes most of the rest
of us quail. His technical subtleties alone provide a great amount of
interest. Note the novel rhyme and rhythm effects.
Josephson sends me a list of names for reading that you might be
interested in. Marlowe is one of his favorites, John Webster, and Donne;
the last is a wonder speaking from my own experience. I’ve got to rush
back to work now so this is all. -- -- -- --
31: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Akron_ _Friday_
Dear Gorham: Have been up to Cleveland for over Thanksgiving, and rushed
back again at dawn today and spent the day as usual. I enjoyed your
letter with its encouragement to Grandma and am sending you a record of
her behaviour to date. She would get very fretful and peevish at times,
and at other times, hysterical and sentimental, and I have been obliged
to handle her in the rather discouraging way that my words attest.
However, I think that something has been said, after all, although the
poem hasn’t turned out as long as I had expected. Tell me, pray, how you
like it.
Have you read _The Young Visitors_ by Daisy Ashford (alias Sir James
Barrie) yet? I don’t know when I have been more delighted. Subtle satire
par excellence!
I shall try to get hold of your article in _The Smart Set_ and see how
you have got up in the world, according to Joe Kling.
I hear a little gossip even here in Akron. There is a bookseller here
who is well known far and wide as a character. I had known him years
ago in Cleveland, but our acquaintance has recently come to more
ripeness here. I just missed dining with Alfred Knopf who came here to
see him the other day. Knopf tells him that Mencken is about to publish
a book with him of which the title I forget, but the last scene is laid
in the Sultan’s bed. The S. having a very large and luxurious one. This
bookseller also gave me the enclosed booklet which was written by Mark
Twain in one of his ribald moments. You will enjoy it, I know, and it
gives me a stronger light on some of Mencken’s enthusiasm for the
writer. The grand ejaculatory climacteric speech of Queen Bess is
magnificent. You will regard the book as quite a treasure. I don’t know
where else on earth it could be procured. --/--
32: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Akron_] _Dec. 13th, ’19_
My dear Gorham: I think you are wrong about _1601_. The bookseller
friend who gave me the book you have, informs me that that is just
another name for the same piece. So you see it is even more scarce and
valuable than you thought. Will you ever forget that sentence of
Raleigh’s where he says he was but clearing his nether throat!? I must
get another one and send it to Josephson, who, by the way, has just
written me about my “Grandmother.” He has some of the same complaints to
make of her as yourself, and many others, but he ends up by calling it
the best thing I have written, and, what is more flattering, begs to
keep the copy I sent him. He says he has had a falling out with Amy
Lowell, but a falling in with T. S. Eliot by way of compensation. His
letters are charming with a peculiar and very definite flavor to them,
and buck me up a good deal. I have lately begun to feel some wear from
my surroundings and work, and to make it worse, have embarked on a love
affair, (of all places unexpected, here in Akron!), that keeps me broken
in pieces most of the time, so that my interest in the arts has sunk to
a rather low station. Now that Christmas is coming in with its usual
inhuman rush in candy selling, I shall not have a moment for anything
but business and sleep. My life is quite barbarous and the only thing to
do is recognize the situation and temporarily bow to it.
Waldo Frank’s book IS a pessimistic analysis! The worst of it is, he has
hit on the truth so many times. I am glad to see such justice done to
Sherwood Anderson, but this extreme national consciousness troubles me.
I cannot make myself think that these men like Dreiser, Anderson, Frost,
etc., could have gone so far creatively had they read this book in their
early days. After all, has not their success been achieved more through
natural unconsciousness combined with great sensitiveness than with a
mind so thoroughly logical or propagandistic (is the word right?) as
Frank’s? But Frank has done a wonderful thing to limn the characters of
Lincoln and Mark Twain as he has,--the first satisfactory words I have
heard about either of them. The book will never be allowed to get dusty
on the library shelves unless he has failed to give us the darkest
shadows in his book,--and I don’t think he has. I notice that Marsden
Hartley is mentioned, but how does it come that “our Caesar” [Zwaska] is
omitted!?
This last makes me think of _The Little Review_, and how terrible their
last issue, November’s, is. I have sent them my poem, but have heard no
answer as yet. If _The Dial_ goes on as you announced in your letter,
perhaps they would care to print it. I am thoroughly confident about the
thing itself since it has got by the particular, hierarchic Josephson,
and I won’t blush to show it to anyone now.
If _The Modernist_ is not already in the mails for me, please do not
forget that I am anxious for a copy. I wrote Fawcett a long time ago,
but he hasn’t responded. My last letter from Anderson urges me to make
him a visit, and I am hoping that sometime next summer such a thing will
be possible. He calls the poem beautiful, but says that it is not as
much poetry to him as “the flesh and bone” of my letters. He and
Josephson are opposite poles. J. classic, hard and glossy,--Anderson,
crowd-bound, with a smell of the sod about him, uncouth. Somewhere
between them is Hart Crane with a kind of wistful indetermination, still
much puzzled.
33: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Akron, Ohio_ _Dec. 27, 1919_
My dear Gorham: --/--/ My stand in the drug store has not proved exactly
a success, although my father is good enough to admit that I am not to
blame in any way. The principal reason that it will be discontinued is
that no one can be found to work there without a quite exorbitant
salary, and the location is too poor to afford that. So many things have
happened lately with the rush of Christmas, etc., that I am tired out
and very much depressed today. This “affair” that I have been having has
been the most intense and satisfactory one of my whole life, and I am
all broken up at the thought of leaving him. Yes, the last word will
jolt you. I have never had devotion returned before like this, nor ever
found a soul, mind, and body so worthy of devotion. Probably I never
shall again. Perhaps we can meet occasionally in Cleveland, if I am not
sent miles away from there, but everything is so damned dubious as far
as such conjectures lead. You, of course, will consider my mention of
this as unmentionable to anyone else.
Sherwood Anderson is coming to N. Y. this week, he writes, and perhaps
it would be possible for you to meet him. Vide _The Little Review_ for
information as to his whereabouts. He says that Van Wyck Brooks has
given in Doran’s hands for publication a book well named,--_The Ordeal
of Mark Twain_, which, I imagine, will follow on something the same line
of direction that Waldo Frank suggests in his book. Hackett’s review of
the latter is a bit severe, although he touches the weak points in every
instance. The work _is_ too rhapsodical, and I noticed frequent lapses
in plain grammar, not to mention diction. But the meat is there anyway,
and the book is stimulating, even though a bit pathetic. Anderson says
he respects the mind of Brooks more. Brooks and Hackett belong, both, to
a harder and more formal species. Therefore Hackett’s critique is quite
consistent with his characteristics.
I have been reading Masters’ latest, _Starved Rock_, and must mention to
you my enthusiasm for “Spring Lake,” the best thing he has written since
the _Spoon River_ elegies. “The Dream of Tasso” has a few splendid
passages free from rhetoric, and there are others, a few, that satisfy.
More and more am I turning toward Pound and Eliot and the minor
Elizabethans for values. I have not written anything for a month, but I
feel, somehow or other, as though progress were being made. Your
estimates of Djuna Barnes and Ida Rauh are interesting and true. I have
been instructed recently not to read behind my counter and so, working
twelve hours per day, have not had time to do much reading. I want to
get at your _New Republic_ reviews, if possible, tomorrow. The booklet,
_1601_, is your own to keep. I can get another, I think, any day for the
asking. My write-up in the paper was silly enough, but forced upon me,
and misquotations as well. However, I took it as an agreeable joke and
an anachronism in Akron. But the pater was furious, at the headlines in
particular, and I spent a nervous day yesterday with him in
explanations, etc. Sic semper. Akron has afforded me one purple evening,
however. I got dreadfully drunk on dreadful raisin brew, smoked one of
the cigars made especially for the Czar, defunct, of Russia, and puked
all over a boarding house. You will believe me an ox when I tell you
that I was on the job again next morning, and carried the day through
with flying colours. I enclose an opus by Eugene Field,--very
exclusive,--which you will copy if you wish, and then return. Do not let
Burleson or your father see it, as it is quite strong. I think you will
more than smile. --/--/
Yes,--Edgar Saltus _is_ gone. I remember reading him and a rare and
wonderfully complete edition of Catullus on the night of the debauch.
However,--I hope you will not think that my companion on that occasion
was the one I mention early in the letter. This fellow of the raisin
brew is another poor soul like myself, in Akron exile from N.Y. A very
sophisticated and erudite fellow to whom I was introduced by my
bookseller.
1920
34: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Akron_] _Jan. 9th, ’20_
My dear Gorham: What a good job Somerset Maugham does in his _Moon and
Sixpence_! Have just finished reading it at a single sitting. Pray take
the time to read it if you haven’t already. How far it follows the facts
biographical to Gauguin, I am not able to say, but from what little I do
know, it touches his case at many angles. Your letter coming this
morning calls echoes in my ears of many such moods familiar to me during
my times in N. Y. and I know how you feel. The mentioned book, I suggest
as a tonic for hardness,--we all need how much more of it!
Complaining of a headache this morning I was excused from my duties for
the day, and so have had time for reading, etc. I have not had to serve
at the soda fountain as yet, and as a matter of fact, have not had much
of anything to do,--my duty seeming to be a kind of marking _time_ until
I shall be occupied in the addition to the store,--a restaurant,--or am
sent up to Cleveland to fly about in a Dodge car, selling. I have a kind
of tacit quarrel with everyone at the store, in spite of smiles, etc.,
but am becoming accustomed to the atmosphere, and suffer considerably
less. Akron has, after all, afforded me more than N. Y. would under
present circumstances and time, and, odd as it may seem, I have almost
no desire for an immediate return there. Of course, I suppose my
“affair” may have a great deal to do with my attitude. And I have also
made two very delightful friendships, one,--the fellow I mentioned as my
companion in the raisin brew debauch (Candee), and a more recent
acquaintance with a filthy old man,--a marvelous photographer [Minns],
the only one in this country to hold the Dresden and Munich awards, and
who has several times been “written up” in the _International Studio_.
Authorities rank him with Coburn and Hoppé of London, and there is no
one in New York who compares with him. He used to read _The Little
Review_, knows Marsden Hartley,--and lives in a tumble down old house in
the center of the city. I expect the pictures of me that he takes to be
wonders. He refused to take the “rubber-king,” F. H. Seiberling, for
love nor money, simply because he thought his face without interest. He
confided in me yesterday that he was an anarchist, and I picture with
some pain the contrast in his circumstances here with what acclaim he
would achieve in a place like London. He has always been afraid of
N.Y.--and wisely,--for probably he would have long since starved there.
I was suddenly surprised last evening (Candee and I have been in the
habit of talking until two and three in the morning) to hear him mention
the Baroness. It seems he knows her very well. Knew her before she came
to the village and Margaret Anderson got hold of her at all, and believe
me he had some surprising tales to tell. He goes on for hours telling of
exotic friends of his and strange experiences. He know[s] Europe well,
English country house parties, and Washington society,--prizefighters,
cardinals, poets and sculptors, etc., etc., and the wonderful thing is
to find him here in Akron, forced to earn his living as secretary for
some wheezing philanthropist.
Your anecdote of New Year’s Eve was interesting,--who knows,--perhaps
someday you will fall too. Prenez garde!
35: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Cleveland, O._ [_January 15_]
Dear Gorham: Your play presents simple difficulties of criticism as far
as particular details. Of course you cannot take it seriously as a work
of art after the first page. It is stark propaganda, however much in the
right direction it may be. For types like ourselves it should hold no
deep interest, as it begins and ends with the universally-obvious
understanding between the artist and what is supposed to be his
“audience.” The Comstock raps are good, but not well enough,--humorously
enough, placed to be sufficiently amusing or effective. Humor is the
artist’s only weapon against the proletariat. Mark Twain knew this, and
used it effectively enough, take _1601_ for example. Mencken knows it
too. And so did Rabelais. I think that _The Liberator_ would be likely
to take it, but I cannot imagine it presented on a stage. You have a
sense of humor and I cannot see how you allowed some lines of it to pass
your pencil. I have marked a few. You’re too damned serious. You
victimize your hero. Your aristocrat is much more vital and admirable
than the polyphonic God, chosen to symbolize the artist. And
anyway,--it’s sentimentality to talk the way he does. The modern artist
has got to harden himself, and the walls of an ivory tower are too
delicate and brittle a coat of mail for substitute. The keen[est] and
most sensitive edges will result from this “hardening” process. If you
will pardon a more personal approach, I think that you would do better
to think less about aesthetics in the abstract,--in fact, forget all
about aesthetics, and apply yourself closely to a conscious observation
of the details of existence, plain psychology, etc. If you ARE an artist
then, you will create spontaneously. But I pray for both of us,--let us
be keen and humorous scientists anyway. And I would rather act my little
tragedy without tears, although I would insist upon a tortured
countenance and all sleekness pared off the muscles.
My love affair is affording me new treasures all the time. Our holidays
are spent together here in Cleveland, and I have discovered new
satisfactions at each occasion. The terrible old grind at the factory is
much relieved by this. I live from Saturday to Saturday. Gold and
purple. Antinoüs at Yale. So the wind blows, and whatever might happen,
I am sure of a pool of wonderful memories. Perhaps this is the romance
of my life,--it is wonderful to find the realization of one’s dreams in
flesh, form, laughter and intelligence,--all in one person. I am not
giddy or blind, but steadier and keener than I’ve ever been before. The
daily grind prevents me from doing anything productive. Here is
something enclosed on which I would like your opinion, as frank and
unmerciful as mine has been of your play.[8] -- -- -- --
36: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Cleveland, O._ _Jan. 28th, --20_
My dear Gorham: Well, I hope that Kling will be able to sell out for the
price of dinner anyway,--but most of all that he sells out, and rids his
own arms, as well as the public’s, of that fetid corpse, _The Pagan_.
The last issue is the worst ever, and I don’t think there are lower
levels to be reached. Joe doesn’t properly belong in an editor’s
chair,--hasn’t taste or discrimination, and that’s all there is to it.
He can make just as good money a thousand other ways,--most Jews can.
I am enraged at Mencken and Nathan for satisfying the public and
insulting their admirers so grossly with that cheap and banal
play,--_Heliogabolus_. Any one who has read even Saltus’ _Imperial
Purple_ knows that there is not a vestige of historical truth in the
setting or dialogue,--and that character, Heliogabolus, the most
dissolute minion of decadent Rome, portrayed as I thought our authors
were about to do,--so truthfully that a limited edition hastily gathered
up would be the only possible method of presentation in America,--that
delusion induced me to part with two good dollars. Instead we have a
senile Al Jolson, farting the usual bedroom-farce calamities. If you
want to read up on Heliogabolus, read some of Dio Cassius, if you can
procure the old scribe,--at least this is what my Akron man-of-the-world
prescribes. He agrees with me about the book, and writes thus: “I
confess I was terribly disappointed. When I think of that slim child of
seventeen with his hair powdered with diamond dust and gold, his half
oriental eyes all but closed, dressed in the costume of a priest of
Baal, offering his hand covered with jewels, to a gladiator who has
fallen at his feet with the words,--‘Hail, Lord,’ and answering
him,--‘Call me not Lord, for I am thy Lady,’ and then read of the
senile, doddering creature with twelve wives as he is pictured by the
joint authors, I have to laugh.”
Your N. Y. notes of the journalese, artists, etc., keeps me awake during
these days of trial at the factory. I am packing cases and moving heavy
cases of chocolate, barrels of sugar, etc., for my living at present,
but even this is better than a station behind the soda counter. My
father is just as impossibly tedious and “hard” as ever, and still as
insistent on starvation wages. I’ll be glad when my mother returns from
the south and the house and my own room are open to me again, and living
will be a little less expensive. Then, too,--I am beginning to discover
that I enjoy her society,--I have worked over her for three years
painfully,--and the result is a woman of more interest than I had dared
to hope for. I’m still in love, too, so I have much to be sad about.
--/--/
37: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT
_Cleveland, Ohio_ _Feb. 5th, --’20_
Dear William: --/--/ But I have cheering news to tell you. “My
Grandmother’s Loveletters” tempted _The Dial_ to part with ten dollars,
my first “litry” money,--the seduction was complete,--and you may begin
to look for outrageous exposures next month or the next, in that
magazine. I cannot write much now, cramped in this rooming house room,
but when my mother returns from the tropics next month and I am
re-installed in my own room with my little Victrola, I hope to revive my
intimacy with la Muse. Just now I am deep in Baudelaire’s _Fleurs du
Mal_, and won’t brook anything healthful or cheery about the place.
38: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT
_Cleveland, Ohio_ _Feb. 24, 1920_
My dear William: --/--/ Take a layman’s word of advice and remain in
your present surroundings as long as possible and extract the full
amount of enjoyment from them while they last. It is not very exciting
to arise and essay forth to ten hours dull and exasperating labor every
morning at five-thirty and return home at night with a head like a wet
muffin afterward. And that is the routine that I am enmeshed in at
present, to say nothing of trying to exist on starvation wages. It’s the
old bunko stuff about “working from the bottom up” and “earning an
honest dollar” in practice, and if there are not some enlivening changes
in it soon, I am liable to walk into the office and tell the amused and
comfortable and rich and thriving spectator that “the joke’s up.”
Catullus uses somewhere in his epigrams about a man that he was “----ed
flat,” meaning I suppose a reference to emaciated thighs, etc., but the
phrase is none too vivid for me to use at present in reference to my
nervous and intellectual state. Add to this, an uncomfortable room,
cold, etc., and a routine of hasty and inadequate meals snatched from
chance lunch counters and there is further evidence for the state o’
things. --/--/
39: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _March 6th, --’20_
My dear Gorham: Well,--my mother is at length returned and the house
open again. At present, however, the domestic vista appears a desolate
prospect to me,--a violent contrast to the warm pictures that the former
rooming-house room had conjured up as anticipations. I wrote you a while
ago that I had gotten ’round to enjoy my mother’s companionship. That
illusion, at least for the present, seems to be dispelled. She left here
two months ago, a rather (for her) ductile and seductive woman with a
certain aura of romance about her. She comes back now, satisfied,
shallow, unemotional, insistent on talking food receipts and household
details during meals. The weight of this terrible Christian Science
satisfaction I feel growing heavier and heavier on my neck. Tonight I am
distraught after a two-hour’s effort at camaraderie and amusement with
her. “Dutiful son,” “sage parent,”--“that’s nice,”--and a pat on the
back and the habitual “goodnight kiss.” I give up evenings to her to
hear advice about details in business affairs which she knows nothing
about. Mon Dieu!!! And there is Grandmother in a loud background to add
to the confusion. Exhausted as one may be from an inhuman day, one must
beam out the dinner and evening in proper style or there are
exclamations culminating in excruciating tears. However, I mind it most
when I am alive, like tonight,--not tired, stupid, mild, as on “week
nights.”
Well, anyway, last night was made enjoyable by the spectacle of a good
prize-fight. I have been to a number lately as guest of a newspaper man
who lived over at the rooming house. Of course many matches are
boresome, but provide two sublime machines of human muscle-play in the
vivid light of a “ring,”--stark darkness all around with yells from all
sides and countless eyes gleaming, centered on the circle,--and I get a
real satisfaction and stimulant. I get very heated, and shout loudly,
jump from my seat, etc., and get more interested every time I go.
Really, you must attend a bout or two in N.Y. where a real knock-out is
permitted. Along with liquor, that aristocratic assertion has
disappeared here. There is something about the atmosphere of a ring show
that I have for long wanted to capture into the snares of a poem. I
shall not rest easy until I do, I fear. To describe it to you,--what I
mean,--would be to accomplish my purpose. A kind of patent leather
gloss, an extreme freshness that has nothing to do with the traditional
“dew-on-the-grass” variety conveys something suggestive of my aim. T. S.
Eliot does it often,--once merely with the name “Sweeney,” and Sherwood
Anderson, though with quite different method in a story of his in _The
Smart Set_, some time ago, called “I Want to Know Why,” one of the
greatest stories I ever expect to read,--better even than most of the
_Winesburg_ chapters. This brings me to your story in _The Plowshare_.
What there was of it was well done. But it seems to me that the humor
and satire of this kind of theme depends on a continued heaping-up and
heaping-up of absurd detail, etc., until a climacteric of either
bitterness or farce is reached. For example,--have you read Gogol’s “The
Cloak,” ever? I don’t know what Hervey White did to it,--but I would
mistrust him of any improvement on it after reading his comments on
Frank’s _Our America_. -- -- -- -- I am as anti-Semitic as they make ’em,
but Frank’s comments cannot afford to be ignored merely because of race
prejudice. White is just an ordinary ass, though, and can easily be
disposed of. I don’t understand, though, how you can consent to such
“alterations” in your mss.
I’m very glad you sent the poem. It begins well,--dramatically, and
maintains itself well until the last two lines. They are an appendix
which I’d remove--merely repetition of better phrases in the beginning.
Why not divide up the second verse into two equal parts and have three
quartet-line verses? Another thing,--the “shoot-the-chutes” image
jars,--one wants to laugh,--and one shouldn’t--something else there
would be better. Also, why use a French title? I know it’s “done in the
best families,” but there seems a touch of servility,--inadequacy about
it to me. I’d send it to _The Dial_ if I had it, and be quite proud of
it whether taken or not.
Josephson writes me that _The Dial_ is causing a great stir, but that
clique favoritism, the old familiar and usual magazine button, is
beginning to become evident. J’s letters are charming, and a recent love
affair of his, a disappointment, has added seasoning to his
observations. I only hope that you, he, and Anderson continue to keep me
awake [?] with occasional mail.
I had a long and hypocritical conference with my father today, and
succeeded to the extent of a five dollar per week raise in salary,--this
makes existence at least possible.
I don’t know, G., whether I’m strong and hardened or not. I know that I
am forced to be very flexible to get along at all under present
conditions. I contrive to humanize my work to some extent by much
camaraderie with the other employees and this is my salvation there. Of
course I am utterly alone,--want to be,--and am beginning to rather
enjoy the slippery scales-of-the-fish, continual escape, attitude. The
few people that I can give myself to are out of physical reach, and so I
can only write where I would like to talk, gesture, and dine. The most
revolting sensation I experience is the feeling of having placed myself
in a position of quiescence or momentary surrender to the contact &
possession of the insensitive fingers of my neighbors here. I am
learning, just beginning to learn,--the technique of escape, and too
often yet, I betray myself by some enthusiasm or other.
My Akron friend has not been able to see me for some five [?] weeks, and
I am in need of a balm, spiritual and fleshly. I hope next Sunday
something can be arranged. -- -- -- --
40: TO MATTHEW JOSEPHSON
_Cleveland_ _March 15th --’20_
Dear Matty: Your praise of _Parsifal_ reminded me to buy a certain
Victrola reproduction,--_The Processional_,--that I have long wanted,
and I have found it an incessant pleasure ever since. I read the _Times_
often enough to realize that music is the only extra stimulus that N.Y.
has to offer above Cleveland in these dry days. As I’ve said before, I
don’t especially long for N.Y. as of yore, except once in awhile when an
overwhelming disgust with my work afflicts me and I want to lose myself
in the chill vastness of the old place. (I should better have said “find
myself,” for I play a business part so much and so painfully, that the
effort wears.) The little “iridescent bubbles” of poems that you suggest
as fortnightly events simply refuse to come to the surface, and as I get
so much of regularity in my daily routine,--time-clock ringing, etc.,
and rushing,--I won’t even worry about it. I cannot commit the old
atrocities,--and I have not time at present for new adventures. At any
rate, in the slow silence my taste is not suffering. There are still
Rabelais, Villon, Apuleius and Eliot to snatch at occasionally. In my
limited surroundings I grow to derive exceptional pleasures from little
things such as a small Gauguin I have on the wall, Japanese prints, and
Russian records on the Victrola, in fact, the seclusion of my room. My
mother is able to offer me only the usual “comforts of home” combined
with stolid, bourgeois ultimatums and judgments which I am learning how
to accept gracefully. So, if you are bored and spleenful, we have much
in common, though you are less impulsive and emotional than myself, and
take it, I am sure, more lightly. Your suggestion of a flight to the
walks of Chelsea or the Mediterranean tempts me exceedingly. I should
like to be rash. I assure you that if I were in your position I should
do just such a thing, but I feel too much bound by responsibilities in
connection with my Mother’s fate, to more than dream of it. However, I
wish we could get together for a while next summer. Perhaps you could
make me a visit here. I will be badly in need of your conversation for a
tonic by that time, and perhaps you will consider it. I can offer you no
woodland retreat or metropolitan carnival,--only a very middle-class
house and dull conversation,--but the time we had to ourselves would be
very interesting to me, at least.
The last _Dial_ was interesting, mainly on account of a story of
Anderson’s and “Mrs. Maecenas.” Burke can write at least very cleverly.
I was entertained. The hero, I cannot help remarking, touches
resemblance to you in several intellectual instances. Physically,--I
never saw you broken out with a rash, or gawky,--but Burke has known you
longer.--Is there an understanding between you about it?... My opus
comes out in the April issue, and you will remark a couple of salutary
changes,--omissions.
It’s late, and those who arise at five must get sleep, so I’ll
barbarically acquiesce. My poem, the phallic theme, was a highly
concentrated piece of symbolism, image wound within image.[9] You were
only too right in your judgment of it. When I get some time I’ll work
more on it. What you saw was fresh and unshodden enough.
41: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Cleveland, Ohio._ _April 14th, ’20_
My dear Gorham: --/--/ Yes,--the Grandmother poem came out very nicely.
You notice, of course, that I cut it in several places, which improved
it, I am sure. It is the only thing I’ve done that satisfies me at all
now,--whether I can ever equal it in the future remains to be seen. I’ve
recently been at work on something that I enclose for your verdict.[10]
As usual I am much at sea about its qualities and faults. It is
interesting to me,--but do I succeed in making it of interest to others?
Please slam and bang your best about it,--pro and con. I have much faith
in your critical powers. Much remains to be done on it yet, but enough
is done with it at present to detect the main current of it, which is
principally all that worries me. My daily routine tends to benumb my
faculties so much that at times I feel an infantile awe before any
attempt whatever, critical or creative. This piece was simply a mood
which rose and spilled over in a slightly cruder form than what you see.
It happens to be autobiographic, which makes any personal estimate of it
all the more dangerous.
I like Marianne Moore in a certain way. She is so prosaic that the
extremity of her detachment touches, or seems to touch, a kind of
inspiration. But she is too much of a precieuse for my adulation. Of
this latter class even give me Wallace Stevens, and the fastidious
Williams in preference. Is there anything more fastidious in poetry than
these lines of his in a recent _Little Review_ ...--? --/--/ [“To a
Friend Concerning Several Ladies,” II. 1-7.]
The Bynner poems and translations were fine. Vildrac is the one who set
me on the track of the Grandmother mood, and it is odd that our poems
should have come out in the same number.
Have not heard from Josephson for some time. His last letter told of
splenetic days following his post-graduation from Columbia, and an urge
to ramble toward the continent via a stewardship on some vessel.
Perhaps, for all I know, he has left our shores. Anderson writes me
often from his Alabama bower. He is enthusiastic about the Negroes and
their life, and will probably write something, sooner or later, on the
subject.
The prospect of Easter spent at home was too much for me, and so I went
to visit an Akron friend armed with two bottles of dago red. That didn’t
seem to suffice after we got started, and a quart of raisin jack was
divided between us with the result that the day proper (after the night
before) was spent very quietly, watered and Bromo-Seltzered, with
amusing anecdotes occasionally sprouting from towelled head to towelled
head. The bath in the unconscious did me good, though, and was much
better than the stilted parade and heavy dinner that my home
neighborhood offered. Since then I have been beset by two terrible
occasions,--a Crane-grandparent--golden-wedding celebration, and a
collegiate ball. The terrors of the first were alleviated by some real
champagne, but the second was aggravated by auto trouble on the way home
with two hysterical, extremely young and innocent females under my care
at three in the morning. I am just getting over it.
Well, this is all for tonight. I have no youths to put to
bed,--otherwise perhaps my correspondence might suffer. I’m afraid I
wouldn’t do in your position at all. But enough! I read in the paper
that John Barrymore is going to appear before the movie public in
_Dorian Gray_!! Mercy me!! Poor Oscar’s ghost upon the screen!! I wonder
what will be done with the part.
42: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _April 26, ’20_
Dear Gorham: Thank you “muchly” for your speedy response to the plea for
a critique. I was very anxious for your words, and they proved very
valuable. You are right in every particular, except in so far as the
understanding of my personal motive of interest in the poem. I realize
that it is only my failure in the realization (concretely) which has
permitted you this possibility. The poem fails, not because of
questions, propagandistic and economic, which you mentioned, but because
of that synthetic conviction of form & creation, which it lacks. It is
all too complicated an explanation to attempt least wise on paper at
this time of the night,--but perhaps you will miraculously be able to
penetrate through to my meaning. As it stands, there are only a few
fragments scattered thru it to build on,--but I may make something of it
in time. However,--if it does evolve into something,--it will be too
elusive for you to attach sociological arguments to, at least in the
matter of most of the details you have mentioned. At present,--I feel
apathetic about it,--but there is, of course, no telling when I will
take it up again. The “Garden Abstract” has got hold of me now--and I
venture that you would not recognize it. It is carrying me on with all
the adventuresome interest that “Grandmother’s Love Letters” did, and I
am very hopeful. Later, when I am further advanced with it and surer,
I’ll send it to you. Also, I am “working up” the “Aunty Climax” which
you will remember,--and a new piece in conventional form about a child
hearing his parents quarreling in the next room at midnight,--a rather
Blake-ian theme, I fear.
I have gone through a great deal lately,--seen love go down through lust
to indifference, etc., and am also, not very well. This, I blame mostly
to overwork. In fact the most of last week I spent at home mending an
incipient rupture caused by the incessant heavy lifting at the factory.
The possibility of such a thing made me furious with resentment against
all those concerned in the circumstances of its cause. But I am quieter
now that the affair has not been so serious as I at first suspected. I
am back at it again today,--but shall in the future take more
precautions against strenuosity. Your letter breathed an equanimity
which it seems is more [than] in your late surroundings. The change must
be doing you good.
43: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _May 25th, ’20_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ Your story in _The Plowshare_ was good and in the
right direction, I think. Somewhat in the Chekhov tradition,--but a
little too slight to leave many foot-marks. Work up to a few more
complications in plot and treatment, and you will give us more of a
chance for a grip. But the main point for praise strikes me in the
evident fact that you have attained an hygienic attitude (“naturalism,”
or what you will, but the only foundation left for serious and
interesting modern work). I’m, I fear, a little obscure, but I need a
conversation with you to get at the root of the matter.
I am plugging along in a very sodden way, planning as much as I dare on
a chance to work a little in the New York office for a few weeks this
summer by way of a change. After a recent conversation with my father
the move seems rather more probable than before,--so, it may be that I
shall see you within six weeks from now of a hot evening. Have been
reading Stendhal’s _Chartreuse de Parma_, _Noa Noa_, _Way of All Flesh_,
and Landor’s _Conversations_,--a strange mixture. Anderson wrote me
very much the same criticism of my “Episode of Hands” poem that you did.
I haven’t done anything more with it in spite of frequent attempts. The
new version of “Garden Abstract” I enclose for your criticism. _The
Dial_ has rejected it, but that doesn’t mean much to me after reading in
their last number that vacant lyric of Alter Brody’s.
This “business life” is getting me in a terrible way,--and I am
beginning to feel that I must contrive a jolt for myself soon. If it
were only myself concerned in the “jolt” I wouldn’t have delaying
qualms,--but,--perhaps I am fated to a life of parental absorptions. My
interests are as keen as ever, though, and so I suppose I need not worry
about myself,--as long as I keep worrying.
44: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Cleveland_, _June 8th, ’20_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ I’ve just read your critique in _The Freeman_, and
while I have never been to a Provincetown performance, I should
certainly want to after this of yours. _The F._ rejected my “Garden
Abstract” along with _The N. Rep._ and _The Dial_, and I’m at a loss to
understand such things in the light of some of the mediocre effects that
are more-or-less the rule in the columns of the first two. Of course the
theme was pure pantheistic aestheticism,--and I suppose they would say
that it was too detached from life, etc. I’m started on a set of
sketches connected with Akron life now, and enclose a sample.[11] Maybe
I shall be able to do something in New York in the mornings, the best
time for such work, but as you know, plans for that kind of thing can
never be made. -- -- -- --
45: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _July 30th, --’20_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ I have been promised the territory around
Washington, D.C., Norfolk, Richmond, Va., etc., as a hunting ground for
“selling,” beginning about the second week in September when I shall
embark for Washington as headquarters. This last named place strikes me
as interesting in the extreme,--even better than N.Y. which I know so
well anyway. I shall more or less freely govern my own operations, rise
and retire at later hours, and have a drawing account at the bank at my
own disposal in addition to a good percentage commission on everything I
sell. I must admit a happy surprise at my father’s recent appreciation
of my efforts here during the last six months. He even made the
unhoped-for concession of mentioning that he had chosen this territory
for me on account of the better sort of business type that is in
Washington and also on account of Washington’s “literary and
journalistic associations.” Well, it will be much better than this smug
atmosphere around here, and I rather tend to expect a moment or two of
revived inspiration. Before closing, I must mention my enthusiasm for
our Henry James. I have read recently his _American_, an early novel,
and a group of tales in his “middle manner” collected in a book called
_The Better Sort_, also I have been at his letters which I bought
riskily but wisely, after all. -- -- -- --
46: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _August 18th --’20_
Dear Gorham: I am delighted to hear about your sudden appreciation of
D’Annunzio’s novels. In fact, I get a picture of you running with them
under your arm, (one arm, I should say,--the other being occupied with
other cargo,--) away from the, as usual, glaring M. Schopenhauer who
stands in the doorway of your erstwhile quiet ivory tower waving his
arms and shaking fists at you. I would rather, and more truthfully, I
think,--think of you thusly than as another picture, more common to
humanity, that always obtrudes upon me when anyone announces “an
engagement”--“The Storm”.... You will remember seeing it in a thousand
“art store” windows:--a curly youth partly in a bearskin trotting
amiably with a barefooted flaxen lady away from something that evidently
hasn’t taken the starch out, as yet, from a rag that they are dragging
along above them. It is all “too lovely” and pink. I am sure there is
more of a “rouge et noir” cast to your surrender. Well,--betrayal brings
memories and wisdom (to the male, anyway), and so I congratulate you on
your splash even though I suffer from unaccustomed silence. One word
before we close the subject, though:--you must not expect me to read
D’Annunzio.
Did I tell you that I have been enjoying the letters of Henry James?
Also, Aldous Huxley’s “Limbo,” and the Noh plays of Fenollosa and Pound.
Conrad’s _Nigger of the Narcissus_ seems to me all polyphonic prose,
plus the usual quality of Conrad characterization, etc. Then I’ve read
most of the tales in James’ _Better Sort_ vol. and that is about all
I’ve been able to cram into the exhausted evening hours since New York.
I’ll chuck in a page of the Akron poem that I struck off the other
evening just because I want an opinion on it from you.[12] Hustle back
to the ivory tower and put on your specks for a minute, please, and tell
me what you think of this uncouth trifle, sir. In view of my attitude
toward what Akron so strongly represents, I have been thinking that it
might be amusing to call the whole series “Porphyro in Akron.” I don’t
much care whether anyone will care for it or not. What I seem to want to
do more and more as time goes on, is to preserve a record of a few
thoughts and reactions that I’ve had in as accurate colors as possible
for at least private satisfaction. --/--/
47: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Washington, D. C._ _Sept. 13th, ’20_
Dear Gorham: -- -- -- -- Here I am after a three-days search for a room in
an unexceptional maison in a row of other rooming houses. There are
charming places in Washington, but it takes time and information to get
at them, and as I haven’t either, and had to give the Cleveland office
“an address” very quickly, I shall remain here for three weeks yet,
anyway. Your last came just before I left home. You ought to thank your
stars for such a summer as you have had. I haven’t any idea yet how much
I shall like Washington. There is a certain easiness about it, and
geographically it is, I should judge, the nearest like Paris of any
American city. An endless number of parks and monuments, and all the
streets are lined with trees. At least it is more elegant than any other
American city and with a very different psychology than N.Y., Cleveland
or Akron. This last name reminds me that I sent “Porphyro” to _The Dial_
with some additions and subtractions from the version you read, before
leaving home. I dread this tramping around trying to sell Crane’s candy,
but this week will see me started in it, and my affection for Washington
will largely depend upon how well I get on. At present I feel a terrible
vacuity about me and within me and a nostalgia for Cleveland. -- -- -- -- I
share your enthusiasm for Cowley’s poem in _The L.R._
48: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Washington_] _Sept. 24th, --’20_
Dear Gorham: -- -- -- -- I’ve been running around talking, talking, talking
and waiting for the proper persons to arrive at their offices, etc.,
etc., etc., all week, and have succeeded to the mild extent of
inaugurating two new accounts for the firm. Fortunately, people here
don’t seem to arrive at their offices until after ten, and so I have the
opportunity to sleep more than I did in Cleveland where the requirements
commanded my resurrection at five A.M. My Akron friend, Mr. Candee, gave
me an introduction to a poet friend of his who has charge of all the
official communications, etc., that come into the State Department. He
has proved a charming person, and has introduced me to several other
interesting people. He is one of the few who is cognizant of what is
going on abroad, knows some things weeks in advance of the newspapers
and, of course, a great many things that never come out. His opinion of
most of Europe, especially the greedy tactics of some of the freshly
hatched nationalities, is below cynicism. I have not yet heard from _The
Dial_ about “Porphyro,” or at any rate he has [not] been redirected to
me. I am beginning to feel that he is my lost soul, and will be a long
time in returning. This simply means that I haven’t had a creative
impulse for so long that I am even getting not to miss it. I am not in
the type of Washington life that offers material or incentive for
writing. The diplomatic circles have all kinds of scandals waving around
which I generally hear a whisper of from the fringes, but there is
really no cafe life here or factory or shop life worth mentioning.
Thousands of clerks pour out of government offices at night and eat and
go to the movies. The streets are beautiful with many parks, etc., but
it is all rather dead. I am really more interested in the soldiers and
sailors that one meets than anything else. They have a strange
psychology of their own that is new to me. This sounds bad, and perhaps
it is so,--but what should one do with the reported example of our new
VICE -- -- -- -- scenting the air as it does. From what I’m hearing, about
every other person in the government service and diplomatic service are
enlarged editions of Lord Douglas. Amusing Household! as Rimbaud would
say. I shall look for _The Rainbow_ in Brentano’s here, and hope that it
may be interesting. -- -- -- --
49: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Washington_] _Oct. 1 ’20_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ New York seems to be set for a fine musical and
dramatic season. I took in _Footloose_ here last week and enjoyed it in
spite of many obvious impossibilities of situation, etc. Emily Stevens
did well in it--I suppose it would have failed without her. _Stepping
Stones_ is here this week and I may go to see it. -- -- -- --
What think you of this Aldous Huxley’s “Leda” poems? They strike me as
dry and very clever,--but is real poetry so obviously clever? Modern
life and its vacuity seems to me to be responsible for such work. There
is only a lime or a lemon to squeeze or a pepper-pot left to shake. All
the same I admire his work very much. He comes in the line of Eliot and
Sitwell. Eliot’s influence threatens to predominate the new English.
50: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Washington, D.C._ _Oct. 20th,--’20_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ Your letter that arrived this morning had the true
rage of the celibate unwilling in it. I sympathize with you.... My
nights are uneasy also. But you ought to pity me more than yourself,--my
satisfactions are far more remote and dangerous than yours, and my
temptations frequent, alas!
I have just been reading your Pollard article, and on bringing it to the
attention of my friend Wilbur Underwood here, was delighted to find that
U. knew Pollard very well, the latter having been enthusiastic about the
two vols. of verse that Underwood brought out in England a long time
ago. What pathos there is in these sudden flashes on forgotten people,
forgotten achievements and encounters! Here is this man, Underwood, with
the beauty and promise of his life all dried and withered by the daily
grind he has had to go through year after year in the State Dept. with a
meagre salary. A better critic and more interesting person one seldom
meets, yet the routine of uninteresting work has probably killed forever
his creative predispositions. A very few friends is all that life holds
for him. Yes, Pound is right in what he says in his “The Rest,”--“O
helpless few in my country, O remnant enslaved!... You who cannot wear
yourselves out by persisting to successes.”
U. has a very fine collection of rare translations, etc., from
antiquity, and I have just been enjoying to the full his copy of the
_Satyricon_ of Petronius (Arbiter), a rare and completely unexpurgated
Paris edition, purported to have been translated by Oscar Wilde,
although it seems to me too fine a job for what I imagine Wilde’s
scholarship to have been. Also, I am enjoying _The Golden Asse_ of
Apuleius, and some Saltus vols. that he has.
I went to see Hampden in _The Merchant of Venice_ recently here. The way
it was done, setting, costumes, speech, gestures,--everything was
sickening. Hampden, in one scene only,--the tantrum with Tubal,--was
good, everywhere else his acting was indifferent. I cannot understand
how a man of his intelligence,--for I remember his Hamlet as being quite
good,--will venture forth with such a cast of burlesque queens, (his
Portia!!!) and bitches. The worst examples of antiquated theatricality,
and mouthing of words! And the audience was ample and enthusiastic,--a
true barometer of the American stage at present. --/--/
I shall be glad to get back to Cleveland for a while, if only to see the
copies of Vildrac, Rimbaud, and Laforgue that have arrived from Paris
since my leaving. I expect to return to W. later, in Jan. when the
“season” here is on. I find agreement from my father that my lack of
results here has not been so much a matter of personal inadequacy as the
weather and general slowness of business here at this particular
time.... I shall certainly be in an ungodly rush, though, all the time I
am at the factory, as the holiday season orders will be coming in and
things become perfectly maddening there for two months. However,
anything will be better than the maddening experience I have been having
here of clawing the air day after day without getting any but the most
meagre results. --/--/
51: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Cleveland,_ _Nov. 9th--’20_
Dear Gorham: -- -- -- -- Yes, “Jurgen” has been breathing his _native_ Ohio
air for two weeks now, and is elbow and knee-deep in shipping and
packing at the factory. The Christmas rush has already begun and I’m
tired to death tonight after a rush since five this morning. But in
spite of all it has been better to get out of the ghostly time I was
having in Washington, back into the usual smoky and tawdry
thoroughfares. Does one really get so used to such things as, in time,
to miss them, if absent? I am sure I should not miss factory whistles in
Pisa or Morocco, but I frankly did miss them in Washington. Anyway, they
were more enlivening (and the people they claim) than anything or anyone
that I saw in W., which seemed to me the most elegantly restricted and
bigoted community I ever ventured into. They say it has changed a lot
since the war, and prohibition, of course, smothered its last way
out.--I almost hope I will not have the opportunity of returning there
in Jan., as expected. But you’ve heard most of this before.--
I have written Margaret Anderson to find out the _L.R._ situation.
Probably what you have heard is only too true. There is no use
expressing familiar resentments about such proceedings, and anyway one
grows rather calloused and numb in time. There is that danger with
me,--of relaxing into an indifference more comfortable than an interest
in the arts nowadays and here, allows. I suppose the Minns pictures, my
poems, etc., are smothered,--at least I’ve reconciled myself to it
peacefully. I’m sorrier about the Minns pictures than anything else, as
it meant a great deal of trouble to bring their reproduction about.
Perhaps they’ll print them again, I don’t know yet. My great wonder is
that M.C.A. and j.h. keep persisting as they do.
When you get a chance see the new monograph on Jacob Epstein including
fifty photos of his works. He seems to be much better than most of
Rodin, and I’m enthusiastic almost to the point of silliness. I’m
reading _The Possessed_ at your suggestion. Dostoievsky is a stranger to
me beyond _Crime and Punishment_ which caught me by the throat. He
_does_ give one more life than my mundane world supplies,--and
stimulates. He makes you forget yourself (should I better say, lose) in
the life of his characters for days at a time. And how few writers can
do that! You see this record of my temper at present,--I’m tired, with
every evidence of it. -- -- -- --
52: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _11/23/20_
My dear Gorham: Your letter has just come, and I’m sorry to know you are
having such an ordeal of “nerves.” Of course, being thrown back
violently again on celibacy after your Woodstock freedom would naturally
tend to bring about such a result, and it is only a pity that you cannot
find anything near you of sufficient temporary interest to relieve your
situation. Of course, I realize, that the puritanical taboos of a
typical boys’ school are what stands in the way most of all, and then
you might possibly resent and refuse sheer sensuality after having
experienced what I imagine has been offered you. I don’t believe in the
“sublimation” theory at all so far as it applies to my own experience.
Beauty has most often appeared to me in moments of penitence and even
sometimes, distraction and worry. Lately my continence has brought me
nothing in the creative way,--it has tended to create a confidence in me
along lines of action,--business, execution, etc. There is not love
enough in me at present to do a thing. This sounds romantic and
silly,--you understand that I mean and refer to the strongest incentive
to the imagination, or, at least, the strongest in my particular case.
So I have nothing to offer you for reading and judgment. Mart Anderson
writes me that the next _L.R._ will be out the twenty-fifth,--96 pgs.,
and will contain my poem, etc., and a publication of the J. Joyce trial
and proceedings which she says are interesting. It ought to be a rich
number with John Quinn and Burleson throwing epithets at each other. I
stopped in the middle of _The Possessed_ to read _Poor White_, but am
again on the Russian trail. What marvelous psychology!!! A careful
reading of “Dosty” ought to prepare one’s mind to handle any human
situation comfortably that ever might arise.... You will like the
Anderson book. It fascinated me as much as _Winesburg_ and this in spite
of a great fear I had of disappointment. There is a woman in it
something like jh although too removed to do anything but suggest her. I
wish, after you have read it, that we could have a fireside hour over
the book. We might agree perhaps on the exquisite work of such scenes as
the description of the murderer-saddlemaker sitting by the pond and
rocking gently to and fro (the simplicity of A’s great power of
suggestion is most mocking to the analyst)--and the scene where the sex
awakening girl hears the men in the barn in speaking of her, say,--“the
sap is mounting into the tree.” Nature is so strong in all the work of
Anderson--and he describes it as one so willingly and happily
surrendered to it, that it colors his work with the most surprising
grasp of what “innocence” and “holiness” ought to mean. Also, his
uncanny intuition into the feelings of women (a number of women have
remarked to me about this) is very unusual. I have an absurd prejudice
against Frank’s _Dark Mother_ merely on account of what I read of it in
a copy of _The Dial_. There it seemed to me too exclamatory, Semitic,
and too much in the style of David Pinski, whose stuff I somehow am
terribly bored with. So I probably shall never read it, as I probably
shall never read more than the three pages of W. D. Howells that I once
attempted. Frankly, you see, I admit to a taste for certain affectations
and ornamental commissions. I wish I could follow your finger guide to
the advice of Brooks in _The Freeman_ about “outside interests” for the
fallow seasons between poems. I had read the article and agree with it
in many ways. But with me, there are no poems for “doldrums” to lag
between, and no time, literally, for poems, to say nothing of energy.
The fact is last week I ran gait at the factory at the rate of fourteen
hours straight per day of rushed and heavy and confusing labor, and as
it will probably continue that way until very near Christmas, I have all
I can do to think of getting enough sleep to begin the rush again next
day. Of course I am becoming very morose and irritable under this
pressure of exertion, not to mention disgust and boredom, and yesterday,
my first day of a chance to sit down and think a minute, I found myself
in a rather serious state of indigestion and neurotic fever. So it goes.
Our age tries hard enough to kill us, but I begin to feel a pleasure in
sheer stubbornness, and will possibly turn in time into some sort of a
beautiful crank. Pax vobiscum!!!!
53: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Sunday, Dec. 5th,--’20_
Dear Gorham: Your article in _The Plowshare_ was so late as to have
arrived only a few days ago,--the “Pascal” came yesterday. In almost
every way, I think, the latter work is superior, and to me, more
suggestive, but this is probably because we agreed pretty well over most
of the contents of “Cafe St. Beuve” last summer in my parlours at the
Prince George and so it was familiar material to me. I have never read
Pascal and so can’t speak beyond telling you that I like your handling
of the theme and it seemed to me that your style was richer than I have
noticed before. I am filled with a kind of bleakness of mind and spirit
lately, so that even this answer to your appreciated interest in my
bland career is somehow an unsatisfactory effort. I should like to be
able to see and talk to you,--the mere technical mechanics of writing
have become so foreign to me from long neglect, that I feel awkward at
best. Again I am very much at sea about everything that personally
concerns me. --/--/ I am not sure about remaining in Cleveland much
after the first of the year, as there is a possibility of my being sent
out on the road again as salesman. On the other hand, it seems to me
that it will be about as much as I can endure to remain at my present
work in the shipping dept. until Christmas is over without a clean and
final break with my father and his company, owing to various
humiliations he seems interested in either forcing or countenancing
others about the place to force, on me. As soon as my mother is off the
scene I shall feel freer to do more as I please. I have practically no
money and as employment is hard to find now, she is very much worried
for fear I shall do something rash and suffer for it. About the only
course I see is to save for all I am worth for two years or so, and then
embark once and for all for foreign lands, Italy or Russia or Paris, and
not come back until I want to. Literature and art be hanged!--even
ordinary existence isn’t worth the candle in these States now. I enclose
Matty Josephson’s last letter to me with his plans. They make my mouth
water.
I wish I had three poems to send to _The Nation_, but I shall have to
desist from a lack of “numbers.” _The Possessed_ was one of the most
tremendous books I’ve ever read, I think, and I am planning on reading
_The Brothers Karamazov_ as soon as time permits. At present I dip into
Seutonius’ _History of the Caesars_, which is easy to recognize as one
of Saltus’ principal authorities and sources for his _Imperial Purple_.
-- -- -- --
54: TO SHERWOOD ANDERSON
[_Cleveland_] _12/8/20_
Dear Anderson: Your mention of a possible trip East soon makes me hope
very much that you will care to stop off at Cleveland here (a few hours
at least) and see me. I shall not be living at home at the time as my
mother expects to leave for her place in Cuba very soon, closing the
house, but if you come alone I can accommodate you at my room wherever
it may be. I want very much to talk with you and hope you can “make it”
this time. Better look me up at the factory at 208 St. Clair Ave. if you
arrive between 8 A.M. and 5 P.M. You don’t know how much I appreciate
the encouragement your letters give me. Although I am not at present
doing anything creatively, I have not sunk too much into despair or
indifference to hope.
Do come,--won’t you!
55: TO ----
[_Cleveland_] [_Dec. 22, 1920_]
Dear ----: NEWS! News! NEWS!--The “golden halo” has widened,--descended
upon me (or “us”) and I’ve been blind with happiness and beauty for the
last full week! Joking aside, I am too happy not to fear a great deal,
but I believe in, or have found God again. It seems vulgar to rush out
with my feelings to anyone so, but you know by this time whether I am
vulgar or not (I don’t) and it may please you, as it often might have
helped me so, to know that something beautiful can be found or can
“occur” once in awhile, and so unexpectedly. Not the brief and limited
sensual thing alone, but something infinitely more thrilling and
inclusive. I foolishly keep wondering,--“How can this be?--How did it
occur?” How my life might be changed could this continue, but I scarcely
dare to hope. I feel like weeping most of the time, and I have become
reconciled, strangely reconciled, to many aggravations. Of course it is
the return of devotion which astounds me so, and the real certainty
that, at least for the time, it is perfectly honest. It makes me feel
very unworthy,--and yet what pleasure the emotion under such
circumstances provides. I have so much now to reverence, discovering
more and more beauty every day,--beauty of character, manner, and body,
that I am for the time, completely changed.--But why aren’t you here to
talk with me about it! How I wish you were here.
I have written you this way (typewriter) because, as you have
discovered, my writing is hard deciphering. I have given up trying to
improve it, and don’t try any more. You have probably got the candy and
hymn by this time,--neither amount to much, but I wanted to send them. I
don’t understand -- -- -- --’s silence,--but certainly hope that I have not
been relinquished as one of Akron’s temporary “makeshifts” or “reliefs.”
It would really hurt. I have told you all that has happened. This rest
would merely be to mention details of ungodly strain and hours of
“Christmas rush” at the factory,--seventeen hours a stretch sometimes.
When I have had time I have spent it with Dostoievsky’s _Les Freres
Karamazov_ which I like even better than _The Possessed_. The beautiful
young Alyosha, and Father Zossima! Dostoievsky seems to me to represent
the nearest type to the “return of Christ” that there is record of,--I
think the greatest of novelists. But I am forgetting Frank Harris, who,
you know, comes second to the “woman taken in adultery.” --/--/
1921
56: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _1/14/21_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ I’m slightly disabled today with a touch of la
grippe and am remaining away from the factory. A talk with my father
last week settled things more definitely for me than many months have
afforded. I shall remain in my present capacity at the factory
indefinitely until I find a job at some more “literary” work, when my
father and I will more-or-less conclusively part hands so far as a
business connection is concerned. At last he seems, after questioning
various mutual friends as to my interests, etc., to have been forced
into this much recognition of my persistence in artistic
directions,--and it was gratifying to observe as gracious a surrender as
he offered me. You see I have not said anything to him about my
personal interests for almost two years, leaving him only what details
of indifference to business as naturally revealed themselves throughout
my association with him, to judge from. I long ago “gave up” talking
over such sores with him,--and it has amused me vastly to find that at
last the attitude aroused him to seek such indirect solutions to the
“enigma.” Now I can hope to get a little reading and writing done before
spring here in some sort of tranquillity. Before the summer is over I
may have found me a journalistic job,--but the main point under either
drudgery is that I accomplish some real writing. But this is the usual
ante-room soliloquy, and I won’t bore you further with more of it.
I am just as glad for you that you didn’t start your magazine,--and with
the same considerations in mind that you gave as your reasons against
it. Italy will do you infinitely more good,--why waste your good money
on what is, after all, an indifferent public. It is bad enough to waste
brains and time--but not money!!! I haven’t seen _Contact_ yet, but will
try to get ’round to send for a copy soon. Williams has a very fine poem
in the last _Poetry_ and also there is a beauty by Padraic Colum. By the
way, I hope you saw Colum’s write-up of Ezra Pound’s _Instigations_ in a
not very recent _New Republic_. It was the best appreciation of Pound on
his own grounds that I’ve ever read.
Your last letter, although very brief and fragmentary, did bring a whiff
from you of revived sensibilities. N.Y. does that to one always after
any period of provincial stiffness. What are you writing now? Of course
I shall send you whatever I do,--but the waiting is longer, by far, for
me than for you. I’m caught dead tight in a new affair de coeur that at
least keeps me stirred up in some ways. I don’t know how much blood I
pay for these predicaments,--but I seem to live more during them than
otherwise. They give the ego a rest. I may sound like an utter
profligate,--but there is much sincerity, too painfully much, for me to
laugh.
57: TO MATTHEW JOSEPHSON
_Cleveland, O._ _1/14/21_
Dear Matty: --/--/ What you say about the Akron suite is very true. I
have only one point of disagreement with you,--crudeness of form. This
was deliberate, and you have got to convince me that such a treatment of
such a mood and subject is inconsistent before we can pick asphodels
together again on the slopes of Parnassus. By the way,--do you care for
my “Garden Abstract” in its final form in _The L.R._? I think that the
version I sent you was an earlier and poorer experiment. I must bestir
myself soon and write something new. My main difficulty is at present a
kind of critical structure that won’t permit me the expression of the
old asininities, _and_ (as you say) the poverty of society in these
“provinces.” Your suggestion about the trade paper work is alluring.
However, I am bound not to break away from my father’s concern until
spring, when there may be a little striving and stirring up of the
dust,--I hope.
Are you still planning on Italy? Why not the island of Capri? I hear
there is interesting company about there,--D. H. Lawrence and Mackenzie
musing and moping around the baths and arcades of Tiberius.... I don’t
long so much for change of surroundings as time, TIME which I never seem
to get to read or write or amuse myself. I hear [that] “New York” has
gone mad about “Dada” and that a most exotic and worthless review is
being concocted by Man Ray and Duchamp, billets in a bag printed
backwards, on rubber deluxe, etc. What next! This is worse than The
Baroness [Freytag-Loringhoven]. By the way I like the way the discovery
has suddenly been made that she has all along been, unconsciously, a
Dadaist. I cannot figure out just what Dadaism is beyond an insane
jumble of the four winds, the six senses, and plum pudding. But if the
Baroness is to be a keystone for it,--then I think I can possibly know
when it is coming and avoid it.
58: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _1/28/21_
Dear Gorham: Your N.Y. bulletin interested me immensely. Last Sunday I
went down to Akron to see Minns after a four months’ separation. I read
him the opinions of Man Ray, whereat he flew into a holy rage. “There is
no sense in the theory of interesting ‘accidents,’” and I am with Minns
in that. There is little to [be] gained in any art so far as I can see,
except with much _conscious_ effort. If he doesn’t watch his lenses, M.
Ray will allow the Dada theories and other flamdoodle of his section run
him off his track. He seems to have done much good work so far, but it
has been in spite of his ideas. If he is just recently infected, it’s
too bad, because there is less chance of him containing his qualities
under such theories--But so much for photography.
--/--/ When I get “Dosty” more cleared out of the way, I intend to get
more poetry reading again, but just now he is all-absorbing, and somehow
his offering is such a distinct type of itself that one doesn’t want to
mix any other kind of reading with it. Here is my sum poetic output for
the last three months--two lines--
“The everlasting eyes of Pierrot
And of Gargantua,--the laughter.”
Maybe it is my epitaph, it is contradictory and wide enough to be. But I
hope soon to turn it into a poem and thereby, like Lazarus, return.
59: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _2/11/21_
Dear Gorham: Yes, my writing is quite Dada,--very Dada (I like the term
as applied) and yet you must put up with it again as my machine has
suffered another relapse.
I was very much amused and interested by the _Contact_ that arrived
about a week ago. Thank you, as always, dear old bean, for being so
thoughtful. You are always sending me something to make my eyes blink
delightedly and arouse me from the general stupor of these parts. How
fine the Wallace Stevens were! And some of Williams’ talk was good--but
how horrid that the room had to be splashed with the wet-dream
explosions of Virgil Jordan and McAlmon. Their talk is all right--but
what is true of it has been said adequately before,--and all they can
seem to add is a putrid remnant or two. Perhaps I am on the downward
grade, but when I come to such stuff as theirs I can only say “Excuse
me.” I will be glad to receive stimulation from the sky or a foetid
chamber or maybe a piss-pot but as far as I can make out they have wound
their _phalli_ around their throats in a frantic and vain effort to
squeeze out an idea. In fact they seem very “Dada” in more sense than
one. But enough!!!
Don’t disown me,--but I have done literally no writing to give you. The
fact is that I am entirely engrossed in personal erotic experience
lately that nothing seems possible in that way. O if you had ever seen
the very Soul of Pierrot (in soul and incarnate) you would at least
admire. Never, though, has such beauty and happy-pain been given me
before--which is to say that my love is at least somewhat requited. You
and one other are the only ones to know now or later of this, so do not
think me vulgar or silly to tell you. Well, you have felt the fire
somewhat yourself so you may appreciate my mood. Never have I suffered
so, or reached such moods of ecstasy....
What do you think of _Poor White_? It certainly has made Anderson one of
the most talked-of artists there are. I wrote you my opinion some time
past. I’m still on “Dosty”--a very fine biography and estimate and
analysis by J. Middleton Murry.
You will please forgive this letter. I have been perhaps a little too
personal,--perhaps vulgar. But if anything’s to blame it’s the
Subconscious rioting out through gates that only alcohol has the power
to open. --/--/
60: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _2/24_
Dear Gorham: Your article on education, etc., in the last _Freeman_
delights me. Remarkably courageous and true. I hope it may do at least a
little good concretely,--but at least it will serve as an accentuation
mark in the minds of a good many like myself who have felt with you
along that line for some time.
Two new pictures just arrived from Minns that I wish you could see.
One,--an old man’s head that is as good as a Rembrandt, and at the
opposite pole, a young girl’s head that brings Pound’s sonnet lines
persistently into my head,--“No, go from me. I have left her lately. I
will not spoil my shield with lesser brightness.--” You know how it
goes. I intend to send the old man’s head to _The Dial_ for publication,
but scarcely hope they will accept it after the mediocrities they have
lately staged there. Really,--I flatter myself, you see,--I have more
doubts about their accepting a poem I recently wrote and sent them,
which I enclose.[13] You see, my present job allows me more time while
“at work,” and I may even do more,--for better or worse, according as
you feel about it.
This is all now until I hear from you and have more to build on. You
know there is precious little for me to build on here, and so you must
not too much mind if my letters have a predominance of what must seem
banality to you. If so, forgive me,--and when you get tired of vainly
tugging at your end of the line, let me know, and I’ll take it
philosophically.
61: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _April 10th_
Dear Gorham: -- -- -- -- For me here--the same old jog-trot except that I
have lately run across an artist here whose work seems to carry the most
astonishing marks of genius that have passed before my eyes in original
form, that is,--I mean present-day work. And I am saying much I think
when I say that I prefer Sommer’s work to most of Brzeska and Boardman
Robinson. A man of 55 or so--works in a lithograph factory--spent most
of his life until the last seven years in the rut of conventional
forms--liberated suddenly by sparks from Gauguin, Van Gogh, Picasso and
Wyndham Lewis, etc. I have taken it upon myself to send out some of his
work for publication, an idea that seems oddly, never to have occurred
to him. --/-- I enclose an incipient effort of mine of recent date.[14]
62: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _April 20th_
Dear Gorham: Your letter did me good, and has left a good hangover for
me for the last few ungenerous days. I left my father’s employ yesterday
_for good_--nothing, I think, will ever bring me back. The last insult
was too much. I’ve been treated like a dog now for two years,--and only
am sorry that it took me so long to find out the simple impossibility of
ever doing anything with him or for him.
It will take me many months, I fear, to erase from my memory the image
of his overbearing head leaning over me like a gargoyle. I think he had
got to think I couldn’t live without his aid. At least he was, I am
told, furious at my departure. Whatever comes now is much better than
the past. I shall learn to be somewhere near free again,--at least free
from the hatred that has corroded me into illness.
Of course I won’t be able to get to N.Y. now for any summer vacation.
You know what a privation that means to me. I have nothing in sight in
the way of employment,--and as times are so bad,--I don’t know when I
shall. A job as copy-writer for an advertising house will probably be
open to me about June 1st. And there is a newspaper opening out here
soon,--perhaps that may yield me something. I have a roof over my head
and food, anyway--here at home--and maybe I shall write something. The
best thing is that [the] cloud of my father is beginning to move from
the horizon now, you have never known me when it has not been there--and
in time we _both_ may discover some new things in me. _Bridges burn’t
behind!_
Glad you like “Estador.” I’m beginning to myself. I cannot quite accept
your word changes although I’m far from satisfied with it. But the more
I work over it the less I seem likely to be,--so I’m going to try it on
_The Dial_.--Anything for some money now.
63: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _May 3rd 21_
My dear Gorham: --/--/ I feel sure S[ommer]’s work is as important as
any contemporary work anywhere, and I’m very interested to hear what
you will think. I wish I were better trained for analysis of this kind
of work,--but as it is I can only “feel” the power of it. I may send you
a few of his drawings at any time,--and later if you have time around
N.Y. after school is out, you might care to show some of them to people
who could give him a chance perhaps, of exhibition somewhere. --/--/
I agree with you about your distinction between the earlier and later
Anderson. I have never got hold of _Windy McPherson’s Son_, but I never
could clap very loudly for _Marching Men_, although I imagine that it is
an improvement on the former. He, I understand, is anxious for these two
books’ extinction. They will probably never be issued by the publisher
again. I’m anxious to read his “Out of Nowhere into Nothing” that _The
Dial_ announces for three summer issues. By the way, a new book of
essays by my acquaintance, Charles S. Brooks, has a chapter in it, “A
Modern Poet,” which is a burlesque on me, the Baroness, and my rooms
over _The Little Review_ on 16th Street. His effort is all the funnier
for the especial lack of comprehension he has for _The L.R._ and “modern
poetry.” I promise you a laugh or two anyway. The Yale Press has just
got it out,--its title is _Hints to Pilgrims_. Brooks lives a few houses
down the street from me here, but at that time he was a New Yorker, and
used to be very hospitable to me with theatres and dinner at his
apartment on 10th St. --/--/
64: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _May 16th, ’21_
Dear Gorham: I am delighted that you have found so much to hold your
interest in Sommer’s work. Some later things that he had recently shown
me only confirm my convictions the more. I’ll send you more of his work
as soon as I can assemble what I want to. Sent two watercolours to _The
Dial_ again last week, which I don’t see how they can let pass by--but
all things are possible to them. --/--/ There is a French-Swiss artist
here just eight months from Paris,--doing very interesting work with a
peculiar sharp diabolism in it. Willy E. Lescaze. His work at a local
exhibition here recently caused a terrible furor, being in company with
Burchfield’s, the only work worth looking at. It amuses me to see
Lescaze praise Sommer’s work--there [are] all the differences between
them that distinguish Baudelaire from Rabelais. I recently sent some of
L’s work to _The Little Review_ along with S’s--but what ever keeps
Margaret Anderson so impolitely silent I cannot figure out. Do what I
will, I can’t seem to get a word out of her. I begin to despair. At
least I hope she will return the drawings someday. If you want more to
take about with you, you might call on her when you next are in town and
find out if she wants them. If not you will find some interesting
additions to add to your bundle. I cannot but feel that there is an
audience in N.Y. ready for such work. Sommer has tried Cleveland people
and found them so indifferent that he didn’t even send one canvas or
sheet to this last exhibition here. In one way, a mistake, I think.
Before I forget your request,--_William Sommer_ is as completely as he
signs himself.
Went yesterday to see the first movie for a long time. Did you see
it--_Deception_--the foreign picture of the affairs of Henry VIII and
Anne Boleyn? It really was stimulating. I could wish for more of such
fare, even though it should (horrid thought!) impoverish our native
celluloid manufactories. There were mob scenes in it, perfect in every
detail, that only the screen can produce. And the old sensualist king
was well acted.
I am still without work. There is absolutely nothing doing here. Things
are at such a standstill that I hate to think of it. I am practically on
my mother’s hands here at home,--and you can believe me that such a
situation is far from a pleasant one for me who have been used to paying
my own way now for some time. If only that promise I have for a job with
a local advertising house fulfills itself next month I shall be all
right. But most friends and friendly offers have proved themselves such
slippery fish! Two years thrown away at the feet of my father without
the gain of a jot of experience at anything but peon duties in a
shipping room! I can never forgive him, nor my own foolishness. Just now
I am too uneasy to concentrate on any writing. Have got to prepare
myself for some kind of practical activity--and so I do not even read
much but advertising books and business folders! Roger Fry’s _Vision and
Design_, a large tome beautifully illustrated, is good to unloosen one’s
tongue about such work as Sommer’s. He brought it around one evening,
and I have enjoyed it. Haven’t read _Main Street_ or _Moon Calf_ yet,
nor _Miss Lulu Bett_. I am beginning to feel rather distinguished about
it all.
65: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Cleveland_ _May 21st_
Dear Gorham: I’m glad to say that my tension is less acute at present
than when I last wrote you. An improvement of the weather with
opportunities for tennis and getting out and around more helps me work
off surplus energies generated by my “change of life.” And you are, of
course, very much right in urging me not to be ridiculously bourgeois in
accepting bourgeois standards.
I’m very glad you liked “A Persuasion.” Perhaps it seems a bit tame to
me on account of having used several phrases coined some years ago in
it. I was much pleased this week to get word from _Double Dealer_
accepting “Black Tambourine” for publication and urging me to send them
some prose. They claim they are much in need of some. Haven’t you some
to offer them? I might write something on Joyce or Anderson--but I don’t
know. I always feel singularly lacking in ideas about these people
excepting to blindly enthuse or refute some ridiculous criticism of
them. Their (“_D.D’s_”) check has not arrived yet but they promise it
soon--before the June number when they expect to use the poem. It
surprises me to find such a Baudelairesque thing acceptable _anywhere_
in U.S. I sent it out as a kind of hopeless protest--not expecting to
see it printed at all. I’m beginning to lose interest in it now--it
cannot be as good as I had thought it. --/--/
66: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Cleveland_, _Friday_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ Excuse my apparent evasion of your request for an
explanation about “Black Tambourine.” The Word “midkingdom” is perhaps
the key word to what ideas there are in it. The poem is a description
and bundle of insinuations, suggestions bearing on the Negro’s place
somewhere between man and beast. That is why Aesop is brought in,
etc.,--the popular conception of Negro romance, the tambourine on the
wall. The value of the poem is only, to me, in what a painter would call
its “tactile” quality,--an entirely aesthetic feature. A propagandist
for either side of the Negro question could find anything he wanted to
in it. My only declaration in it is that I find the Negro (in the
popular mind) sentimentally or brutally “placed” in this midkingdom,
etc. Tell me if I have made it plain or not to you.
67: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Cleveland_, _June 12th ’21_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ Sommer said you had something in a very recent
_Freeman_ which I’ve been trying to get, but guess I’m too late.
Sometimes I get so exasperated with the “intellectual” attitudes of
these papers like _The Freeman_, _New Rep._, _Nation_, etc., where
everything is all jumbled together,--politics, literature, painting,
birth control, etc., etc., etc., that I ignore them for a time and
probably miss some good things. It’s the way they are served that I
object to. I’m beginning to be somewhat pained by this “Intelligentsia”
mood when it comes upon me. This probably indicates that I am not a very
responsible individual--and truth is--I’m not. How tired I am of the
perpetual ferment of _The New Rep_. Those fellows are playing a canster
game nonsense. Does anything they ever say have any concrete effect? Old
Washington goes on just the same on the old rotten paths. These
gentlemen are merely clever at earning their livelihood in clean cuffs.
But hear me rant on!!! I don’t care two-pence for the whole earth &
heavens and least of all for politics. It’s only when the political
gentlemen (Irish potatobeds) obstruct my view of my petunias and
hollyhocks that I’m thus aroused,--and even that is a small complaint in
the long list of larger ones I have. --/--/
No job in sight even now! I’m about convinced of the hopelessness of the
advertising plan. Business gets worse and worse and they don’t have
enough to do to keep a new man busy.
Oh well!--I manage to get drunk once a week on delicious wine served out
by a friend of mine here and I have an evening a week with Sommer when
we do all kinds of stunts from Chopin Ballades and Heine lyrics to
sparring with an old set of gloves I have. Wish I could think of
something entertaining to write--but, at present I’m mostly trying to
regain a mental and spiritual status that has been lost to me for over a
year. What I want to do is gather up the threads again and go on, to put
it stale-ly.
I have reached such blind alleys and found no way out of them that there
is nothing at present for me to do but laugh a little and
_endure_--which I hope to do. --/--/
Did I tell you I’d been drawing and painting some? I find it a
tremendous stimulation--and you begin to see so many more things than
before wherever you look. My drawings are original, at least, and Sommer
professes to see much in ’em. --/--/
68: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Cleveland_ _June 16th ’21_
Hail! Citizen of the world! --/--/No work here except what I’ve lately
been making myself. This has all been occasioned by a very cordial
letter from the editor of _The Double-Dealer_, Basil Thompson, who urged
me to write something for them on Anderson. This has been done (to the
extent of 2000 words which, if taken, means $20.00) and dispatched. In
my present mood it seems to have been a good job. Also, I got up courage
and erudition enough to “do” a Vildrac translation for them which in the
original at least is fine.
I was very disappointed to find quite a bad typographical error in
“Black Tambourine.” “Mingle” instead of “mingl_ing_”--last line 2nd
verse. How foolish it makes me feel that way! It quite destroys the
sense of the thing.
They pay .30 per line of verse & 1 cent per prose word and want prose
badly. As I need money worse, I may do something in the short story way
for them if they fancy the Anderson thing. This last little effort has
rewarded me much already merely in getting my mind to working a little
again. I don’t dare hope for an ultimate success as a “free lance” but
am beginning to think that this writing game offers a chance to augment
one’s savings a little now and then at least.
69: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Saturday midnight_
Dear Gorham: Well. It has been a day I shall not soon forget. I have
just a little time since returned from my first visit to the Sommer farm
and studio--about half way between here and Akron in a beautiful
untrodden valley. He has an old old-fashioned schoolhouse for his
studio--the walls are white and hung with such an array of things as you
never have seen. Forgive my enthusiasm--I have been so dazzled for the
last 8 hours that I may seem somewhat incoherent in my expression. I
have brought home with me a considerable number of water-colours and
drawings which I am going to send on to you within a few days. These are
representative of his _best_ in this medium and I think you will be
enthusiastic about them. I could picture a dozen N.Y. picture dealers in
that studio today--radical or pedantical--all tearing [each] other’s
hair for the first chance of exhibiting such stuff. I feel convinced now
that all that needs be done is to get some samples of this work before
them,--and if they have any sense at all--either artistic or
commercial--they will seize upon it. --/--/
“Dynamism” is the splendid & fitting word for Sommer--the word I had
been looking for and got only as far as the adjectival use. --/--/
70: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Cleveland,_ _July 8th_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ The weather has been terrifically hot here, making
action and thought alike impossible,--but I am slowly trying to labor
out in the suitable style for _Shadowland_ an article on Ezra [Pound]
which may bring me in a little money. This magazine is popular and in
some ways becoming more interesting than _Vanity Fair_. I would like a
foothold in it if it is possible. It seems evident enough that I have
accomplished something in the estimation of the editors of _The D.D._ as
they have incorporated me in their list of contributors on their
stationery. I got word the other day that they will bring out my
Anderson article in this July issue. I haven’t got my check yet but it
ought to be twenty dollars or so.
I have a query for you. What would you think of a play on or around the
figure of John Brown? There is plenty of material, but the only trouble
I see is the issue of slavery, North and South, etc., which might kill
it. I am reading a fine biography of the man by Villard. As I am
principally interested in this idea for mere commercial reasons the
possibility of popularity is the largest factor. I tend to think the
subject, in this light, too forbidding.
-- -- -- -- I always seem to choose the wrong moment for my letters, when
the ice-man is hammering at the door or the family is waiting to be
driven to town, so my letters are more like bulletins and telegrams than
anything else. Things pan out the same way when I start on an essay,
article or poem,--but I hope for better days. --/--/
71: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Cleveland_, _July 14th, ’21_
Dear Gorham: This is the kind of note I got yesterday from JH of _The
Little Review_, returning some mss.,--“Found this as I was going through
Mart’s files. She’s crazy. The drawings are fine but we haven’t any hope
of printing them for ages, so I sent them back.--jh.” So it looks as
though _The L.R._ was done for, and perhaps poor Mart. Doesn’t the way
jh puts it makes you feel rather uneasy. I wish I knew more
details,--whether it is a mere -- -- -- -- rumpus that is all the matter,
or whether Mart Anderson has worn herself out in vain assaults against
the decision against her in the Joyce trial. I wish I could get in touch
with her direct, but as she hasn’t answered any letter for the last six
weeks she probably cannot write. I happen to know from Mart’s friends
too much inside information on the two women’s mutual relationships to
feel certain of any direct truth about Mart from jh. If you hear
anything about them or their plans please let me know. You know my
admiration and (yes) affection for Margaret Anderson is very strong, and
I detest nothing more than such a brutal squib as this thing that jh
just sent. --/--/
The cover for the July _Double Dealer_ gives me the shivers, but my
Anderson article is all there. Write me what you think of it now that
you have read him more or less completely. I enclose a letter of
introduction [to Anderson]. My Pound article is a far more difficult
thing and progresses slowly, but I am bent now on making as much money
writing as I can, and I’m going to get it published one place or
another. Your encouragement anent the John Brown adventure is very
gratifying. This is a long winded matter, but I think I shall go ahead
with it, hoping by the time you get back from Europe to have something
to show you. By the way, when you are in Paris there is one place you
must go. Joyce’s _Ulysses_ is to be brought out complete in Paris this
fall. I enclose a subscription blank with address, etc. I have already
subscribed for it. --/--/
72: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Cleveland_ _July 22nd, ’21_
Dear Gorham: The “march of events” has brought upon me Cleveland’s 125th
anniversary with all its fussy & futile inanities and advertisements to
make hideous the streets. Blocked, and obliged to wait while the initial
“pee-rade” went by today, I spent two hours of painful rumination ending
with such disgust at America and everything in it, that I more than ever
envy you your egress to foreign parts. No place but America could relish
& applaud anything so stupid & drab as that parade--led by the most
notable and richest grafter of the place decked out in Colonial rags as
the founder of the city Moses C. Ah--the Baroness, lunatic that she is,
is right. Our people have no _atom_ of a conception of beauty--and don’t
want it. One thing almost brought tears to my eyes (and I hope you do
not think me too silly in mentioning it)--the handful of Chinese who
came along in some native and antique vestments & liveries to prostitute
themselves in the medley of trash around them. To see them passing the
(inevitable) Soldier’s Monument ablaze with their aristocratic barbarity
of silk, gold and embroideries _was_ an anachronism that could occur
_only_ in America. And the last of their “section” brought a float with
a large “melting pot”--its significance was blazoned in letters _on_
it!! All I can say is--it’s a gay old world! If ever I felt alone it has
been today. But I must encounter fireworks, bawling “choruses” and more
“pee-rades” for 7 more days--as the community believes in celebrations
that are productive of business.
Your letter came this morning, and I agree largely with what you have to
say about the Anderson article. A friend of mine here, Lescaze the
painter, who is an excellent literary critic as well, told me that
reading it gave him the impression of a young man inflating and playing
with a series of variously-colored balloons in the boredom of his
chambre--which in an imagistic way singularly seems to agree with the
substance of your opinion on it. Well,--this is true & rather painfully
so--I must admit. My only justification is the singularly inadequate
surroundings I have here for any kind of concentration. My one hope is
to do better with more practice at such work and relieved somewhat of
the haste that the pressing necessities for money presently force upon
me. I struggle with the Pound article still,--but the subject itself is
so complex and (I fancy) the audience interested so small, that I may be
forced to give it up.
You are right about _The D.D.’s_ exceedingly uneven quality. To my mind
almost every issue has been largely filled with utter weakness and
banality. Will some one tell me how an (often) good poet like Haniel
Long can bring himself to allow to be printed such _stuff_ as he has
signed himself to in _The D.D._? As a matter of fact I am continually
being more and more horrified at what names we had always been
accustomed to hoping rather much of,--are rushing into print with, and
obviously out of the urgent need or desire of more money. _Shadowland_,
especially the August number with Babette Deutsch’s list of American
poets! Alas--what Fletcher wrote on the artist’s conscience in _The
Freeman_ (July 12th or so) makes me think a good deal. Living _is_ at
last becoming quite impossible, at least here,--when you get to Italy I
advise a permanent residence there for you. Later, perhaps I’ll come
over and join you. In time there may be only D. H. Lawrence, the
rainbow, and Capri left. I shall (with my millions acquired by that time
in flattering biographies of rich businessmen)--I shall rejuvenate the
baths and temple there of Tiberius and we shall live in state,--waited
on by the only fair and unsullied youths & maidens then procurable in
Europe. --/--/
73: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Cleveland, O._ _Aug. 9th ’21_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ My unemployment lingers. I learn a Scriabin
Prelude,--make a drawing,--stroke my black cat (a recent acquisition)
and read intermittently. Lately I had a good letter from Colum, who
likes my “Black Tambourine,” and yesterday a long letter from Matthew
Josephson, the first word for almost a year. He is up in Maine with Carl
Springhorn and Kenneth Burke in a kind of camp. (Also his wife.) They
both expect to sail for Italy six weeks from now, to stay two years or
more. I don’t know their proposed localities, but hope you will meet.
-- -- -- --
74: TO CHARMION WIEGAND
_Cleveland, Ohio_ _August 13, ’21_
Dear Charmion: --/--/ I am very glad to know that you have been keeping
up the writing,--whether prose, poetry, or drama doesn’t so much matter.
The point about it all is that it serves to keep you alert and alive
much more than any other activity I know of,--and especially anything as
warm as a “Byzantine drama of blood” sounds interesting. The historical
drama seems to me as legitimate as any other provided it has enough
organic life of its own and doesn’t depend merely on the fame, etc., of
the protagonists for effect. Have you read Stendhal’s _Chartreuse de
Parma_? So far as I know it has never been dramatized, and there is much
good material in it. I find Stendhal, incidentally, one of the few men
who wear deeper with familiarity. You probably have read his _Rouge et
Noir_. --/--/
75: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Cleveland, Ohio_ _Sept. 19th ’21_
My dear Gorham: --/--/ _The L. R._, I was informed on a card from j.h.
the other day, is recovering, will shortly re-appear as a quarterly
under Pound, Picabia, etc., 24 illustrations and 96 pgs! Mart Anderson
also recovering “sanity,” etc. -- -- -- -- I sold them [_The Dial_] the
poem you read just before leaving, “Pastorale”--which will come out
soon. I also sold one, “Persuasion,” to _The Measure_--and “Porphyro in
Akron” came out in the last _Double Dealer_ in first place.
The result of all this is that I am “sold out” and will have to rush
rhymes and rhythms together to supply my enthusiastic “public” as fast
as I can. But the family is all upset about my unemployment and money
_is_ needed. I am too uneasy to accomplish a thing, but hammer out a
translation of de Gourmont’s marginalia on Poe & Baudelaire for _The
D.D._ I have projects and a few lines started on poems,--but nothing
“comes through”--it is at times discouraging. I do not expect to hear
from Josephson again. He wrote me several letters full of brilliant
criticism and suggestions--but we do not exactly agree on theory and he
has become so complex--that the lack of sympathy my last letter offered
him will bring no response from [him] I’m quite sure--especially now
after an unusually long interstice. But this extremity of hair
splitting palls on one after awhile. A little is interesting--but goes a
long ways. He seems afraid to use any emotion in his poetry,--merely
observation and sensation,--and because I call such work apt to become
thin, he thinks me sloppy and stupid,--as no doubt I am. But after
all,--I recognize him as in many ways the most _acute_ critic of poetry
I know of--the only trouble is that he tries to force his theories into
the creative process,--and the result, to me, is too tame a thing.
--/--/
76: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Cleveland_ _Oct. 1, ’21_
Dear Gorham: My terrible hay fever days are over, and the fine autumn
weather that I like the best of the year has arrived to console me. My
mood is neither happy nor desperately sad. It will best be conveyed to
you by the quotation of a new poem, “Chaplinesque”--only started (if I
can help it) as yet: --/--/[15]
And I must tell you that my greatest dramatic treat since seeing Garden
in _The Love of Three Kings_ two winters ago, was recently enjoyed when
Charlie Chaplin’s _The Kid_ was shown here. Comedy, I may say, has never
reached a higher level in this country before. We have (I cannot be too
sure of this for my own satisfaction) in Chaplin a dramatic genius that
truly approaches the fabulous sort. I could write pages on the overtones
and brilliant subtleties of this picture, for which nobody but Chaplin
can be responsible, as he wrote it, directed it,--and I am quite sure
had much to do with the settings which are unusually fine. If you have
not already seen it in N. Y., it may now be in Paris. It was a year late
in arriving in Cleveland, I understand, on account of objections from
the state board of censors!!!! What they could have possibly objected
to, I cannot imagine. It must have been some superstition aroused
against good acting! But they will always release any sickening and
false melodrama of high life and sex, lost virginities, etc., at the
first glance. Well, I am thankful to get even what their paws have
mauled of the Chaplin and _Caligari_ sort. My poem is a sympathetic
attempt to put in words some of the Chaplin pantomime, so beautiful, and
so full of eloquence, and so modern.
--/--/ It will be time for me to raise my voice in praise of Anderson
soon, as his new book _The Triumph of the Egg_, and other stories, is on
the market. This also includes the serial “Out of Nowhere into Nothing,”
recently completed in _The Dial_. I would lay a bet on it that long
after Zona Gale, Lewis, etc., are forgotten, Sherwood will hold his own.
There are lots of things I want to read but haven’t the money to buy,
like Hecht’s first novel, a great success they say, _Erik Dorn_,
recently out. I wrote you how much I enjoyed Shaw’s _Back to
Methuselah_, a review of which I wrote for _The D.D._
I am taking a course in advertising two nights of every week until next
May which is very good and ought to help me get started. It has the
advantage, at any rate, of giving one a diploma which, I understand, has
a real value. I am now pretty sure of making advertising my real route
to bread and butter, and have a strong notion that as a copy writer I
will eventually make a “whiz.” --/--/
77: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Cleveland_, _Oct. 6th, ’21_
Dear Gorham: Here you are with the rest of the Chaplin poem. I know not
if you will like it,--but to me it has a real appeal. I have made that
“infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing” of Eliot’s into the
symbol of the kitten. I feel that, from my standpoint, the pantomime of
Charlie represents fairly well the futile gesture of the poet in U.S.A.
today, perhaps elsewhere too. And yet, the heart lives on....
Maybe this is because I myself feel so particularly futile just now that
I feel this pathos, (or is it bathos?). Je ne sais pas.
Yesterday I worked my first day foreman-ing three men on a distribution
job, and walked untold miles of city blocks. I am stiff,--but the
exercise did me much good. No work today,--perhaps tomorrow. At this
work the most I can hope to get before spring is $30.00 per week.
Yesterday brought me $2.50. Needless to say, I will look for something
better as soon as I can get hands on it.
A new light and friend of my friend, the Swiss-French painter, Willy
Lescaze, has arrived in town,--Jean Binet, teacher of Eurythmics in our
very alive Cleveland School of Music which Ernest Bloch heads. I am to
meet him tonight and with some anticipations, as I am told he is a
remarkable and inspired amateur pianist, playing Erik Satie, Ravel,
etc., to perfection. Lescaze has proved an inspiration to me. Knowing
intimately the work of Marcel Proust, Salmon, Gide, and a host of other
French moderns, he is able to see so much better than anyone else around
here, the aims I have in my own work. We have had great times discussing
the merits of mutual favorites like Joyce, Donne, Eliot, Pound, de
Gourmont, Gordon Craig, Nietzsche, etc., ad infinitum. After this it
goes without saying that I never found a more stimulating individual in
N. Y.
78: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT
_Cleveland, O._ _Oct. 17, 1921_
Dear William: I can come half way with you about Edna Millay,--but I
fear not much further. She really has genius in a limited sense, and is
much better than Sara Teasdale, Marguerite Wilkinson, Lady Speyer, etc.,
to mention a few drops in the bucket of feminine lushness that forms a
kind of milky way in the poetic firmament of the time (likewise all
times);--indeed I think she is every bit as good as Elizabeth Browning.
And here it will be probably evident that most of her most earnest
devotees could not ask for more. I can only say that I also do not
greatly care for Mme. Browning. And on top of my dislike for this lady,
Tennyson, Thompson, Chatterton, Byron, Moore, Milton, and several more,
I have the apparent brassiness to call myself a person of rather
catholic admirations. But you will also notice that I _do_ run joyfully
toward Messrs. Poe, Whitman, Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge,
John Donne!!!, John Webster!!!, Marlowe, Baudelaire, Laforgue, Dante,
Cavalcanti, Li Po, and a host of others. Oh I wish we had an evening to
talk over poetic creeds,--it is ridiculous to attempt it in a letter. I
can only apologize by saying that if my work seems needlessly
sophisticated it is because I am only interested in adding what seems to
me something really _new_ to what _has_ been written. Unless one has
some new, intensely personal viewpoint to record, say on the eternal
feelings of love, and the suitable personal idiom to employ in the act,
I say, why write about it? Nine chances out of ten, if you know where in
the past to look, you will find words already written in the
more-or-less exact tongue of your soul. And the complaint to be made
against nine out of ten poets is just this,--that you are apt to find
their sentiments much better expressed perhaps four hundred years past.
And it is not that Miss Millay fails entirely, but that I often am made
to hear too many echoes in her things, that I cannot like her as well as
you do. With her equipment Edna Millay is bound to succeed to the
appreciative applause of a fairly large audience. And for you, who I
rather suppose have not gone into this branch of literature with as much
enthusiasm as myself, she is a creditable heroine.
I admit to a slight leaning toward the esoteric, and am perhaps not to
be taken seriously. I am fond of things of great fragility, and also and
especially of the kind of poetry John Donne represents, a dark musky,
brooding, speculative vintage, at once sensual and spiritual, and
singing rather the beauty of experience than innocence.
As you did not “get” my idiom in “Chaplinesque,” I feel rather like
doing my best to explain myself. I am moved to put Chaplin with the
poets (of today); hence the “we.” In other words, he, especially in _The
Kid_, made me feel myself, as a poet, as being “in the same boat” with
him. Poetry, the human feelings, “the kitten,” is so crowded out of the
humdrum, rushing, mechanical scramble of today that the man who would
preserve them must duck and camouflage for dear life to keep them or
keep himself from annihilation. I have since learned that I am by no
means alone in seeing these things in the buffooneries of the tragedian,
Chaplin, (if you want to read the opinions of the London and Paris
presses, see _Literary Digest_, Oct. 8th) and in the poem I have tried
to express these “social sympathies” in words corresponding somewhat to
the antics of the actor. I may have failed, as only a small number of
those I have shown it to have responded with any clear answer,--but on
the other hand, I realize that the audience for my work will always be
quite small. I freely admit to a liking for the thing, myself,--in fact
I have to like something of my own once in a while being so hard to
please anyway.
The job I mentioned lasted just one day. I took the men out and carried
the thing through to success, sore feet, and numb limbses,--but,--there
was no work to be done next day, nor the next,--and I got tired of
trailing around hoping for only $2.50 for a fortune, and don’t care
whether there is little or much awaiting me there now, having hit the
employment trail again toward other fields. When I once get pastured
again, I’ll praise even Edna Millay--may even buy her _Second April_ (if
it is in Season) and not bore you so much with long diatribes on Poetry.
Just now, though, that is all I have. Can’t even buy the books I long to
read, like _Three Soldiers_, _Erik Dorn_, and the new _Little Review_
(Quarterly--AND $2.00). Write me soon and cheer me up. Just for fun,
look up the poems of Donne in the Library and read some of the short
lyrics like “The Apparition,” “A Jet Ring Sent,” “The Prohibition,” “The
Ecstasy,” and some of the longer things like “The Progress of the Soul,”
etc., if you feel intrigued.
79: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Cleveland_ _Nov. 1st, ’21_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ Yes,--I much wish I could share your
horizons,--instead of retracing day after day a few familiar circles of
routine & thought. Keep on writing me your bright kindly letters. They
are a lantern of hope and a warmth to the heart. I sometimes wonder if,
without you, I should have kept writing so long.
Just read _Erik Dorn_ and am shy a little of criticizing it. Undoubtedly
it is a fine piece of work,--and an odd addition to Am. literature.
Almost European in viewpoint. I cannot, though, yet make sure whether
Hecht has his tongue in his cheek part of the time or not. Hecht is a
virtuoso, and arouses suspicions that one would never feel for Dreiser
or Anderson. One sees an influence of Joyce in the book,--diluted or
“rationalized” just enough to be more pleasing to the public taste. Carl
Sandburg and Anderson are given parts in the scenery in an interesting
way. --/--/
80: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Nov. 3_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ You are very much right about the poems. I can’t
blame you for not seeing as much in “Chaplinesque” as myself because I
realize that the technique of the thing is virtuosic and open to all
kinds of misinterpretations. Maybe, though, since you have seen _The
Kid_ which “inspired” it, you have got nearer to my meaning. For me, it
holds double the interest of “Pastorale” which is more perfectly done,
but to me, not so rich. Chaplin may be a sentimentalist, after all, but
he carries the theme with such power and universal portent that
sentimentality is made to transcend itself into a new kind of tragedy,
eccentric, homely and yet brilliant. It is because I feel that I have
captured the arrested climaxes and evasive victories of his gestures in
words, somehow, that I like the poem as much as anything I have done.
But we will see. My mind changes sometimes sooner than I plan. I was
much surprised that Sherwood Anderson should like it, who is not prone
to care for complicated expressions. He was, further, more or less in
agreement with you about the sea poem.[16] --/--/
Further time and thought on _Erik Dorn_ lessen my opinion of it. It
hangs somewhere between the prose symphonies of Huysmans and the poetic
symphonies of Aiken. Impressionistic. However, there is little
character. As long as we have _Ulysses_ and _Tarr_ to praise we need not
spend too much breath on it, recognizing it, nevertheless, as a hopeful
sign, not much more. One misses any actual sincerity,--and somehow the
issue or accusation of meretriciousness creeps in. It brings back to me
something about Hecht that Saphier once told me:--“A brilliant fellow,”
he said. “He can sit down to a typewriter and reel off that stuff by the
yard. Has three or four of them (short stories) on hand at once.” This
was apropos of the really fine little things of his that were appearing
in _The L.R._ then. In fact I am moved into sympathy with Seldes’ review
of it in the Oct. _Dial_ which you will have read by this time. --/--/
Tonight I attend the weekly “salon” that Lescaze gives to his friends.
There will be banter and chatter enough to be tiresome. Somehow, when
there are women present (the kind one has around here) no conversation
can be had uninterrupted by little compliments, concessions to them,
etc. They insist upon being the center of attention irrespective of
their ability to take part in any argument. Consequently there are
interminable innuendoes and clucking and puffings that never terminate
anywhere. One of the few women who would carefully avoid this kind of
thing is Margaret Anderson. Hommage to Margaret!!
The Dada dramas are tres amusant,--but--well--alright56789--*!!
81: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Cleveland_, _Nov. 21st._
Your letter about the _Gargoyle_ plan has just come and as I haven’t
written you for some time, I’m giving some kind of answer, however
unworthy. These enclosed poems you are welcome to use if you care to.
-- -- -- -- _The L. R._ has it [“Chaplinesque”] in hand now, but I shall
probably not hear from them about it for months and should they decide
to take it,--I cannot see that its publication in France should
complicate matters any. The same applies to “Black Tambourine” which
came out misprinted in _The D.D._ last July. I would like to see it
printed right sometime and it occurs to me that this may be an
opportunity. I am doing nothing new worth while, so I can’t send you
anything else. If you get the names your letter mentions together as
contributors you will have something worth while. Burke’s contribution
to the new _L.R._ quarterly just out is about the only good thing in it.
I don’t need to go on about it, as you have probably seen it in Paris by
this time. About the only thing to be gathered from Pound’s article on
Brancusi is that Pound wishes to avoid being obvious at the cost of no
matter what else. For myself--I [have] just finished a week’s trial at
selling real estate--of which, of course, I didn’t sell any. Trying now
to get into a bookstore to help out during the Christmas rush.
There is nothing but gall and disgust in me,--and there is nothing more
for me to tell you but familiar, all-too-familiar complaints. I wish I
could cultivate a more graceful mask against all this. --/--/
82: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Cleveland_ _Nov. 26th, ’21_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ I’ve been having a wonderful time diving into Ben
Jonson, so you see I haven’t been so far off, after all. After one has
read _Bartholomew Fair_ it isn’t so hard to see where Synge got his
start,--a start toward a husky folk-element in the drama. I can see
myself from now rapidly joining Josephson in a kind of Elizabethan
fanaticism. You have doubtless known my long-standing friendship with
Donne, Webster, and Marlowe. Now I have another Mermaid “conjugal” to
strengthen the tie. The fact is, I can find nothing in modern work to
come up to the verbal richness, irony and emotion of these folks, and I
would like to let them influence me as much as they can in the
interpretation of modern moods,--somewhat as Eliot has so beautifully
done. There are parts of his “Gerontion” that you can find almost bodily
in Webster and Jonson. Certain Elizabethans and Laforgue have played a
tremendous part in Eliot’s work, and you catch hints of his great study
of these writers in his _Sacred Grove_. I don’t want to imitate Eliot,
of course,--but I have come to the stage now where I want to carefully
choose my most congenial influences and, in a way, “cultivate” their
influence. I can say with J[osephson] that the problem of form becomes
harder and harder for me every day. I am not at all satisfied with
anything I have thus far done, mere shadowings, and too slight to
satisfy me. I have never, so far, been able to present a vital, living
and tangible,--a positive emotion to my satisfaction. For as soon as I
attempt such an act I either grow obvious or ordinary, and abandon the
thing at the second line. Oh! it is hard! One must be drenched in words,
literally soaked with them to have the right ones form themselves into
the proper pattern at the right moment. When they come, as they did in
“Pastorale” (thin, but rather good), they come as things in themselves;
it is a matter of felicitous juggling!; and no amount of will or emotion
can help the thing a bit. So you see I believe with Sommer that the
“Ding an Sich” method is ultimately the only satisfactory creative
principle to follow. But I also find that J[osephson] stirred up a
hornet’s nest in me this summer with his words about getting away from
current formulae, from Heine to Wallace Stevens, by experimentation in
original models, etc., and my reaction to this stimulation is to work
away from the current impressionism as much as possible. I mean such
“impressionism” as the Cocteau poem (trans.) in _The Little Review_,
which you have probably seen. Dada (maybe I am wrong, but you will
correct me) is nothing more to me than the dying agonies of this
movement, maladie moderne. I may be even carried back into “rime and
rhythm” before I get through, provided I can carry these encumbrances as
deftly and un-selfconsciously as, say, Edward Thomas sometimes did. I
grow to like my “Black Tambourine” more, for this reason, than before.
It becomes to my mind a kind of diminutive model of ambition, simply
pointing a direction. S’much for this endless tirade, but write as usual
and keep me cheered and momentarily thrilled.
Maybe J[osephson] has already started on his novel, burlesquing the
Americans in the Quartier, that he intended. Tell him to send me some
poetry, anything he is writing. It’s sure to be better than anything the
magazines offer here.
83: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Cleveland_ _December the tenth_
Dear Gorham: Your letter in French (which innovation I like) reached me
yesterday, a welcome evening stimulant after the day’s work. For I am,
in a way, very glad to announce that I’ve been busy for the last two
weeks at selling books in a store here during the seasonal “rush.” This
is, in all probability, entirely a temporary tent for me,--but it has
enabled me, though intensely occupied, to get free of the money complex
that had simply reduced me to ashes. This item added to a total lack of
any sex life for a long period had left me so empty that I gave up
insulting you with a mere heap of stones for a letter, and though I
haven’t more to offer you now, I have sufficient interest again in the
activity of writing to make my meagreness seem less obvious. Erotic
experience is stumbled upon occasionally by accident, and the other
evening I was quite nicely entertained, in _my_ usual way, of course.
And thus the spell is broken! I can’t help remarking also that this
“breaker of the spell” is one very familiar with your present haunts,
“La Rotonde,” etc., etc., only of a few years back. You see, then, that
one may enjoy a few Parisian sophistications even in Cleveland!
The _Ulysses_ situation is terrible to think on. I shall be eternally
grateful to you if you can manage to smuggle my already-subscribed-for
copy home with you. If this will in any chance be possible, please let
me send you the cash for purchase, etc., at the proper time. I _must_
have this book!
De Gourmont’s _Une Coeur Virginal_ has just been published here, (trans.
by Aldous Huxley), and I have snatched it up against its imminent
suppression along with _Jurgen_ and other masterpieces. If this is a
fair sample of its author, and it’s supposed to be, I cannot see how his
_Physique d’Amour_, translated by Pound and to be published by Boni &
Liveright, will ever get beyond the printers’ hands. Yet how mellow and
kindly is the light from de Gourmont! One hates to see him on the tables
with Zane Grey and Rex Beach. Maybe, after all (and since I have
procured my volume), it will not be so heart-rending to see the
destruction of the jealous Puritan at work again. Two weeks of
book-service to the “demands of the public” in a store have bred curious
changes of attitude toward the value of popularity (of the slightest
sort) in my mind. The curious “unread” that slumber lengthily on the
shelves, and whose names are never called, are much nearer my envy than
I had once thought they might be from the mere standpoint of neglect.
This pawing over of gift-book classics in tooled leather bindings, etc.,
etc., is a sight to never forget. Poor dear Emerson must slumber badly.
Aristocratic is Whitman, though--no one ever calls for that “democrat”
any more than for Landor or Donne. And Edgar Guest and Service, death
heads both, are rampant.
Of course you have heard of Anderson’s winning of _The Dial_ prize. I
was quite certain of it anyway, but intensely gratified at the fact now
he has. He will probably go to Mexico now as money was all he needed. He
wrote me an answer recently to my criticism of _Erik Dorn_, praising
parts of it much and damning others. The book still puzzles me, which
makes me dislike it a little more than ever. As a whole it is deficient,
but I have always admitted certain parts good. But when one compares it
with such a book as Anderson’s _Triumph of the Egg_, it fades out
terribly. This latter is an anthology of recent short stories of
Anderson and re-reading them together I get the most violent reaction.
He has written of ghastly desolations which are only too evident in my
own experience and on every hand. I am more enthusiastic than ever in my
praise for him although I feel in an odd way, that he has, like a diver,
touched bottom in a certain sense, and that his future work must
manifest certain changes of a more positive character than the bare
statement of reality, or conclude his promise. --/--/
84: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Dec. 25th, ’21_
Dear Gorham: Your letter arriving a few days ago, of the 5th, and the
note of the seventh announcing my presence on the boulevards (in
Chaplinesque attire) have provided me with rich materials for a kind of
Christmas tree, at least as thrilling as any of remotest childhood
memories. Names and presences glitter and fascinate with all kinds of
exotic suggestions on the branches. I can be grateful to you for the
best of Christmas donations, as I can thank you for the main part of my
mental and imaginative sustenance of the last six months, weary and
tormented as they have been. And now things seem, at least, to look a
little better for me. I have been asked to remain on for a brief period
in the capacity of book-clerk, and there is a possibility in sight of my
gaining a very promising position soon in a very high-class advertising
house here that has the attraction of the best connections with the
largest agencies in New York and elsewhere. At least my interview with
the “authorities” there today proved favorable to me, and if I can only
manage to write them the proper kind of letter and “sell myself” as they
ridiculously put it, I may secure myself something profitable.
Leastwise, however, I have paid off an obligation that worried me and
had a little change to spend during the last few weeks which has worked
unbelievable miracles on my spirit. My work has been so hectic during
the last month that I have not had time to write you, much less poems,
but I have a feeling that now that the rush is over and the New Year
started, I shall again do something. You see I am promising again.
You cannot imagine how interesting to me have been your opinions of the
personalities you have come in contact with. Your opportunities in this
direction have far exceeded my happiest anticipations for you. It
strikes me that you have met about all the personalities in the younger
left-wing at all worth while. --/--/
It has been very gratifying, also, to hear of your amiable progress with
Josephson. His “tightening and hardening” effect on one is exactly the
compliment I owe to him. In a way he is cold as ice, having a most
astonishing faculty for depersonization,--and on the other hand, you
have no doubt found a certain affectionate propensity in his nature that
is doubly pleasant against the rather frigidly intellectual relief of
the rest of him. He likes you much, and wrote me so, also sending me
some poems to submit to _The D.D._ which I cannot fancy as having a
ghost of a show in such an uneven corner. But he needs money, and I
shall be glad to do anything in my power to help him along,--not
worrying, however, very, very much, as he has a flexibility and
resourcefulness that I envy.
--/--/ If I were only in N.Y. I would see to it that S[ommer]’s work
were given its due,--but that time will have to wait. Meanwhile he shows
not the slightest inclination to wilt. As I said, his achievements
present one gorgeous surprise after another. A mutual friend of ours
here recently died, a Nietzschean and thorough appreciator of all the
best, who has pursued his lonely way in America since the age of fifteen
when he left his family in Norway on account of religious differences.
Bill and I were among the pallbearers at this funeral, where there were
only a few others present, although all appreciative of what the man
was. I can’t go into detail, but the affair was tremendous, especially
the finale at the crematorium. It was beautiful, but left me emotionally
bankrupt last Sunday, the day following. That funeral was one of the few
beautiful things that have happened to me in Cleveland.
Now for a brief résumé of American literature. It is, in a way,
hopefully significant that Anderson’s _Winesburg_ has been issued by
Boni and Liveright in their Modern Library with a very fine introduction
by Ernest Boyd which gives much praise to _The L. R._ for having had the
acumen to introduce Anderson to the world. --/--/
_The Dial_ for December has a fine article in it on American painting by
Rosenfeld, singling out Hartley for extra and very intelligent praise.
It also includes a fairly good poem by Malcolm Cowley, a rather
disappointing article on Flaubert by Middleton Murry, and an atrocious
piece of dull nonsense by Bodenheim. The new _Shadowland_ is [as] far
from thrilling as those tepid baths it did offer last summer, and the
_Ladies Home Journal_ and the _Atlantic_ are as bouncing as ever.
This is all for tonight. We have a houseful of indiscriminate relatives
and it has been hard to collect myself for even this potpourri, but I
have more to say when I can get to it. I need time (a natural
requirement with me for all writing or thought) to sit Buddha-like for a
couple of hours every day and let things sift themselves into some
semblance of order in my brain. But I haven’t had the opportunity for
such operations for weeks, and may never,--until which time I pray you
to be contented as you can by such thrusts in haste as this letter.
Your figure haunts me like a kind of affectionate caress through all
sorts of difficulties. You are always my final and satisfactory “court
of appeal,” and it is useless to attempt to tell you how much this means
to me. So believe me when I tell you that I love you, and plan and plan
for the glorious day when we shall get knees under the table and talk,
and talk, and talk. The inefficacy of my letters to you always troubles
me.
1922
85: TO SHERWOOD ANDERSON
_Cleveland_ _Jan. 10th_
Dear Anderson: Waiting on shoppers in a book store during the holiday
hurricane deferred my answer to your letter. I was glad to get any kind
of work, however, after my empty-pocketed summer and fall. Now I am
working as a copy-writer for the Corday and Gross Co. here which you may
have heard of. I like this better than any bread-and-butter work I’ve
ever done. You were right about the real estate job. Ogling poor people
for small investments against their will didn’t appeal to me very long.
I had given it up before you wrote.
If I can satisfy the requirements of my position here, I shall feel a
little hope returning for the satisfaction of a few aims again. I mean,
of course, to turn out a little verse or prose this winter. When out of
work I am not able to rid myself of worries enough to accomplish
anything. Some pecuniary assurances seem necessary to me to any opening
of the creative channels. Now things begin to look a little better for
me.
I saw your story “The Contract” in the last _Broom_, and would like to
offer a criticism. It may be an infraction, but if it is I want to ask
your forgiveness. This story in some ways strikes me as inferior to the
intensity and beauty of your other recent work, and I have an idea that
it is something you wrote quite a while ago. Coming from anyone else, I
would think, “This is good; but this fellow is trying to imitate
Anderson and can’t quite do it.”
I wouldn’t attempt any suggestions nor try to point out any places. Your
work is always too much a composite whole for that critical sort of
prodding to yield anything. I only felt this story as somehow an
anti-climax to the amazing sense of beauty I recently got in re-reading
the short stories you have done during the last few years that are
collected together in the _Egg_ volume. Please pardon me for this
doubtless unnecessary comment. It is only in the light of my own desires
and feeling in such circumstances that I have ventured it.
In my own work I find the problem of style and form becoming more and
more difficult as time goes on. I imagine that I am interested in this
style of writing much more than you are. Perhaps, though, we include the
same features under different terms. In verse this feature can become a
preoccupation, to be enjoyed for its own sake. I do not think you will
sympathize with me very strongly on this point, but, of course, if you
got as much pleasure out of finding instances of it in other writers as
I do, you would see what I mean. For instance, when I come to such a
line as the following from John Donne,--I am thrilled -- -- -- -- [“Of the
Progresse of the Soule, The Second Anniversary,” ll. 296-98]. Or take
another, called “The Expiration”: --/--/ [ll. 1-12]. What I want to get
is just what is so beautifully done in this poem,--an “interior” form, a
form that is so thorough and intense as to dye the words themselves with
a peculiarity of meaning, slightly different maybe from the ordinary
definition of them separate from the poem. If you remember my “Black
Tambourine” you will perhaps agree with me that I have at least
accomplished this idea once. My aims make writing slow for me, and so
far I have done practically nothing,--but I can wait for slow
improvements rather more easily than I can let a lot of stuff loose that
doesn’t satisfy me. There is plenty of that in the publishing houses and
magazines every day to amuse the folks that like it. This may very well
be a tiresome ranting for you, but I think you will like the quotation
anyway.
What are you going to do this winter: go to Mexico as you had thought
of? I was all ready to scrape around for money enough to start for
Europe when this job came along, and I thought I had better take it. Two
friends of mine, however, have been in Paris for some time, writing me
letters that made me foam at my moorings, and the desire to break loose
has been strong.
If you aren’t too busy write me. A friend of mine, Lescaze, was in N. Y.
over Christmas and says he had a very pleasant talk with you one evening
at Paul Rosenfeld’s.
86: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Jan. 23rd, ’22_
Dear Gorham: I come to my first evening, free and alone, in some time,
and recognize quite plainly that I have neglected you. There are so many
rather interesting people around this winter that there is always
something or other doing. A concert to go to, a soirée,--and then since
I have been writing ads a certain amount of hangover work to be done
evenings sometimes,--that altogether I don’t like it. But I like my work
and am wonderfully treated at the office. Never guessed a commercial
institution could be organized on such a decent basis. And they actually
will come of their own accord and tell you that they are pleased with
the work you are doing for them!!!!!!!!!! I pass my goggle-eyed father
on the streets now without a tremor! I go on mad carouses with Bill
Sommer wherein we begin with pigs’ feet and sauerkraut and end with
Debussy’s “Gradus ad Parnassum” in the “ivory tower.” Around Ernest
Bloch at the Institute of Music here are gathered some interesting folks
from all over everywhere. There is even a French restaurant here where
the proprietress stands at the cashier’s desk reading _La Nouvelle Revue
Francaise_ and where wonderful steaks with mushrooms are served--alas,
everything, including real garçons, except vin. The place looks like a
sentence without any punctuation, or, if you prefer, this letter.
And now, mon cher, willy-nilly as it all may be, we come to your
magazine. I don’t want to hurt you at all, but I must confess to little
or no enthusiasm at the prospect of another small magazine, full of
compressed dynamite as yours might well be. Unless one has half a
million or so, what’s the use of adding to the other little
repercussions that dwindle out after a few issues!? Don’t waste your
time with it all, is my advice. Much better sit down and pound on your
typewriter, or go toting mss. around to stolid editors. Listen,--there
is now _some_ kind of magazine that will print one’s work however bad or
good it is. The “arty” book stores bulge and sob with them all. I pray
you invest your hard-earned money in neckties, theatre tickets or
something else good for the belly or the soul,--but don’t throw it away
in paper and inefficient typography. Don’t come home three months sooner
for the prospects of that rainbow.
No one will especially appreciate it -- -- -- --. By all this you must not
think that I have joined the Right Wing to such an extent that I am
rollicking in F. Scott Fitzgerald. No,--but by the straight and narrow
path swinging to the south of the village DADA I have arrived at a
somewhat and abashed posture of reverence before the statues of Ben
Jonson, Michael Drayton, Chaucer, sundry others already mentioned. The
precious rages of dear Matty [Josephson] somehow don’t seem to swerve me
from this position. He is, it strikes me, altogether unsteady. Of
course, since Mallarmé and Huysmans were elegant weepers it is up to the
following generation to haw-haw gloriously! Even dear old Buddha-face de
Gourmont is passé. Well, I suppose it is up to one in Paris to do as the
Romans do, but it all looks too easy to me from Cleveland, Cuyhoga
County, God’s country. But Matty will always glitter when he walks
provided the man in front of him has not sparkled,--which we hope he
never does, of course,--and so I am happy to hear from him always about
his latest change of mind. Quite seriously Matty is thrilling, in prose
especially. His performance is always agreeable despite my inability to
sympathize with his theories. Paris seems to be a good place for him to
work and I suppose he will stay there at least until his contes are
published. --/--/
87: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT
_Cleveland, O._ _February 11, 1922_
Dear Bill: Don’t let me keep on worrying. Your visit was a great
pleasure to me, resulting in the renewal of old contacts and the
discoveries of many new ones. I am so much interested in you now, that I
am in danger of pestering you with all kinds of advice and admonitions.
One of these is: not to let the caprices of any unmellow ladies result
in your unbalance or extreme discomfiture. Even the best of them, at
times, know not and care not what they do. They have the faculty of
producing very debilitating and thoroughly unprofitable effects on
gentlemen who put themselves too much in their hands. Woman was not
meant to occupy this position. It was only the Roman Catholic Church who
gave it to her. Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians knew better how to handle
her. I suggest your reading De Gourmont’s _Virgin Heart_ for a delicate
dissection of this kind of problem. De Gourmont was something more than
a purely “literary critic,” you know. He was one of the most thorough
students of physiology and psychology of the modern world. He was an
adept scientist of the emotions. Stendhal was another, but less clear.
All this suffering is quite romantic and beautiful, you know, but you
pay a stupid price for it. I can’t help saying these things because of
my interest and because I saw you go away in ominous style. I hope you
haven’t been ill, and that you have merely forgotten to write me.
I have been through two or three of these cataclysms myself, harder than
yours because of their unusual and unsympathetic situations. Maybe I
have gained something by them, I don’t know,--but it is certain that I
lost a great deal too.
88: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland?_] _Feb. 25th --’22_
Dear Gorham: Arrived yesterday the new _Gargoyle_. Altogether not such a
poor issue as Matty predicted in one of his letters of last month. Your
translations amuse me without interesting me as thoroughly as your
nicely administered spanking of McAlmon. Maybe your translations (or
rather selections) would excite me somewhat if I weren’t somehow so
hopelessly tired of Art and theories about Art lately. I can’t quite
account for it--never having suffered from indigestion like this before.
It is, after all, I suppose, because I have nothing of my own to “give,”
and therefore feel so little at stake in all the deluge of production
and argument that I grow either bewildered or else indifferent. I am
going through a difficult readjustment right now, besides meeting a
period in my so-called “creative life” where neither my conscious self
nor my unconscious self can get enough “co-operation” from the other to
do anything worth while. I wrote something recently which I thought, on
the moment, was good. Today I have faced it as a hopeless failure,
disjointed and ugly and vain. I am only momentarily depressed by these
facts, however, as I am kept so busy with my ad writing that I haven’t
time to think much about it. --/--/
89: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT
_Jamestown, New York_ _March 2, 1922_
Dear Bill: This is my second excursion to this place, no doubt somewhat
familiar to you,--having been here part of last week. It’s a matter of
business for the Co. (“investigation of the product,” in ad. lingo) and
I rather enjoy getting out of Cleveland for a day or so. I’ve been
getting out a catalog for the Art Metal folks here and puzzling my head
over blue prints and figures until I have become somewhat dull. --/--/
By this time I suppose you are back again and full tilt in your
customary carousels. I was glad to know that the trouble with you was
only “physiological.” By this time you have probably read some of De
Gourmont’s observations on that sort of thing, and, wise man!, were
fully experienced to appreciate them. What an awful lot of novel forms
there are! The novel is the most flexible literary form there is. It
permits the freest and completest expression. Have you read Louis
Hemon’s _Maria Chapdelaine_ yet? The young French emigrant who wrote it
died shortly afterward, but for what it intends it is one of the most
finished things one could hope for. Human emotion in it is like delicate
pastel tinted flowers on a background of midnight black. The black
terrific power of the forest and winter threatens continually behind
every word in the action. But I am nowhere near so enthused about this
book as I am about Gogol’s _Taras Bulba_ that I read on the train
recently. I think someone has called it the Russian _Iliad_. It is
certainly not secondary to _The Iliad_ in many ways. That sting and tang
of those Cossack adventures are something I won’t forget, and the hero,
old Taras, is altogether memorable. This is something you _must_ read.
I don’t want to go any further without thanking you for your “Ballade.”
I find so much that is good in it that I am tempted beyond the proper
respect for your very dégagé gesture of presentation in your letter, and
want to risk the impropriety of some criticism of it. The main faults of
it are faults inherent with the form you used. I do not, as you know,
insist by any means on vers libre forms. But it is just when I see such
a thing as your ballade with the (unavoidable) tiresome repetitions of
sound or rhyme, that I am most moved to applaud even the slouchy vers
libre work that seems to “get over” its meaning or lack of meaning at
least without that mechanical insistence of certain formal patterns that
can sometimes infuriate me. For instance, after “sweet, feet, deceit,
conceit, and fleet” have all successively pecked at the ear, along comes
“discreet retreat”!!, giving the whole poem at the point a tone of the
neatest mean-ness. And that sort of tone is exactly what you do not
want,--at least not along with some of your quite exquisite imagery that
speaks in largeness of a full heart.
The first verse, the first four lines especially, is fine, and the idea
behind that “discreet retreat behind sophistications of bread and meat”
is good. It would be improved by using another and richer word than
“sophistications” just to _improve_ the sophistication a little,
however. I feel this way,--that however you wrote this poem,--in jest,
literary exercise, or emotionally,--it proves distinct poetic
possibilities in you, which, whether you care to follow or not, are
still there. Why don’t you work this poem into an easier form or perhaps
into a vers libre form? I could do it to show you what I mean, but that
would take all the fun out of it for you. Forms as strict as the
ballade, can, in my opinion, be used satisfactorily for only very
artificial subjects, or abstract themes.
I’ve been doing something myself, but don’t feel satisfied enough with
it yet to send it.
90: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _March 2, ’22_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ Just now, I apologize for it, I am so much worried
by family finances that it’s hard for me to do anything more than my
work. My mother’s alimony has reached its limited time and she is
preparing (at 45 yrs. of age!) to go out into the world to learn to make
her living!
I, naturally, shall henceforward be called upon not only to “keep”
myself, but to lend as much of a helping hand as is possible in this
predicament. So, it’s hard work for some time ahead for me, I guess. My
present wages just suffice for my own limited requirements. My pater is
too much of a cad to really do anything for his former wife except what
the agreement between them says. The fact that this was made when she
was partially out of mind and very ill, makes no difference to him.
However, I shall not resign myself to the proverbial and sentimental
fate of the “might-have-been” artist without a few more strenuosities. I
will have to expect a certain tardiness of gait, however.
I have just read Aldous Huxley’s latest, _Crome Yellow_, one of those
things that evokes much quiet laughter and holds delightful savours, at
least for a contemporary, between its covers. -- -- -- --
As no good plays ever get to Cleveland, and the Chicago opera not at all
this year, my outside entertainment has been meagre. Only a symphony
concert every other week, and little new there.
Ernest Bloch, however, conducted two weeks ago his _Trois Poèmes Juifs_
which were magnificent enough for Solomon to have marched & sung to. I
occasionally pass him on the streets or in the aisles of the auditorium,
and realize that genius, after all, may walk in Cleveland. -- -- -- --
91: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _March 24th_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ You know I shall talk it [_Secession_] up,--but the
worst is that most of my acquaintances are totally unfitted for
enthusiasms of this sort. The indifference you will encounter when you
return to these States you must be prepared to face. Every one is
suddenly and enormously _busy_--making money, attending teas, motoring,
starving--God knows what all. It makes me reel! Life is too scattered
for me to savor it any more. Probably this is only on account of my
present work which demands the most frequent jerks of the imagination
from one thing to another, still--the war certainly has changed things a
bit here. The question in my mind is, how much less vertigo are we going
to suffer in the latter whirl than we did in the first blows and
commotion. If I am drifting into nonsense, it must be because I’m
getting no time lately for anything but work.
If you come home in May--one of the first things you must do is to make
me a good visit. You will be free to come, whereas there is a
considerable doubt now about my coming east at all this summer. Here in
my tower-study, rimmed with Sommer paintings and grey cracked paper, you
will have a good chance to focus your recent observations -- -- -- --.
Besides,--you have never seen any of the midwest, and it ought to be
part of your education. --/--/
92: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _March 29th, ’22_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ With the banal arrival of spring and weeks of rain
and cloudy skies, I have again fallen in love! I guess I might about as
well take up quarters at La Rotonde--and be done with it. However,
_something_ must be indulged in to make Cleveland interesting.
93: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT
_Cleveland, O._ _April 2nd_
Dear Bill: Your prose is much better than your verse. I don’t know how
to explain--perhaps if I saw more of your poetry I might,--but certainly
the story you recently sent me makes me quite certain of it. The poem
has the tepid and pubescent steam in it that always seems to issue from
the environs of a college campus. It is college adolescence in only a
slight advance from the ordinary. It has enough in it to “get by” on the
first reading with a rather pleasing effect. But the second discovers
much to be criticized. It’s not in the technique but in the attitude
that I blame you for this. You have a real flair for phrasing, and two
years ago I should have probably praised you for the poem.
But now let’s turn to the story. It is vital and well told. Nobody can
imitate Anderson, of course, but that is not what we want anyway. Your
story stands on its own feet quite well. In some places it is too
accented. I say this in spite of my realization of the intent of it and
also via recommending the very effective literary device of
under-accentuation in just the right place to produce “overtones” of
overwhelming effect. Then you could afford to be more sparing of
adjectives! But I won’t rail any further! You certainly are displaying
evidence and promises of a hopeful career. If you don’t get too
engrossed in commerce after you leave college the break will do you
good, I think. No matter how “free” one may be in college, the campus
world with its idols and codes is very different from the world outside.
Don’t think, please, that I’m decrying education, it’s only a mention
that things are somehow harder and a little “scarey.” “Practical people”
suddenly surround one, and they have such an insistence about being
listened to. --/--/
The more speed I develop in ad-writing the more occasion I’m given to
use it, and I seem to need to keep in touch with so many people that the
hours spent at home are too few. This hankering for continual
conversational excitement is one of my weaknesses. What I _should_ be
doing is working. Truly, on this gay Sunday afternoon, my conscience is
weighted.
94: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _April 19th --’22_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ The two copies of _Secession_ reached me yesterday.
Of course they were immediately and doubly devoured. But right here I
ought to stop--I have so many things to say about it. --/--/
I find I have many, at least several disagreements with you. I can’t say
nearly so much for Matty’s poem as you do--I mean the Café phallicus.
The Tzara poem is perfectly flat. The Cowley poem is encouraging,
although dreadfully alike something he had published in one of the last
_L.R’s_. The Aragon prose is, in its odd way, a quite beautiful thing.
But what has happened to Matty!?! And,--just _why_ is Apollinaire so
portentous a god? Will radios, flying machines, and cinemas have such a
great effect on poetry in the end? All this talk of Matty’s is quite
stimulating, but it’s like coffee--twenty-four hours afterward not much
remains to work with. It is metallic and pointillistic--not derogatory
terms to my mind at all, but somehow thin,--a little too slender and
“smart”--after all.
O Matty must be amusing himself perfectly in Paris. And so he took you
to be a real, honest-to-God disreputable and commercial editor! Serve
you right, you bad boy, following the primrose path of the magazines!
--/--/
95: TO CHARMION WIEGAND
_Cleveland, Ohio_ _May 6th, ’22_
Dear Charmion: --/--/ You must put me in direct touch with Emil Reeck,
however, as soon as possible. I have just written Anderson all about the
plan, and shall rush the answer to you as soon as possible. But letters
take such a dreadfully long time to get back and forth and you say you
are leaving Berlin just about a month from now!! I somehow feel as
though I were rushing to catch a train!
I very much agree with you that Germany would be really appreciative of
Anderson, and they ought to have him. However, as Huebsch, Anderson’s
publisher, is himself a German and very much in touch with Berlin, I
suspect that already translation arrangements may have been started.
Anderson is having a great enough vogue here at present to turn the head
of anyone but a pessimist like Anderson. He is, I understand, very much
made of by _The Nouvelle Revue Francaise_ Group (headed by Jacques
Copeau) and has been translated into French. His trip to Europe last
summer put him in direct touch with all the younger crowd in France.
However, we’ll see about Germany. There is still a chance.
Did I tell you that our friend, Gorham Munson, has been in Europe all
this time? He is the one we went with to that meeting against
prohibition, restricted speech, or something at some church on Central
Park W. one night. Gilbert Cannan spoke, etc. Munson has been quite a
bit in Berlin, and from Vienna has started a new literary magazine of
his own, _Secession_, which is (first number) just seeping into this
country. Munson must have just arrived in New York again, is due to
anyway. He expects to print his magazine in Vienna right along as he can
get it done there so much cheaper. His magazine is filled with quite
ultra things by EE Cummings, Marianne Moore, Slater Brown, Matthew
Josephson, Malcolm Cowley, etc., all of whom were with him in Paris last
fall and winter when the inception of the magazine took place. I am
sceptical about all such dear, darling and courageous and brief
attempts, but shall do my best to make his magazine a success, despite
my literary and philosophical differences with him in this project.
--/--/
Thinking it might interest Chaplin to read the poem I wrote about him, I
sent it to him,--and with the result that today I’ve received a most
delightful acknowledgment of the same.... You know I worship Chaplin’s
work. Think he is the greatest living actor I’ve seen, and the prime
interpreter of the soul imposed upon by modern civilization. --/--/
You asked about French books. I have not been reading much modern work,
but I am in touch with a good deal of it through a French-Swiss painter
friend of mine here who has modern tastes and is in touch with Europe
and the best of it all the time. --/--/
Any of the works of Andre Gide are good, same of older ones like
Rimbaud, Laforgue (Jules) and Guillaume Apollinaire. The latter’s
_Calligrammes_ and _Alcools_ (poems) are just being talked about in
this country. I am mad about Laforgue, but he is hard to translate and
very acid.
There is a wild bird and fashionable, Jean Cocteau, who writes plays,
poetry and novelties that I understand is the present king of les
boulevards, but I haven’t read him. The scene in France today is, I
judge, about as scattered as the Genoa Conference. Everybody is being
intensely clever, and everybody is also worried about what new standard
tomorrow may erect. However, I have tried to name people here who have
already been more-or-less settled and accepted, or who bid fair to be.
The people I am closest to in English are Yeats, Eliot, Pound, and the
dear great Elizabethans like Marlowe, Webster, Donne and Drayton, whom I
never weary of. I’ve lately been enjoying Melville’s _Moby Dick_,
however. --/--/
I’ll write to you as soon as I hear from Anderson. If you come across
any good monograph on Cezanne in Germany I would be glad to pay you for
it as soon as you get back. Otherwise--with the exception of a good book
illustrating Greek Vases well, I can’t think of anything.
96: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _May 16th ’22_
Hooray Whoop La! That little note on the back of the envelope meant a
lot to me. And I somehow feel good that you are once more with me on the
same stretch of land! Jump right on the train, old dear, and I’ll meet
you at the station. I’m very anxious to see you. I want you to meet this
_great_ Bill Sommer--and tell me all about all you have done and seen. I
have the assurance now that you’ll come as soon as you can get the
money, and it makes me quite happy.
Your rough & tedious transition back to the States gave you a good
chance to prepare for the surprises of New York--there must have been
some new aspects of the place awaiting you. I know that even a few
months in the West Indies and Canada open your eyes to new things on
your return. Of course there will be only too evident all the old
aggravations,--but from occasional references in your letters I judge
that you have more than once been touched by these same things during
the last six months. The world is fast becoming standardized,--and who
knows but what our American scene will be the most intricate and
absorbing one in fifty years or so?
Something is happening. Some kind of aristocracy of taste is being
established,--there is more of it evidenced every year. People like you,
Matty and I belong here. Especially Matty, who was doing better work
last summer before he got in touch with the Paris crowd than I suspect
since. --/--/ His present crazes are, frankly, beyond my understanding.
They are so much so that I have still a great deal of confidence that no
matter how wild and eccentric he becomes, it’s just a phase which will
be a practical benefit in the end. But, on the other hand, if one denies
all emotional suffering the result is a rather frigid (however “gay”)
type of work. Let us watch & pray! --/--/
97: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Same evening (May 16th)_
Dear Gorham: I forgot to mention that the art books reached me and how
pleased I am. Derain is one of my favorites--more even than Matisse &
Picasso--and Vlaminck I have long admired. Marie Laurencin is
amusing--but no more than any febrile female. Have you seen the amazing
satires of Georg(?) Grosz and the beautiful metaphysics of Chirico? My
friend Lescaze has put me in touch with a lot of moderns that I fear,
off here in Cleveland, I should otherwise never have heard of.
I’m at work on a metaphysical attempt of my own--again I mention the
familiar “Faustus & Helen” affair which has received a little stimulus
lately. The trouble is--I get so little _expanse_ of time undisturbed
for it, that it’s hopelessly fragmentary so far. Here is a tentative
beginning. -- -- -- -- [See Weber, _op. cit._, p. 175]
I wish you would tell me how you like my translations from Laforgue’s
“Locutions des Pierrots” in the current _Double Dealer_.
You will notice below them a very interesting poem by Allen Tate. This
poem interested me so much that I wrote him a letter and his answer
reached me along with yours today. --/--/
98: TO ALLEN TATE
_Cleveland_ _May 16th ’22_
Dear Allen Tate: Being born in ’99, I too, have a little toe-nail in the
last century. You are not alone in all your youth and disgrace! But
perhaps the umbilical cord made a clean margin of it with you, for I am
reminded that it is 1922 and there is a chance of that. I popped on the
scene shortly after Independence Day! and consequently have always had a
dread of firecrackers.
Despite all this desperate imminence, I want to thank you for your
answer to my letter. It has thrown me clear off the advertising copy
work I brought home with me (yes, I’m one of the band!) as I feel more
like putting that off until tomorrow, than this. But on the other hand
there are so many things I want to say that I don’t know where to begin.
Letters are sometimes worse than nothing, especially for introductions,
so if I am chatty and autobiographical you must pardon it.
Certain educated friends of mine have lamented my scant education, not
in the academic sense, but as regards my acceptance and enthusiasm about
some modern French work without having placed it in relation to most of
the older “classics,” which I haven’t read. I have offered apologies,
but continued to accept fate, which seems to limit me continually in
some directions. Nevertheless, my affection for Laforgue is none the
less genuine for being led to him through Pound and T. S. Eliot than it
would have been through Baudelaire. There are always people to class
one’s admirations and enthusiasms illegitimate, and though I still have
to have the dictionary close by when I take up a French book, a certain
sympathy with Laforgue’s attitude made me an easier translator of the
three poems in _The D.D._ than perhaps an accomplished linguist might
have been. However, no one ought to be particularly happy about a
successful translation. I did them for fun, and it finally occurred to
me that I might as well be paid for them.
As I said before, it is because your poem seemed so much in line with
the kind of thing I am wanting to do, that I felt almost compelled to
write you. While I am always interested in the latest developments in
poetry I am inveterately devoted to certain English old fellows that are
a constant challenge. I refer to Donne, Webster, Jonson, Marlowe,
Vaughan, Blake, etc. More “modernly,” have you read and admired Yeats
(later poems), Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Edward Thomas, Wallace Stevens?
I am missing a few, but I like all these people.
I am interested greatly in seeing your poems in _The Fugitive_. It
occurs to me that my friend, Gorham Munson, editor of _Secession_, would
possibly be interested in publishing some of your things, although he
can’t pay anything yet for mss. Notice and N.Y. address of his magazine
are in the back pages of the current _D.D._ I am trying to give him
something myself, but I write so little that I simply haven’t anything.
The last went to _The Dial_ and ought to be out next month.
Don’t tell me you like the enclosed poems unless you really do. You may
have seen them in different places, but I’m in the dark as to that.
P.S. Robinson is very interesting--his work is real and permanent, yet
it is also a tragedy--one of the tragedies of Puritanism, materialism,
America and the last century. Wm. Vaughn Moody’s beautiful tonality
suffered in a kind of vacuum, too. We are more fortunate today, despite
Amy Lowell!
The poetry of negation is beautiful--alas, too dangerously so for one of
my mind. But I am trying to break away from it. Perhaps this is useless,
perhaps it is silly--but one _does_ have joys. The vocabulary of
damnations and prostrations has been developed at the expense of these
other moods, however, so that it is hard to dance in proper measure. Let
us invent an idiom for the proper transposition of jazz into words!
Something clean, sparkling, elusive!
99: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _June 4th ’22_
Dear Gorham: -- -- -- -- I probably should not be here at the Corona were
it not that I want you to see the new coin from the mint enclosed
herewith.
I have been at it for the last 24 hours and it may be subjected to a few
changes and additions, but as I see it now in the red light of the womb
it seems to me like a work of youth and magic.
At any rate, it is something entirely new in English poetry, so far as I
know. The jazz rhythms in that first verse are something I have been
impotently wishing to “do” for many a day. It is the second part of the
(three section) “Marriage of Faustus and Helen” that I must have tired
you with mentioning. The other parts are entirely unlike it, and God
knows when they will be done. The first part is just begun. However, I
have considerable ambitions in this opus, as I have told you. Please let
me know your sentiments regarding the enclosed.
The reassurance of your projected visit here makes me happy in spite of
rose-fever cyclones. What talks we shall have! and there are three
others here who have heard so much about you that they are anxious to
meet you too. Bill Sommer has moved to his country place where the
charming schoolhouse-studio is located. We shall have to spend a
week-end there among the gay canvasses that line its walls.
100: TO ALLEN TATE
_Cleveland_ _June 12th_
Dear Allen: So you are in love with the dear Duchess of Malfi also! How
lovely she speaks in that one matchless passage: --/--[17] Exquisite
pride surrendering to love! And it was this that faced all the brutality
of circumstance in those hideous and gorgeous final scenes of the play!
The old betrayals of life, and yet they are worth something--from a
distance, afterward.
What you say about Eliot does not surprise me,--but you will recover
from the shock. No one ever says the last word, and it is a good thing
for you, (notice how I congratulate myself!) to have been faced with him
as early as possible. I have been facing him for _four_ years,--and
while I haven’t discovered a weak spot yet in his armour, I flatter
myself a little lately that I have discovered a safe tangent to strike
which, if I can possibly explain the position,--goes _through_ him
toward a _different goal_. You see it is such a fearful temptation to
imitate him that at times I have been almost distracted. He is, you have
now discovered, far more profound than Huxley (whom I like) or any
others obviously under his influence. You will profit by reading him
again and again. I must have read “Prufrock” twenty-five times and
things like the “Preludes” more often. His work will lead you back to
some of the Elizabethans and point out the best in them. And there is
Henry James, Laforgue, Blake and a dozen others in his work. He wrote
most of this verse between 22 and 25, and is now, I understand, dying
piecemeal as a clerk in a London bank! In his own realm Eliot presents
us with an absolute _impasse_, yet oddly enough, he can be utilized to
lead us to, intelligently point to, other positions and “pastures new.”
Having absorbed him enough we can trust ourselves as never before, in
the air or on the sea. I, for instance, would like to leave a few of his
“negations” behind me, risk the realm of the obvious more, in quest of
new sensations, _humeurs_. These theories and manoeuvres are interesting
and consolatory,--but of course, when it comes right down to the act
itself,--I have to depend on intuition, “inspiration” or what you will
to fill up the page. Let us not be too much disturbed, antagonized or
influenced by the _fait accompli_. For in the words of our divine object
of “envy” (“Reflections on Contemporary Poetry,” _Egoist_, London,
’19--): “Admiration leads most often to imitation; we can seldom long
remain unconscious of our imitating another, and the awareness of our
imitation naturally leads us to hatred of the object imitated. If we
stand toward a writer in this other relation of which I speak we do not
imitate him, and though we are quite as [....]”[18]
101: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] [_ca. June 18_]
Dear Gorham: I have been in a house up in “Little Italy,” a section of
Sicilian immigrants very near our house where one can get good
three-year Chianti,--and incidentally am feeling very fine as Sunday
evenings go. _There_ is the place to enjoy oneself, in the family
parlour of a pickslinger’s family with chromos on the walls that are
right in style of Derain and Vlaminck. Bitch dogs and the rest of the
family wander in while the bottle is still half empty and some of the
family offspring. _Tristram Shandy_ read to a friend with a Spanish
Bolero going on the Victrola sounds good in such a milieu! I never
should live without wine! When you come here we shall make many visits
to this charming family. You will like my classic, puritan, inhibited
friend Sam Loveman who translates Baudelaire charmingly! It is hard to
get him to do anything outside the imagination,--but he is charming and
has just given me a most charming work on Greek Vases (made in
Deutschland) in which satyrs with great erections prance to the
ceremonies of Dionysios with all the fervour of de Gourmont’s
descriptions of sexual sacrifice in _Physique de L’Amour_, which I am
lately reading in trans.
I am glad you like Lescaze’s portrait of me. He _has_ an athletic style.
Your criticism of painting et al strikes me as very exact and
appreciative--at least, as far as I am able to justly criticize it. He
hates Cleveland with all the awareness of the recent description of this
place accorded in the last _Masses_ or _Liberator_, as I understand.
Just now I am in too banal a mood to give sympathy to anything. At
times, dear Gorham, I feel an enormous power in me--that seems almost
supernatural. If this power is not too dissipated in aggravation and
discouragement I may amount to something sometime. I can say this now
with perfect equanimity because I am notoriously drunk and the Victrola
is still going with that glorious “Bolero.” Did I tell you of that
thrilling experience this last winter in the dentist’s chair when under
the influence of aether and _amnesia_ my mind spiraled to a kind of
seventh heaven of consciousness and egoistic dance among the seven
spheres--and something like an objective voice kept saying to me--“You
have the higher consciousness--you have the higher consciousness. This
is something that very few have. This is what is called genius.”? A
happiness, ecstatic such as I have known only twice in “inspirations”
came over me. I felt the two worlds. And at once. As the bore went into
my tooth I was able to follow its every revolution as detached as a
spectator at a funeral. O Gorham, I have known moments in eternity. I
tell you this as one who is a brother. I want you to know me as I feel
myself to be sometimes. I don’t want you to feel that I am conceited.
But since this adventure in the dentist’s chair, I feel a new confidence
in myself. At least I had none of the ordinary hallucinations common to
this operation. Even that means something. You know I live for
work,--for poetry. I shall do my best work later on when I am about 35
or 40. The imagination is the only thing worth a damn. Lately I have
grown terribly isolated, and very egoist. One has to do it [in]
Cleveland. I rush home from work to my room hung with the creations of
Sommer and Lescaze--and fiddle through the evenings. If I could afford
wine _every_ evening I might do more. But I am slow anyway. However,
today I have made a good start on the first part of “Faustus & Helen.” I
am, needless to say, delighted that you like the second part so well.
The other two parts are to be quite different. But, as yet, I am dubious
about the successful eventuation of the poem as a _whole_. Certainly it
is the most ambitious thing I have ever attempted and in it I am
attempting to evolve a conscious pseudo-symphonic construction toward an
abstract beauty that has not been done before in English--at least
directly. If I can get this done in the way I hope--I might get some
consideration for _The Dial_ prize. Perhaps I’m a fool for such
hopes--sooner or later I expect to get that yearly donation. --/--/
I am not going to read this over in the clear sober light of the dawn.
Take it for what it is worth tonight when I seal the envelope--_if_ you
can read it!
102: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _June 22nd_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ This is just rushed off between jobs. I must have
insulted you to the limit with that letter of Sunday night,--but when I
am filled up I am feeling too good to be taken seriously, so please
don’t mind.[19] Your applause of the “Faustus and Helen II” has
heartened me, although I am having a terrible time with the first part
of it. The best way for me to speed up, I guess, is to forget all about
time and be quite indifferent. --/--/
103: TO ----
[_Cleveland_] _4th of July_
Dear ----: --/--/ I am sorry to disappoint you about my “Praise.” There
were no accouchements there at all. Not even temptations in that
direction. It is, or was, entirely “platonic.” Nelson was a Norwegian
who rebelled against the religious restrictions of home and came to
America when a mere kid. Went to art school in Washington and won some
kind of distinguished medal there. As soon as he was through school, an
aunt of his in America who had been paying his tuition abruptly withdrew
all her help and forced him into the prostitution of all his ideals and
a cheap lithographic work that he was never able to pull out of
afterward. He wrote several good poems published in _Scribner’s_ &
_Century_ a long time ago, got married, and I finally met him here in
Cleveland where he had been living in seclusion for a number of years.
One of the best-read people I ever met, wonderful kindliness and
tolerance and a true Nietzschean. He was one of many broken against the
stupidity of American life in such places as here. I think he has had a
lasting influence on me. --/--/
104: TO ALLEN TATE
[_Cleveland_] _July 19th, ’22_
Dear Allen: -- -- -- -- Let me salute you again. “Bored to Choresis” is as
good as “Euthanasia,”--if not better. You do the trick here. Your
vocabulary is exceedingly interesting--you have a way of meticulously
accenting certain things in a quiet, yet withal so sharp a note, that
the effect is greater than as though you roared. “Tribal library,” “Her
rhythms are reptilian and religious,” etc., are excellent. And then, of
course, I like your lunge at the bourgeois literary biographical
interests. No one has ever put it better than you have.
You see what is good about this poem is over and above the merely
personal sketches and digs that Robinson has been getting you into. Here
you come into something larger, as you did in “Euthanasia,” where you
hit all humanity a few slaps, but in so interesting a way! In other
words,--this poem is _creative_ where the ordinary “character” portrait
is merely analytic and, generally, unimportant (at least in poetry).
You needn’t be afraid of running too squarely into Eliot with work like
this.
I would like to see you follow out the directions indicated in this
poem--not their downward slant (interesting enough), but (if you get
what I mean) their upward slant into something broadly human. Launch
into praise. _You_ are one who can give praise an edge and beauty,
Allen. You have done so well in a couple of damnations, that I feel
confident in you.
I must close. Bosses brush near my shoulder, and poetry isn’t exactly
encouraged around here. Munson is strong for you with this new poem. I
think he would like it for _Secession_ if _The Dial_ does not take it.
He asks me to inform you that no particular “jargon” is necessary for
_Secession_ contributors. Be your own language--in so pure a way that it
will be noticeable, and you will do well enough.
My hay fever temporarily passes. I peer again on the world with
subsiding eyes. It’s a pleasure to think you of down in the clear
valleys, and feeling so top-spinning! Marriage! Well, it sounds ominous.
Think well, beforehand. Are you easily satisfied? That’s the main
danger.
105: TO ----
[_Cleveland_] _July 27th, ’22_
Dear ----: --/--/ I feel like shouting _EUREKA_! When Munson went
yesterday after a two weeks visit, he left my copy of _Ulysses_, a huge
tome printed on Verge d’arche paper. But do you know--since reading it
partially, I do not think I will care to trust it to any bookbinder I
know of. It sounds ridiculous, but the book is so strong in its
marvelous oaths and blasphemies, that I wouldn’t have an easy moment
while it was out of the house. You will pardon my strength of opinion on
the thing, but it appears to me easily the epic of the age. It is as
great a thing as Goethe’s _Faust_ to which it has a distinct resemblance
in many ways. The sharp beauty and sensitivity of the thing! The
matchless details! I DO HOPE you get a copy, but from what Munson says
there is little hope unless you can get some friend of yours in Europe
to smuggle it in in his trunk. It has been barred from England. It is
quite likely I have one of two or three copies west of New York. _The
Dial_ ordered six and has only been able to get one so far, etc., etc.
Munson, who met Joyce several times in Paris last summer, tells me that
the Man Ray photo of J. in the recent _Vanity Fair_ is really not a good
resemblance. The face is not so puffy-looking, nor the odd ocular
expression. Man Ray, you know, has his own individual temperament to
express! Ah, these interesting photographers. Joyce dresses quietly and
neatly. Is very quiet in manner, and, Anderson says, does not seem to
have read anything contemporary for years. His book is steeped in the
Elizabethans, his early love, and Latin Church, and some Greek;--but the
man rarely talks about books. I rather like him for that. --/--/
Joyce is still very poor. Recently some French writers headed by Valery
Larbaud, gave a dinner and reading for his benefit. It is my opinion
that some fanatic will kill Joyce sometime soon for the wonderful things
said in _Ulysses_. Joyce is too big for chit-chat, so I hope I haven’t
offended you with the above details about him. He is the one above all
others I should like to talk to.
I have been very quiet while Munson has been here. Tonight, however, I
break out into fresh violences. --/--/ And thanks, dear -- -- -- --, for
the newspaper bundle. In the _Times_ I enjoyed Colum’s account of
Joyce’s early Dublin days, although he told me the story of the Yeats
encounter several years ago. --/--/
106: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Aug. 7th, ’22_
Dear Gorham: I sent 27 Sommer things off to Anderson last Saturday,
feeling very much as though I were delivering Plato into the hands of
the Philistines. Anderson has been very nasty besides being “just
another fool.” I have been shocked, sensation very rare with me, with
the contents of your letter relating his manoeuvres. He is evidently
none too sure of the quality of his work so highly praised by Rosenfeld.
I realize that he insulted me while he was here--it wasn’t necessary to
tell fibs to avoid my company--but I shall beam on until all hope of his
getting Bill an audience has vanished. In that event, I judge by your
letter that we can depend fairly certainly on Frank, and Stieglitz,
perhaps. I haven’t much hope in Anderson’s interest in anything
connected with us now, after disgracing himself the way he has. Encore,
regardez, mon ami,--don’t let kittens out of the bag before they have
claws again if you want to be an effective iconoclast. --/--/
Why haven’t I received _Secession_ #2 yet? Your letter of last week
mentions it, and I am anxious to get at it. I got the new _Broom_ with
your Epstein trans. in it and Matty’s very clever translations and
criticisms. Delightful “Blahs” and “blagues,” too! Matty has developed a
“high hand” attitude in criticism that is (to anyone ignorant of his
subject matter, direct contact with his authors, etc.) as effective and
compelling as Pound’s. I am beginning to see little Caesarian laurels
sprouting on his brow. His (anti-Zwaska) Caesarian attitude is not a
little pleasing. Matty and Julius! Surely they have both gone into Gaul
with somewhat the same stones, though Matty will have to wait until he
gets back to the good old U.S.A. to be divided into three parts!
I am glad Frank took so well to your book. I have since wanted to read
it over again, say fresh in the morning to better absorb its many
compact and rich allusions toward your esthétique. Stupid and hasty as
this letter is--I hope you won’t think I am satisfied with it. I’ve got
so much on my mind that you must bear with me until a cool day comes
when I shall not be so tired at night, nor the garret study be so hot as
it is this evening. I enclose some poetry.[1] I think the first part of
“Faustus” is about right now. Tell me what you think of the thing as a
whole. Read it entirely over from the first so as to judge better of my
graduation from the quotidian into the abstract, and tell me frankly
what you think about it. I have been so close to the thing for so long a
time that at present I cannot judge it _synthetically_ at all. The third
part has not been even started yet. The other evening I had a hint for
the speed that I wanted in something like the following [four] lines:
-- -- -- --[20] But I have found nothing yet to satisfy me at all. It must
be a dramatic comment done somewhat in a new idiom. I have got to search
awhile yet for it. Meanwhile I have a homely and gay thing to show you
that I did yesterday out of sheer joy, “Thinking of Bill----“, etc.[21]
-- -- -- --
Joyce is being savoured slowly--with steady pleasure. Meanwhile I find
_Enormous Room_ a stimulating article. It has taught me to better
appreciate Cummings’ poetry--although the things in the last _Broom_ of
his are, I think, boresome. _Since Cezanne_ by Bell has interested me a
good deal.
_Dominick!_ O yes! I think we both were bored with the climacteric after
your departure. I have not seen him since!
“The Bottom of the Sea” is too deep for me to model yet as I want it. I
haven’t forgotten it though.
107: TO CHARMION WIEGAND
_Cleveland, O._ _Aug. 15th, ’22_
Dear Charmion: You will be delighted to know, I’m sure, that the
Anderson trans. matter has been settled. I got a letter from Huebsch
last week saying that he had given Herr Reeck the rights--so _some_
letters got across the waters anyway! This suggests the mention that
Anderson was here about six weeks ago while Munson was visiting me, and
came out to the house for an evening. The man’s personal charm supported
the impressions his letters had given me (we had never actually met
before) but I have been very disappointed in him since he went down to
N. Y. afterward and stirred up a petty rumpus in _The Dial_ office,
about something that Munson told him [in Cleveland] on the subject of
Rosenfeld’s position as a critic, etc. The story is not worth going
into, but it showed Anderson to be surprisingly petty and malignant, not
to say untactful. La-La! Well,--he hasn’t yet destroyed my taste for
some of his work yet--despite that most of my friends don’t value his
work above a Russian rouble.
“Pandora’s Box” is a good piece of “general” criticism. It is more
social than literary and is the kind of thing, above all, that Americans
need to read. I hope you find a good market for it. You must let me know
where and when your things are published so I can look for them and get
them.
Since Munson brought me my copy of _Ulysses_ I have been having high
times. A book that in many ways surpasses anything I have ever read. 800
pgs! You must read E. E. Cummings’ _Enormous Room_ for a real
inspiration in language and humanity.
The first issue of _Secession_ does not come up to the second, now out.
You should get it somewhere there in N. Y. and read Cowley’s two poems
and Josephson’s story. “The Oblate.” --/--/
108: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Friday night_
Dear Gorham: -- -- -- -- My enthusiasms, the hot weather, the onset of hay
fever, the infinite and distasteful detail work I have been doing at the
office, and the suspense of finding another position, etc., etc., have
brought me very near the ground. In fact, for several days this week I
have been unable to retain food and have thought at any moment something
would snap and I would go into a million pieces. I haven’t felt as
“dangerously” for several years. But I am picking up today--since I have
got the job matter settled and informed the office that I shall not be
with them after the first of September. This bit of news I had the
wonderful pleasure of delivering to them just as my boss was starting in
on a series of gentle reprimands, etc., and so instead of ever hearing
the end of that rigmarole--I was begged to remain at a higher salary.
Where I am going however, I shall have complete charge of the copy work
and shall receive ten dollars a week more to start with and a
considerable raise within sixty days. I was literally urged to come with
them--a new agency--which was a unique pleasure for me!
Well,--we heard from Anderson! Rosenfeld’s remarks along with those of
several other artists present at the time of the “trial” were quoted in
effect that S[ommer] was not a notable man at all--had no personal
vision--his work a mixture of half-a-dozen modern influences--and
_couldn’t draw a head on man, woman or animal_! Anderson was very sorry
he had had anything to do with any adverse criticism, etc., etc. So much
for that. Dear G., let us create our own little vicious circle! Let us
erect it on the remains of such as Paul Rosenfeld. But enough of this
for now.
Of course I’m enthusiastic about “Faustus and Helen” now! Who wouldn’t
be after your comments. However,--when it comes to the last section--I
think I shall not attempt to make it the paragon of SPEED that I thought
of. I think it needs more sheer weight than such a motive would provide.
Beyond this I have only the surety that it is, of course, to include a
comment on the world war--and be Promethean in mood. What made the first
part of my poem so good was the extreme amount of time, work and thought
put on it. The following is my beginning of the last part--at present:
--/--/ How neatly here is violence clothed in pathos! --/--/
109: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Thursday_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ My vacation has given me the time to read _Rahab_
and finish _Ulysses_. _Rahab_ is a beautiful book. It has a synthetic
beauty that is more evident than the lyric note behind _Ulysses_. It
contains beautiful language--Frank is a real artist--no doubt about that
and of course way beyond Anderson when it comes to craft. My only doubt
about _Rahab_ comes in with the question, as yet undecided, as to
whether or not there isn’t a slight touch of sentimentality attached to
Frank’s “mysticism.” Certainly the man is not a _realist_--certainly he
is sincere. There is also this question--Fanny’s later development, so
far as I can see, does not put her far enough beyond her initial
appreciation of life at the time she is deserted by her husband to
warrant the stress on that thesis which Frank evidently intends as the
_motif_ of the book. As a picture of crucifixion the book is
superb--but, after all, what tangible gain has Fanny got out of it
except an attitude that Butler outlines in some such words as I believe
I have repeated to you: “No one has ever begun to really appreciate
life, or lived, until he has recognized the background of life as
essentially Tragedy.” It is from this platform of perception that I
conceive every artist as beginning his work. Does Frank consider Fanny’s
course as complete where he leaves her at the end of _Rahab_--or isn’t
there still something more to be said? The reason I pose this question
is because Stephen Daedalus has already gone as far as Fanny before
_Ulysses_ begins. The _Portrait_ took him beyond where Fanny sits at the
end of _Rahab_. Of course it would stretch reality a great deal,
probably, to take Fanny Dirk any further--but, in my mind, it is just
this stubborn impossibility (however nonresponsible Frank may be) that
makes my judgment of _Rahab_ suffer in the light of _Ulysses_. Perhaps I
am unfair and “all off.” Both books, however, have a strong ethical and
Nietzschean basis and reading them at the same time as I have, I am
irresistibly drawn into comparisons. Frank is so young that he has lots
of time to benefit by Joyce and even go further--although I doubt if
such will will be done for a hundred years or more. The point is--after
all--I am interested in Frank and thank you for putting me out of
prejudice. As an American today he is certainly in the front line--no
doubt about that at all. --/--/
110: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Monday_
Dear Gorham: I’m glad that Burke meets you in approving the “sea”
poem,[22] and I’m sorry that it is, or at least appears to be beyond me
to make changes in it. Of course you know I have never been very
enthusiastic about it. Its only value in my mind rests in its approach
to the “advertisement” form that I am contemplating and, I think, spoke
to you about. It is a kind of poster,--in fact, you might name it
“Poster” if the idea hits you. There is nothing more profound in it than
a “stop, look and listen” sign. And it is the conception of the poem
that makes me like the last line as I do--merely bold and unambitious
like a skull & cross-bones insignia. --/--/
111: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Tuesday_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ God! I wish I were on the New York scene, what with
the items of your last letter. I was especially thrilled at the Damon
book on Blake. You know how much Blake has always interested me. I’ve
always thought Damon a very capable figure, and hope you get the
Vers-Libre histoire for _Secession_. Sam [Loveman] was telling me today
that he had seen some notice of issue #3 of that notable sheet in
Sunday’s [N. Y.] _Times_, with a mention specific of Matty too.
I answered jh last Saturday, with a slight reprimand for the impotence
of her “kick” at you in _The L. R._ I should rather like to see her
aggravated a little longer, which is pretty sure to occur. I, as you
know, have a certain admiration for Cuthbert Wright, but I felt his
anti-DADA article in _The D. D._ was rather weak. I’m so tired of seeing
the _young_ turn their heads and wag them despairingly at every modern
manifestation. They don’t need to accept them all,--but it’s so
uninspiring to see them turn back to Greece and quote some Meleager
lyric as the paragon of all time. This gesture from Wright was a little
disappointing to me. Allen Tate writes me that he has returned to
Nashville and joined the Ransom crowd there again. Your rejection of
“Choresis” I presume was largely responsible for this return to the
native.
I’m about fed up on furnaces and hot water heaters. I’ve been very
attentive to the little ad. stories now for quite awhile. It’s about
time that I did something about “F and Helen” again. To make things
better or worse (I don’t know which yet) I’ve almost fallen in love. I
may add, an object more than usually responsive this time. --/--/
112: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Sept. 29th, 1922_
Dear Gorham: What would you think of my using the first part of “F and
H” alone? Calling it just “For the Marriage of,” etc. This would seem
rather disappointing, I know, but I feel that it is fate. This
conviction comes after much thought and especially after writing one
added verse (originally intended for part 3) to be inserted as the
next-last, coming just before the “eye motif.” I feel that with this
added the first part becomes an intensity that is definitely developed
and closed,--and that further additions such as part 2 are
irrelevant--at least anti-climactic by position. And as for the third
part, I am interested enough in the aeroplane, war-speed idea but I
think it would be better developed under a different sky. Let me know
what you think of the idea;--what you think of the additional verse
also.
“The Springs of Guilty Song,” or former part 2, would do very well, I
think, to send to _Broom_. Of course, I want to try _Dial_ on “F and H,”
before it goes anywhere else. Its present length will slightly overlap
two pages.
I am glad to have the _Secession_ program in advance. You’re travelling
right along it seems. I wish I could spare an erection, as suggested,
but I have to save them all for Seiberling Tires, Furnaces, etc. I have
a widening interest, you see, in tilling the public mind with my ideas
of excellence. Frankly, I’m tired to death. The new job has been beyond
expectations in many ways, but it simply keeps my imagination tied down
more than ever. I have so much to do.
Allen Tate is in Cincinnati visiting his brother and may come up here
for a couple of days. I really enjoy admonishing him--Matty is not the
only one who has “disciples.” By the way,--I guess that latter gent got
peeved again at my last letter. I preface every letter now, you know,
with the prediction that its contents will absolutely disgust him beyond
the desire to answer--someday, perhaps already, that prophecy will be
fulfilled.
I can’t spare the money to put into reproductions of Bill’s [Sommer]
pictures for some time. It will cost over twenty dollars just for six.
It will be two months before I even break clear from the dentist and hay
fever bills of the year,--so I guess we can’t send Loeb anything yet.
--/--/
113: TO CHARMION WIEGAND
[_Cleveland_] _Oct. 9th, ’22_
My dear Charmion: --/--/ I’ve changed jobs only to find myself
completely imprisoned now, there’s so much more to do. It’s copy work
(as before) only now I have about _all_ of it to write. I haven’t had
time to think about poetry for weeks and letters have to wait. There are
birth pangs to go through with, even in so staid a thing as advertising
copy and ideas. I hammer my forehead for hours some days trying to get
an idea that will be read, and loosen purse strings. --/--/
About _Ulysses_--I paid $20.00 for mine, that being the original
subscription price (1-1/2) years ago when I ordered it. But I should
never have got it past the censors and customs had Munson not brought it
all the way from Paris in the bottom of his trunk. I know that already
it is bringing such prices as $200.00-$300.00 (depending on binding and
paper) in some places. Certainly I should never part with mine for any
price. I feel quite luxurious!
I got a beautiful German monograph on Etruscan art the other day. But
the art books I ordered months ago from Halim (Bremen) haven’t yet
arrived. God knows,--I suppose the postoffice found something “obscene”
in the Japanese landscapes somewhere, or the Chinese temples--or the
Egyptian monuments!! --/--/
114: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Oct. 12, ’22_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ Today also brought me the most prodigious book on
Egyptian sculpture that I’ve ever seen. Of course it’s German,--one of
the books I ordered from Halim (Bremen) months ago. I shall gloat over
it many hours.
Looking it over gives one the impression that the children of the Nile
completed every possibility of sculpture long before the Greeks began to
work. The latter added some architectural features, in figures they only
added a few rondures and a certain humanity that is less evident in the
African forms. It’s largely the spacious austerity of Egyptian art that
particularly hits me. --/--/
Williams wrote Bill [Sommer] a memorable letter accompanying his
check (for $25.00) in which he said that Bill got under his
under-drawers!--and went on to say that he was potentially greater than
Marin. It has heartened Bill wonderfully. Such a letter was worth more
than the plaudits of a hundred Rosenfelds. I’d like to meet Williams!
(Repeating this statement so many times won’t do any good I suppose, but
there’s that directness about the man that I know I’d find cleansing.)
I’m sending off “F. & H.” to _The Dial_ today. I’m impatient for the
money--besides that I feel that it is complete and might as well be out
and aired. Having it around stagnates new ideas for me.
Allen Tate sends me a good poem, acknowledges myself and Eliot as his
models--calls me mature and perfect--so that now (with a grain of salt)
I feel vastly superior to Matty. I feel quite jolly tonight! -- -- -- --
O Hell! what can you expect with a gallon of sherry gone since Sunday!
It’s as smooth as Prufrock and is only supposed to be sold to _rabbis_
for religious purposes. Rabbi Crane! What strange conversions there are.
I’ve been reading Rebecca West’s _Judge_ with much delight. She’s the
best exponent of the old novel form I know, and she has fine pathos and
a certain cleanliness that is more than neatness. “Codes” are
interesting after all. As a rabbi and upholder of document and
tradition, I applaud. -- -- -- --
115: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Oct. 25th, ’22_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ You should see me in my luxurious new coat. Light
brown with wide cross-stripes in orange! My progress down the avenue is
attended with awesome gazes, to say the least. From now on, having
broken the spell of modesty and bashfulness, I shall wear what I want
to--providing I can afford it. But I just got a raise,--so maybe I stand
a better chance in the future. --/--/
116: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Nov. 7th, ’22_
Dear Gorham: “F and H” came back from _The Dial_ on Monday. Evidently
Mr. Watson, Jr., has something to say about things as Seldes mentioned
that he was obliged to keep it over time in order to show it to Mr.
Watson, concluding with, “Regrettably, we cannot use it.” Now it is on
its way to _Broom_ along with “The Springs of Guilty Song” (former part
II). I would like to make a vow, if I felt capable of keeping it, not to
send anything again to _The Dial_ for two years. But, of course, I am
merely cutting off my own nose with such tactics.
Matty wrote me quite a long letter from the _Broom_ office in Berlin,
arriving last week. After dissecting the copy of “Guilty Song” that I
had sent him last summer as a sample of what I was doing, he came forth
with the statement that there was damned little stuff of this calibre
being written these days. So I am presuming that he will be glad to
publish that poem, whether or not he fancies “F and H.” This latter he
will probably find too emotional or old fashioned to praise, but I
thought I’d submit it anyway.[23] If you care to, show it to Burke. In
case of its second rejection--I am assuming your continued interest--you
might care to use it in _Secession_. _The Dial_ seems to have abandoned
all interest in publishing American things, or anything, in fact, that
comes to them unheralded by years of established reputation. Certainly,
if the remaining installments of Anderson’s _Many Marriages_ are equal
in stupidity and banality to the first installment, they are going to
make pretty fools of themselves. Anderson’s “naiveté” or what-you-will,
becomes very aggravating.
I am strong with you in my admiration for Burke. I repeat for the
eleventh time, I wish I could be in New York to talk to him, especially
lately do I feel an intense need for contact and conversation with the
right sort of people. I have rather missed Lescaze’s stimulation since
he left, while Loveman, the only other person left here, becomes more
incoherent every day. I am, really, suffering a great deal these days,
and the worst is that I have almost no impulse toward writing. This
wholesale “fertilization” of America by such half-baked people as the
Algonquin gang is one of the most depressing features of all, because it
is without any sense of values. Ben Hecht and Eliot get equal honors in
such company. But at any rate I can rival you in some ways. Where you
have Untermeyer, I can trot out Braithwaite. A letter from Braithwaite
came last week inviting or rather soliciting my “Praise for an Urn” for
the 1922 _Anthology_. At last I shall rub shoulders with Florence [sic]
Wilkinson!
Allen Tate was a week later than expected in getting to N. Y., but you
have probably met him by this time. I am rather looking forward to his
two days here--he has enthusiasm and brains, however, undeveloped his
style may be. Matty’s trans. from Soupault in the last _Broom_ are
undoubtedly clever, but I don’t see how he can rave so about this man’s
conceptions. Matty mentions his recent love for Francis Jammes and
Vielé-Griffin, the latter as being much abler than Laforgue. Where is he
headed for, anyway? His Joyce article was amazing in its lack of
recognition of the great elements in Joyce. I look forward to his final
suicide with Frank. But, after all,--Matty will always keep his head up,
and sniff ominously. --/--/
117: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Nov. 20th, ’22_
Dear Gorham: I am immersed totally in a rush job and will be for a week
or so more. These campaigns are taxing affairs and very confining, so I
can’t write much. But I do want to assure you of my enthusiastic desire
to both write the jacket for your _Frank Study_ and also write a
communication to the Double Skull[24] (delightful name) about it. As
regards the latter,--it will necessarily be very short, as they once
returned a reasonably-sized review I had written on Shaw’s _Back to
Methuselah_ on the argument that it was too long for the comparative
importance of the book! Please send me the proofs as soon as they are
out and I’ll begin.
I hope you enjoyed -- -- -- --. I took the liberty of writing him to look
you up because you had once mentioned a certain interest in him incurred
in Pollard’s _Their Day in Court_. -- -- -- -- is delightful company,
whether he goes in for post-Beardsley attitudes or not. The episodes of
the _Satyricon_ are mild as compared to his usual exploits in N. Y.
during vacations. --/--/
Are you continuing with the advertising instructions? What do you think
of Eliot’s _The Wasteland_? I was rather disappointed. It was good, of
course, but so damned dead. Neither does it, in my opinion, add anything
important to Eliot’s achievement.
I like the admonitions you offered on Macy, etc., in _The New Republic_.
You are developing a tightened hold on criticism that is a favorable
opposite to Mr. Rosenfeld’s rapturous Turner-sunset technique.
118: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Thanksgiving Day ’22_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ I have not seen Sommer for weeks and weeks. He is
very peculiar, never looks you up, never phones or manifests the
slightest interest. I have got tired of ever-lastingly tagging after him
and shall wait until I have some important news for him before I crash
into his cosmos again. I don’t think he ever so much as replied with a
note of thanks to Williams for his purchase and beautiful, generous
tribute of praise. I can’t understand it. But it is perhaps good to
become impersonal in the admiration of art.
Poor -- -- -- --! I feared you would not like him very much. My affection
for him is based on a certain community of taste and pursuit we have
which you will understand. Because he has been mewed up so long with
unpleasant work -- -- -- -- in a city where conversation and letters never
existed--he has, out of sheer ennui, been forced to find entertainment
in ways which have taken the best of him to feed what has become a sort
of obsession. His creative impulse was never very strong, but in his
letters and on his favorite topic you get as strong a satire as
Petronius! Life has tamed him terribly,--yet he has lived a great deal
if the senses mean anything.
I haven’t had time to read all of #3.[25] But I can well understand your
dismay at Matty. With all his boasted time and leisure he ought to have
made a better job of it. And that silly slant at Joyce--putting him
along with Cabell! Matty’s “gay intellectualism” will eventually expose
him to the jibes of a psychoanalyst if he continues in such loose
estimates as his article in _Broom_ on advertising displays. Some things
he says may be true,--but how damned vulgar his rhapsodies become! I
would rather be on the side of “sacred art” with Underwood than admit
that a great art is inherent in the tinsel of the billboards. Technique
there is, of course, but such gross materialism has nothing to do with
art. Artistry and fancy will be Matty’s limit as long as he is not
willing to admit the power and beauty of emotional intensity--which he
has proved he hasn’t got.
Burke has an Egyptian quality of hard and solid speculation. Egyptian
literature is, of course, not my comparison,--but in looking at the
sculpture of that nation one gets the same impression, the same
austerity. I have decided, perhaps I repeat myself, that no advance in
sculpture has been made since the Egyptians so far as essential
plastique is concerned. This after looking at the 200 or so photographs
in a modern German book on the subject that I got recently.
Sam Loveman didn’t like your Saltus review. Said it was scattered, etc.
I haven’t read it. His book on the man and his works is progressing, he
says. I think it will probably be very bad. He is the kind of “critic”
that feels it needful to damn every one else in order to praise. He made
the terrible assertion that “while Saltus was steadily working,
neglected in obscurity, Henry James was applauded in two countries for
his _puking_.” James never did that, whatever else you may say about
him. Ridiculous. Of course I don’t take Sam seriously in any criticism.
The man _Rychtarik_ and his wife are really the best company I have now.
(Note the spelling of his name, correct this time.) His initials are W.
R. I mention this because it would be sad to get his name wrong for that
cover. He was pleased greatly by your acceptance and praise. --/--/
119: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Cleveland_] _Nov. 30th ’22_
Dear Waldo Frank: I have heard through Munson that you care for some of
my poems. Let me take the occasion of _Secession_ #3 to tell you how
powerfully I think you can write in such a story or episode as “Hope.”
This is so fine that I cannot keep [from] writing you.
I never read prose before that flowed with such lyricism and
intensity.--I suppose there are sure to be shocked cries, but the
beautiful manipulation of symbolism in the thing has made your daring
(if it took any) infinitely worth while. Writing like this is a real
legacy, and nothing could be cleaner!
You may be interested in seeing six reproductions of work by Wm. Sommer
that I sent Gorham today. In that case, anyway, this outburst may have
served some purpose.
120: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Dec. 7th, ’22_
Dear Gorham: Frank’s “Hope” struck me so strongly that I wrote him a few
encomiums. I also wrote Fisher, ordering a copy of the Kuniyoshi
monograph. His reply included mention that he failed to get to New York
last week but expected to see you this week; that he would not be able
to publish anything of Sommer’s for some time in any case until he got
some monetary returns from his recent collections, etc. I hope Stieglitz
likes them.
I haven’t heard anything whatever from Tate, not even a rumor. He must
be quite ill, deranged or something. If, by any chance, he is sore at
me, I cannot account for a reason.
Untermeyer’s article was at least decent, it was a non-insulting sort of
bulletin and one of the better sort of things that could happen to
_Secession_ and its group. I was quite surprised that this parodist and
facile assessor could so gracefully rise to the occasion of a new
attitude. Whether we like him or not, his “position” in the American
scene carries some weight, so I rather hope to see him continue his
interest. --/--/
121: TO ----
_Cleveland_ _December 10th, ’22_
My dear ----: My mother will not tolerate wine at the house--so I am
rebelling. I am thinking seriously of moving into permanent private
quarters where one need not be questioned about every detail of life and
where one can be free of the description of one’s food and its contents
and manner of preparation while it is eaten at the table. To this end I
am at present staying for a few days at a hotel. Maybe I shall move out
as above indicated, or maybe I shall go back; it all depends on the
course she takes. Because I dread to leave her on account of the
position it puts her in I hope she will be more lenient with me. I don’t
ask much, and the little wine I succeed in getting has never resulted in
embarrassing her. I never “carry on” at the house or annoy her. The fact
of wine, alone, is what infuriates her puritanical instincts. All this
is tedious and maudlin stuff to write, but that very fact makes it in
some measure an excuse for my present dull outlook on things. Life is
hard enough, God knows, without having to put up with a hundred extra
restrictions in order to just have a room and a bed! --/--/
How _do_ you manage such exquisite delights every time you journey to
the Metropolis?! Your letter was superb. I can understand, also, how you
failed to “mix” with Munson and his friends. You are so much of the
Nineties that it was scarcely to be expected. You had the same reactions
as H---- would have had to such a meeting. I am not saying that there is
any single attitude toward art that is final. I do contend, however,
that Munson, Burke, Cummings and Waldo Frank all have something new and
fine to offer. And whether or not you agree with their critical “lingo”
you will nevertheless find their creative results interesting and vital.
In last week’s _New Republic_ there was an article on the group by Louis
Untermeyer, non-committal but intelligent, on _Secession_ and its
contributors in which I was mentioned casually. We are all of us quite
different. Our differences from the attitude of the present
generation-in-power are in each case individual. I shall probably never
amount to anything--but the others that I have just mentioned will do
things of considerable importance. Frank, in _Rahab_, and Burke in his
criticisms and in a number of short ideographic stories, have already
established places in contemporary letters. --/--/
I am quite disrupted. Family affairs and “fusses” have been my
destruction since I was eight years old when my father and mother began
to quarrel. That phase only ended recently, and the slightest
disturbance now tends to recall with consummate force all the past and
its horrid memories on pretext of the slightest derangement of
equilibrium. As I write I am ensconced at my office. Everybody else is
away, for it is Sunday. Yet, in forgetfulness someone was very kind in
leaving a gallon of delicious sherry. I have already had two good
glasses of it without permission. I shall probably have two more before
I go to see Isadora Duncan this evening and go back to the uninteresting
room at the hotel. For without my books around me and my pictures and my
Victrola with its Ravel, Debussy, Strauss and Wagner records--I am
desolate, I find. I have grown accustomed to an “ivory tower” sort of
existence. I am succeeding very well in my advertising writing. Salary
raised and promises of more and decent people to work with who enjoy
Joyce, Cabell, Pater and the best things of life. Yet even so--Life is
meagre with me. I am unsatisfied and left always begging for beauty. I
am tied to the stake--a little more wastefully burnt every day of my
life while all America is saying, “every day I am growing better and
better in every way,” and Dr. Coué makes his millions!
I am just enough filled with wine at the time of this letter to make
confessions that will bore you. Yet, oddly enough, it is at such times
that I feel most like writing you and H----. He is floating under the
shades of bamboos up the rivers of China under the dragon stars. You and
I are in offices--seeking the same things--but my gift of humor has left
me today. --/--/
122: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Tuesday, Dec. 12th_
Dear Gorham: You, as well as some of my local friends, must share in my
excitement at seeing Isadora Duncan dance on Sunday night. She gave the
same program (All Tschaikowsky) that she gave in Moscow for the Soviet
celebration and, I think, you saw it in New York recently. It was
glorious beyond words, and sad beyond words too, from the rude and
careless reception she got here. It was like a wave of life, a flaming
gale that passed over the heads of the nine thousand in the audience
without evoking response other than silence and some maddening
cat-calls. After the first movement of the _Pathétique_ she came to the
fore of the stage, her hands extended. Silence,--the most awful silence!
I started clapping furiously until she disappeared behind the draperies.
At least one tiny sound should follow her from all that audience. She
continued through the performance with utter indifference for the
audience and with such intensity of gesture and such plastique grace as
I have never seen, although the music was sometimes almost drowned out
by the noises from the hall. I felt like rushing to the stage, but I was
stimulated almost beyond the power to walk straight. When it was all
over she came to the fore-stage again in the little red dress that had
so shocked Boston, as she stated, and among other things told the people
to go home and take from the bookshelf the works of Walt Whitman, and
turn to the section called “Calamus.” Ninety-nine percent of them had
never heard of Whitman, of course, but that was part of the beauty of
her gesture. Glorious to see her there with her right breast and nipple
quite exposed, telling the audience that the truth was not pretty, that
it was really indecent, and telling them (boobs!) about Beethoven,
Tschaikowsky, and Scriabin. She is now on her way back to Moscow, so I
understand, where someone will give her some roses for her pains.
I am in great ferment, and have been staying at a hotel for several days
until I talk to my mother about some things that will determine whether
or not I shall continue to live out at the house any more. They are
little things, mostly, but such little things accumulate almost into a
complex that [is] too much for me to work under. There is no use in
discussing them here, but just the constant restraint necessary in
living with others, you may appreciate, is a deadening thing. Unless
something happens to release me from such annoyances I give up hope of
doing any satisfactory writing. -- -- -- --
123: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT
_Cleveland, O._ _December 24, 1922_
Dear William: However much boredom you may find in Warren--I assure you,
it will not be as strenuous as the hot water I am stewing in. The
Pittsburgh Water Heater surely has been on my mind the last three weeks,
and the burden is still unshifted. I am growing bald trying to scratch
up new ideas in housekeeping and personal hygiene--to tell people why
they need more and quicker hot water. Last night I got drunk on some
sherry. Even in that wild orgy my mind was still enchained by the hot
water complex,--and I sat down and reeled off the best lines written so
far in my handling of the campaign. All of my poems in the future will
attest this sterilizing influence of HOT WATER!
Nothing happens here, either. I am grateful only for wine. I have
neither women or song. Cleveland street car rides twice a day take out
all hope of these latter elements. I think of New York and next summer
when the present is too sharp (or is it dull!). But the main faults are
not of our city, alone. They are of the age. A period that is loose at
all ends, without apparent direction of any sort. In some ways the most
amazing age there ever was. Appalling and dull at the same time. --/--/
PART TWO
New York
(1923-1925)
1923
124: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Jan. 5th, ’23_
Dear Gorham: I cannot remember a more hectic month than the last unless
I recall some of the old bivouacs of New York days, when I ricochet-ed
“from roof to roof” without intermission. Two rush campaigns to write,
gifts and remembrances to buy and send to far too many people--suppers,
parties and evenings--much tossing of the pot,--“prison, palace and
reverberation”! That is why I’ve been so slow in writing.
At present I’m flabbergasted and dull. But my carousing on New Year’s
Eve had one good outcome; it started the third part of “Faustus and
Helen” with more gusto than before. When I catch my next breath I hope
to carry it on to the end. --/--/
Waldo Frank wrote me a very cordial letter in answer to my written
praise of “Hope.” I should like to be in New York now and hear his
lectures at the Rand School. I am hoping to make my visit along in May
or June when the weather is mild and some of the shows are still going.
I shall appear with a new cane that was given me for Christmas. Despite
my objections to cane-carrying last summer, I find it very pleasant.
Puce-colored gloves complete the proper touch.
I notice that _Broom_ has been consistently weak in poetry. Cowley’s
things have been by far the best--but (with all due modesty) I think
that my “F. and H.” will be an improvement over their past offerings.
Matty appears to rest in clover and periwinkles, what with the
Guggenheim millions and the international sweep of editorial authority.
(In accepting my poems he merely mentioned that he thought Loeb also
liked them!) What do you think of his _Broom_ ad in the Dec. number? He
asked my opinion on the grounds that literary ads were generally the
flattest in the world. It seems “attractive” enough to me--but the
prize-subscription offer I balk at as a matter of policy in such a type
of magazine.
Stieglitz voiced an old feeling of mine about Bill’s [Sommer] work--the
lack of finish evident in so much of it. This has always pained me. As a
whole, his comments seem very just. But I tend to differ with him on
one point in common with other critics who are so obsessed with the
importance of current developments in art that they fail to recognize
certain positive and timeless qualities.
I refer to the quality of line in Sommer’s work. That has, in
particular, nothing more to do with modern work than the draughtsmanship
of Michelangelo. It is something that may not distinguish a man as a
great innovator or personality--but it is, for all that, a rare and
wondrous quality. From what you write Stieglitz has the sense to
recognize this quality and to value it. But a person like Georgia
O’Keeffe, who has so distinctly her own horn to play, is scornful of
everything short of evolution and revolution.
It is a relief once in awhile to detach one’s judgment from such
considerations as hers, and to look at a piece of work as totally
detached from time and fashion, and then judge it entirely on its
individual appeal. I think that in Sommer’s case, you, Williams and
myself are appreciators of this kind. I can enjoy Bill’s things
regardless of their descent, evident or otherwise, from French or German
artists of the last generation. He has certain perfections which many of
the most lauded were lacking in. God DAMN this constant nostalgia for
something always “new.” This disdain for anything with a trace of the
past in it!!! This kind of criticism is like a newspaper, always with
its dernier cri. It breeds its own swift decay because its whole theory
is built on an hysterical sort of evolution theory. I shall probably
always enjoy El Greco and Goya. I still like to look at the things
Sommer makes, because many of them are filled with a solid and clear
beauty.
I have frequently wondered why you were so laggard in your interest in
Eliot. Your recent announcement brings me much pleasure of anticipation.
Please let [me] know what you find in Eliot. With your head knocked
against Burke’s over such a topic there ought to be some fine
illuminations. You already know, I think, that my work for the past two
years (those meagre drops!) has been more influenced by Eliot than any
other modern. He has been a very good counter-balance to Matty’s
shifting morale and violent urgings. My amusement at Matty’s acceptance
of “F and H” considerably heightened by the memory of several sly hints
against Eliot which some of his more recent letters had contained.
There is no one writing in English who can command so much respect, to
my mind, as Eliot. However, I take Eliot as a point of departure toward
an almost complete reverse of direction. His pessimism is amply
justified, in his own case. But I would apply as much of his erudition
and technique as I can absorb and assemble toward a more positive, or
(if [I] must put it so in a sceptical age) ecstatic goal. I should not
think of this if a kind of rhythm and ecstasy were not (at odd moments,
and rare!) a very real thing to me. I feel that Eliot ignores certain
spiritual events and possibilities as real and powerful now as, say, in
the time of Blake. Certainly the man has dug the ground and buried hope
as deep and direfully as it can ever be done. He has outclassed
Baudelaire with a devastating humor that the earlier poet lacked.
After this perfection of death--nothing is possible in motion but a
resurrection of some kind. Or else, as everyone persists in announcing
in the deep and dirgeful _Dial_, the fruits of civilization are entirely
harvested. Everyone, of course, wants to die as soon and as painlessly
as possible! Now is the time for humor, and the Dance of Death. All I
know through very much suffering and dullness (somehow I seem to twinge
more all the time) is that it interests me to still affirm certain
things. That will be the persisting theme of the last part of “F and H”
as it has been all along. --/--/
125: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Jan. 10th, ’23_
Dear Gorham: Your _Study_ came day before yesterday. So far I have only
had time for a single reading, but am ready to offer whole-hearted
congratulations. It IS much improved from the fragment I read last
summer, and I think you have made a criticism that, besides being quite
exact and fair, is dramatic--and very constructive beyond the actual
boundaries of the man and subject concerned. I shall go over it again
this evening. By early next week I hope to have some words for the
jacket written,--later a review for the Double-Skull. I’ll send them
both to you as soon as they are ready, for suggestions or “corrections.”
By this time, according to a recent letter of yours, you will be
something of a “copy” critic also.
Sommer’s gratitude to you for your interest and success in helping him
will never reach the frenzied pitch of a letter,--but I know that he
feels quite deeply grateful. As I am his official and unofficial
secretary in other matters I include mention of his sentiments here. I
must admit that I personally got a greater “thrill” out of the news than
any personal acceptances have given me for many a day.[26] -- -- -- --
126: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Jan. 14th, ’23_
Dear Gorham: This (enclosed)[27] may, or may not yet be finished.
Anyway, I think it is rounded enough as it is to be somewhat enjoyed.
Some things about it surprise and satisfy me. It has a bit of Dionysian
splendor, perhaps an overtone of some of our evenings together last
summer. It is so packed with tangential slants, interwoven symbolisms,
that I’m not sure whether or not it will [be] understood. However, I am
sure that it perfectly consorts with the other two parts of the poem as
I intend them:
Part I
Meditation, Evocation, Love, Beauty
Part II
Dance, Humor, Satisfaction
Part III
Tragedy, War (the eternal soldier), Résumé, Ecstasy, Final Declaration
There is an organization and symphonic rhythm to III that I did not
think I could do. The last three evenings have been wonderful for me,
anyway! A kind of ecstasy and power for WORK.
III doesn’t seem half long enough to me now--but I’m too much with and
in it to know.
127: TO CHARMION WIEGAND
[_Cleveland_] _Jan. 20th, ’23_
My dear Charmion: It didn’t take me long to decide that Buschor’s
_Graechische Vasenmalerei_ is a book that I shall always carry about
with me, even though it has taken me an unforgivably long time to tell
you so. You and Hermann [Habicht] have my sincerest gratitude for such
an unexpected and beautiful holiday present.
With a few exceptions I prefer Egyptian sculpture to the Greek, and this
book makes me feel that the Greeks had more to express in line and
design than they had in the third dimension. In pottery you get the less
ambitious and less “cosmopolitan” aspiration and expression of these
people. There is an intimacy and rusticity to the pottery which
especially appeals to the literary instinct. The famous Nike of
Samothrace always left me somewhat cool. Lady Milo is a bit imposing
(Jove’s too near around the corner) and these idealized human dolls all
stand too much on their dignity. O I know how they prostrated Heine and
Pater et al., and I do respect them--but give me these lovely vase
intaglios and arabesques--and maids and naughty satyrs with their rank
lustful lives and leaves and brine and wine!
--/--/ I think it is a credit to Munson’s platform and writing that so
much attention has already been proffered _Secession_. I was very
lukewarm in the beginning and urged him not to “waste his time” on any
magazine project. But after his visit here last summer I quickly
switched about, especially as _S_ has contained such new and suggestive
material as the last 2 numbers included. _Secession_ gets away from the
“temperamental” editorial attitude of _The Little Review_ (good in many
ways as this has been) and bases its judgment on more tradition while at
the same time being far more daring in its experiments than such
magazines as _The Dial_. It has been discouraging to see how very “safe”
_The Dial_ plays sometimes, despite its protests to the contrary.
I find that I have derived considerable stimulation from _Secession_.
Without it there would be only the vague hope that the steady pessimism
which pervades _The Dial_ since Eliot and others have announced that
happiness and beauty dwell only in memory--might sometimes lift. I cry
for a positive attitude! When you see the first two parts of my “Faustus
& Helen” that comes out in _Broom_ in Feb. or March, you will see better
what I mean. I’ve about finished the third and last part now, and am
pleased at the finale. --/--/
I’m rather worn out with the incessant activities of the last two
weeks--last _month_, in fact. I can’t stand much “society” even with
interesting people, and my acquaintance in Cleveland has somehow
increased so extensively during the last two years that with work,
reading, writing, etc., things are becoming entirely too febrile. You’ll
excuse my mention of such “ailments” I hope, as part of my excuse for
delay in writing. But I have already probably exhausted you beyond
“resentments” of such nature by this lengthy gust. -- -- -- --
128: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Jan. 24, ’23_
Dear Gorham: I’ll wait for your next letter before sending any other
versions of “F. & H. III” The last two days have been occupied with the
enclosed strange psychoanalytic thing. I can’t quite justify the title
in words, but it came to me quite freely as _the_ right thing. Let me
know how you like it.[28] --/--/
129: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Feb. 6th, ’23_
Dear Gorham: Everyone writes me such encouraging notes about “F and H”
that I am doubly sorry that I ever sent any to _Broom_ for publication.
Frank wrote me a very shrewd appreciation of Part II which he probably
repeated to you. Untermeyer’s mention of me among the New Patricians
prompted me to send him a copy after reading his article on Eliot in a
recent _Freeman_. I disagreed with him openly on many points, but the
substance of his last paragraph made me think he would be interested in
reading the poem. I was rather foolish to follow such an impulse, but
his answer was quite decent. He made the charge of a new type of
“rhetoric,” however, which is just what Frank took pains to mention as
fully absent. Untermeyer comes here for a lecture on March 11th and says
he wants to have a talk with me if possible. This is all right, but I am
not keen about argument. Allen Tate writes me the most glowing praises
possible, calls me the greatest contemporary American poet, etc., etc.,
so I feel about ready to deliver myself of my memoirs and expire in
roses. And then, your appreciation has especially been enjoyed. You
“get” the form and arrangement of the “Stark Major” poem much better
than Frank does, but he is right about the second paragraph being too
complicated and vague and you are wrong about the last verse being
redundant. When I get the second verse worked out to suit me I’ll send
you another copy. In the meantime I am ruminating on a new longish poem
under the title of _The Bridge_ which carries on further the tendencies
manifest in “F and H.” It will be exceedingly difficult to accomplish it
as I see it now, so much time will be wasted in thinking about it. Your
news about _Broom_ is discouraging in view of the fact that I had just
sent part III of “F and H” to Matty last week. Everything has been
bungled all the way through. I hope I can get enough material together
during the next few months for a small volume where things can be
arranged in proper order. I am so deadly sick of manipulating things
with magazines, _The Dial_ included. This latter refuses my “F and H”
and then takes such a silly thing as that Apleton or what’s-’ername
woman contained this month in its covers. I have been so rushed around
with too much society that I have not yet got at the review for your
study, but it will be done within two weeks anyway. It was much easier
to rap out this enclosed review for Fitts. Let me know what you like or
don’t like about it. I am very awkward at reviews, mainly, I suppose,
because the procedure is strange to me. I am through doing things for
Sommer until he cooperates better. He has received notice and
photographs from _The Dial_ I learn from second hand. Ten days ago this
was. I had especially asked him to phone me as soon as he heard anything
definite from them, certainly a small task, but he never peeps or comes
near. I shall not send back the photographs to you to show to anyone
until he returns them to me. He knows I paid twenty dollars for them and
that I want to keep them circulating, etc. He knew that I would be the
one to write to _The Dial_ and blow ’em up if they failed to keep their
word on the reproductions, and naturally want to know the facts of the
situation, yet he keeps his stolid distance. What’s the use? It’s too
much trouble with all the rest I have to do, though I’d be only too glad
to keep it up indefinitely if he’d show a little interest. --/--/
130: TO ALLEN TATE
[_Cleveland_] _Feb. 6th, ’23_
Dear Allen: I can’t seem to get around to write you a decent
consideration of your recent poems, “Yellow River,” etc. When I get time
to write, as now at the office, they are not by me, and you have already
had evidence of my state of mind at other odd moments. Meanwhile, do not
think me indifferent, please.
I’m afraid you will have to postpone your kind proclamations in regard
to “F and H” until the three parts appear in book form and in proper
sequence. The inadvertency of “The Springs of Guilty Song” in the
_Broom_ is too complicated to explain fully. Josephson is most
unscrupulous in his editorship, and it takes so long to get word back
and forth that I shall probably not send anything more to _Broom_ even
if they finish “F and H” with the other two parts. This is quite
unlikely as Munson writes me doleful presages about its financial
straits. Two more issues and it will probably expire. However, in case
they do print the third part which I sent about two weeks ago, it will
include a note at the bottom of the page explaining the sequence, etc.,
and correcting the misnomer “The Springs of Guilty Song.” In regard to
this latter I had a very fine appreciation from Waldo Frank who was
quite astonished at it. Then with your fine praise and Munson’s I feel
more encouraged than ever about my work. I’m already started on a new
poem, _The Bridge_, which continues the tendencies that are evident in
“Faustus and Helen,” but it’s too vague and nebulous yet to talk about.
In the next _S4N_ I have an amusing parody of Cummings and have asked
Fitts, the editor, to send you a copy. Don’t be puzzled by the name of
this magazine, it’s taken from the insignia of a mosquito fleet during
the war, I think. I wish I could partake of the genuine Tatian Theory,
but it’s not so universal in its application, I fear, as it used to be.
Sherry and bad Port are about all one succeeds in safely absorbing
around here. When am I to expect that promised portrait of you?
131: TO WALDO FRANK
_Cleveland, Ohio_ _Feb. 7th, ’23_
Dear Waldo Frank: I have not been so stimulated for a long time as I was
with your letter and its exact appreciation of the very things I wanted
to put into the second part of “For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen”
or its misnomer, “The Springs of Guilty Song.” The fact that its
intention was completely evident to you without any explanations or
“notes” from me, has renewed my confidence and made me quite happy. It
has also made me doubly anxious that you should have a copy of the
entire poem to read. This is enclosed, and, of course, is yours to keep
if you want it. It has been very discouraging the way _Broom_ has
handled the publication of this poem. The mails are slow and unreliable,
and Josephson is hasty, to say the least, in his methods. At best now,
it will come out in broken sequence, and a final Note with part III
cannot much repair the situation. I want at least a few of my friends to
have the thing in decent shape.
A few planks of the scaffolding may interest you, so I’ll roughly
indicate a few of my intentions. Part I starts out from the quotidian,
rises to evocation, ecstasy and statement. The whole poem is a kind of
fusion of our own time with the past. Almost every symbol of current
significance is matched by a correlative, suggested or actually stated,
“of ancient days.” Helen, the symbol of this abstract “sense of beauty,”
Faustus the symbol of myself, the poetic or imaginative man of all
times. The street car device is the most concrete symbol I could find
for the transition of the imagination from quotidian details to the
universal consideration of beauty,--the body still “centered in
traffic,” the imagination eluding its daily nets and self consciousness.
Symbolically, also, and in relation to Homer, this first part has
significance of the rape of Helen by Paris. In one word, however, Part
I stands simply for the EVOCATION of beauty.
Part II is, of course, the DANCE and sensual culmination. It is also an
acceleration of the ecstasy of PART III. This last part begins with
_catharsis_, the acceptance of tragedy through destruction (The Fall of
Troy, etc., also in it). It is Dionysian in its attitude, the creator
and the eternal destroyer dance arm in arm, etc., all ending in a
restatement of the imagination as in Part I. You would probably get all
these things without my crude and hasty mention of them, but to me, the
entire poem is so packed with cross-currents and multiple suggestions
that I am anxious that you should see the thing as I do, even though I
have perhaps not succeeded in “putting over” all the points which I
think I have. If you feel like severe criticism in any cases I shall
certainly welcome it. Certainly I was not “hurt” by the very accurate
criticisms you offered in your last letter.
“Nuances” in Part II takes the American pronunciation, that is, the “es”
is voiced. You were quite right about the second verse in “Stark Major.”
I have never been satisfied with it as to clarity, and it will undergo
revision before publication anywhere. --/--/
132: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Feb. 9th, ’23_
Dear Gorham: You don’t deserve my pains in copying these two charming
things of Allen Tate’s until you send back that much belabored poem of
Harris’s, but these being yours to keep or throw away, I submit them
casually, as possible material for _Secession_. Tate sent them to me
this week, and seems to have written them in a mood of amusement with no
idea of their publication anywhere. I shall not say anything at all to
him about above considerations unless you should happen to want one or
both of them. Tate has a whole lot to offer when he finds his way out of
the Eliot idiom, which as you know, is natural to him, and was before he
ever heard of Eliot. These things are certainly not imitative of anyone
to [any] noticeable extent. They certainly beat Gerty Stein on her own
ground--that is from the standpoint of her announced desire to break up
poetry into an idiom corresponding to cubism, etc. Tate has much more
precision, while giving the same broken effect. Not that I care a damn
about such theories beyond their being merely interesting, but that may
be because from now on I feel that personal problems of my own,
extenuating from the experience in writing “F and H,” will be enough to
interest myself.
I am in a very unfavorable mood, and just after having congratulated
myself strongly on security against future outbreaks of the affections.
You see, for two or three years I have not been attacked in this way. A
recent evening at a concert some glances of such a very stirring
response and beauty threw me into such an hour of agony as I supposed I
was beyond feeling ever again. The mere senses can be handled without
such effects, but I discover I am as powerless as ever against those
higher and certainly hopeless manifestations of the flesh. O God that I
should have to live within these American restrictions forever, where
one cannot whisper a word, not at least exchange a few words! In such
cases they almost suffice, you know. Passions of this kind completely
derail me from anything creative for days,--and that’s the worst of it.
Tate wrote me a charming old fashioned sonnet on my picture that I
recently sent him. Because, in a loose way, it is so clairvoyant, I
confide it to you, an act which would be almost immodest in other
circumstances.
133: TO ALLEN TATE
[_Cleveland_] _Feb. 12th ’23_
Dear Allen: Let me congratulate you on the “Tercets of the Triad,”
however mockingly intended. It is among your very best results, as is,
also, the “Pins and Needles.” O I shall not soon forget “grandfather’s
knees,” etc., etc. The interweaving of the lines is very cunning. I
think you display a great amount of cleverness also in the “Pins and
Needles”--although I’m not sure that I applaud the name for this. There
might be others more apropos. To my mind you beat “Gerty” Stein on her
own race track. That is, you succeed much better than she in
accomplishing what is her avowed aim--to split up lyrical or
picture-word sequences into pieces in the same way that Cubists do in
painting. She is entertaining only at the expense of all coherence,
whereas you break things up into sharp impressions and also preserve the
outlines of the scattered pieces. This comparison, now that I see it
written, is aimless, because your directions and temperaments are so
entirely different. Yet its record here may amuse you as an idea that
immediately came to my mind when I read your poem.
Odd paradoxes occur. These things which you claim to have written for
amusement only, seem to carry through so far as completeness of form is
concerned better than “Yellow River” and “Quality of Mercy” where your
“seriousness” was, if anything, too evident. You won’t misunderstand me
on this, I hope. I simply mean that your satirical leanings are very
strong ... that their astringency frequently breaks up your lyrical
passages and at other times overloads them to the point of obscurity. In
an indifferent or gay mood you escape these encumbrances, as well as
[the] slight tendency that such endowments always carry with them--the
danger of occasional lapses into sentimentality. Do not be abashed. The
same was true of no less a man than Jules Laforgue, who was like you in
many ways and who naturally had far less temptations in Paris and Berlin
than you and I, Allen and Hart in Kentucky and Ohio (U.S.A.)
respectively. If I can find it I’ll send you a scrap of De Gourmont’s
essay on Laforgue that I translated last summer. This is more
illuminating than anything I could offer.
I think you need to cultivate greater simplicity of statement in your
more emotional things,--however well your present facility suits the
more ornamented and artificial congruities of satire or brilliant
impressionism. In “Yellow River” there are many lines that are too noble
to be wasted,--some of great penetration and beauty. So all this makes
me wish you would devote some extra effort into perfecting this poem,
willfully extracting the more obvious echoes of Eliot. You are certainly
rich enough to get along without them. Don’t let your interest in _The
Fugitive_ woo too many things into too sudden print. Forgive my pedantic
bass and lifted finger, but I think you are inclined to too hasty mss.
dispatches sometimes.
The ads are calling, so Addios. I feel like quoting the first verse of
_The Bridge_ for a snappy close:--
Macadam, gun grey as the tunny’s pelt,
Leaps from Far Rockaway to Golden Gate,
For first it was the road, the road only
We heeded in joint piracy and pushed.
134: TO ALLEN TATE
[_Cleveland_] _Feb. 15th, ’23_
Dear Allen: --/--/ I enclose a note from James Daly, whose poetry you
may have sampled in _Broom_. He was here last Fall visiting a mutual
friend, and I think I showed him some of your verse. After you have seen
what “some others” think of you, please return the enclosed. _Broom_, by
the way, has busted; N. Y. office closed last Saturday; March issue, the
last, to be distributed from Berlin while the tent-stakes are being
pulled up. I rejoice in a way. At least they won’t get a chance to
murder my “F and H” any more. _Secession_ will publish the three parts
together probably sometime next summer. (There is no use in my sending
anything more to _The Dial_; they just rejected my “Stark Major,” and it
is plain that their interest in helping American letters is very
incidental. Note the predominance given to translations of the older
generation of Germans, etc., who have absolutely nothing to give us but
a certain ante-bellum “refinement.” They aren’t printing the younger
crowd of any country.) All this should convince you, as well as myself,
of the real place and necessity for _Secession_. Of course I’m sorry now
that I fooled around sending “F and H” anywhere else at all. _Dial_ had
a chance at that, too, you know.
You may be indisposed to Waldo Frank, but I must recommend to you _City
Block_ as the richest in content of any “fiction” that has appeared in
the American 20th century. Frank has the real mystic’s vision. His
apprehensions astonish one. I have also enjoyed reading Ouspensky’s
_Tertium Organum_ lately. Its corroboration of several experiences in
consciousness that I have had gave it particular interest.
135: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _Feb. 18th, ’23_
Dear Gorham: -- -- -- -- Your summary of praises for “F and H” was such a
fine tribute that it might account for my backache and confinement to
the bed yesterday. But the more probable cause for _that_, however, is
liquor and the cogitations and cerebral excitements it threw me into
regarding my new enterprise, _The Bridge_, on the evening precedent. I
am too much interested in this _Bridge_ thing lately to write letters,
ads, or anything. It is just beginning to take the least outline,--and
the more outline the conception of the thing takes,--the more its final
difficulties appal me. All this preliminary thought has to result, of
course, in some channel forms or mould into which I throw myself at
white heat. Very roughly, it concerns a mystical synthesis of “America.”
History and fact, location, etc., all have to be transfigured into
abstract form that would almost function independently of its subject
matter. The initial impulses of “our people” will have to be gathered up
toward the climax of the bridge, symbol of our constructive future, our
unique identity, in which is included also our scientific hopes and
achievements of the future. The mystic portent of all this is already
flocking through my mind (when I say this I should say “the mystic
possibilities,” but that is all that’s worth announcing, anyway) but the
actual statement of the thing, the marshalling of the forces, will take
me months, at best; and I may have to give it up entirely before that;
it may be too impossible an ambition. But if I do succeed, such a waving
of banners, such ascent of towers, such dancing, etc., will never before
have been put down on paper! The form will be symphonic, something like
“F and H” with its treatment of varied content, and it will probably
approximate the same length in lines. It is perhaps rather silly to go
on this way before more than a dozen lines have been written, but at any
rate it serves to excuse my possible deficiencies in correspondence in
the near future, should the obsession carry me much further. I hate to
have to go to work every day! When I get _The Bridge_ done, or something
of equal length, I think it will be time to try Liveright or Huebsch or
Knopf for a collected publication. Just now I have hardly enough of even
quality and tone to satisfy me. Of course I’m glad to know that Wheeler
and Wescott are interested in me, especially as I am led to respect
their standards, but I might as well relinquish my mss. to the desk
drawer as to offer its publication to Wheeler, at least so far as I
know. Did he publish Turbyfill in Chicago? or was it Berlin? You will
naturally see my reasons for at least attempting the more standard
publishers first, I’m sure. And until I have the extra and necessary
amount to add, there is no use committing myself to any arrangements at
all. In passing I do want to thank you, Gorham, for your constant
interest in interpreting me to others whose added interest all makes me
confident that I have more to offer than I once supposed. And I am even
more grateful for your very rich suggestions best stated in your _Frank
Study_ on the treatment of mechanical manifestations of today as subject
for lyrical, dramatic, and even epic poetry. You must already notice
that influence in “F and H.” It is to figure even larger in _The
Bridge_. The field of possibilities literally glitters all around one
with the perception and vocabulary to pick out significant details and
digest them into something emotional.
Your visit to Amy Lowell was a characteristic literary experience in
American letters of the day, a baptism, as it were, from the Episcopal
font, endowing you with the proper blessing and chastisement necessary
for the younger generation. All hail to Amy’s poetry propaganda! but I
should not enjoy talking to her.
I think you discovered the weak points in my review pretty well.
However, I think Wheelwright’s recent letter about _Secession_ in _The
Freeman_ displayed very little evidence as prose workmanship, even of
the most fundamental nature. He certainly sustained himself much better
as “Dorian Abbott.” In the letter his partis pris emotionalism was too
evident to convince his readers properly. In this sense, a course in
advertising would be good for him, which reminds me that I’ll soon send
you one of my campaigns that not only “went over big” but is
theoretically a good piece of work. Are you still studying this modern
science?
It must be rather hellish reading through so many books every week that
your eyes pop out. Truly, you must look for some editorial post,
copywriting job, or something that will relieve you of such strains. I
think you will probably find things much smoother in your new apartment
which I’m delighted to think of. Is it in the Village? I can’t quite
place it. When I come down in June, I’ll probably plan on staying with
you and Elizabeth [Mrs. Munson].
Just now, it’s Vulcan back to the Furnace! The “bowels” poem comes out
in the next _S4N_, which bunch Tate writes that he has just joined
through my communications. He has submitted “Pins and Needles,” which I
imagine Fitts will use. I’m waiting now for _The Dial_ to send back my
“Stark Major.” Just sent a caricature of Paul Rosenfeld to _The Little
Review_, telling them to publish it, if they cared to, “along with the
rest of my inadvertent correspondence.” It is called “Anointment of our
Well Dressed Critic,” or “Why Waste the Eggs?”--Three-dimensional Vista,
by Hart Crane. Allons!
136: TO ----
[_Cleveland_] [_Feb. 20_]
Dear ----: Those who have wept in the darkness sometimes are rewarded
with stray leaves blown inadvertently. Since your last I have [had] one
of those few experiences that come,--ever, but which are almost
sufficient in their very incompleteness. This was only last evening in a
vaudeville show with -- -- -- --. -- -- -- -- has manifested charming traits
before, but there has always been an older brother around. Last
night--it sounds silly enough to tell (but not in view of his real
beauty)--O, it was only a matter of light affectionate stray
touches--and half-hinted speech. But these were genuine and in that
sense among the few things I can remember happily. With -- -- -- -- you
must think of someone mildly sober, with a face not too thin, but with
faun precision of line and feature. Crisp ears, a little pointed, fine
and docile hair almost golden, yet darker,--eyes that are a little
heavy--but wide apart and usually a little narrowed,--aristocratic
(English) jaws, and a mouth that [is] just mobile enough to suggest
voluptuousness. A strong rather slender figure, negligently carried,
that is perfect from flanks that hold an easy persistence to shoulders
that are soft yet full and hard. A smooth and rather olive skin that is
cool--at first.
Excuse this long catalog--I admit it is mainly for my own satisfaction,
and I am drunk now and in such state my satisfactions are always
lengthy. When I see you ask me to tell you more about him for he is
worth more and better words, I assure you. O yes, I shall see him again
soon. The climax will be all too easily reached,--But my gratitude is
enduring--if only for that _once_, at least, something beautiful
approached me and as though it were the most natural thing in the world,
enclosed me in his arm and pulled me to him without my slightest bid.
And we who create must endure--must hold to spirit not by the mind, the
intellect alone. These have no mystic possibilities. O flesh damned to
hate and scorn! I have felt my cheek pressed on the desert these days
and months too much. How old I am! Yet, oddly now this sense [of]
age--not at all in my senses--is gaining me altogether unique love and
happiness. I feel I have been thru much of this again and again before.
I long to go to India and stay always. Meditation on the sun is all
there is. Not that this isn’t enough! I mean I find my imagination more
sufficient all the time. The work of the workaday world is what I
dislike. I spend my evenings in music and sometimes ecstasy. I’ve been
writing a lot lately. --/--/ I’m bringing much into contemporary verse
that is new. I’m on a synthesis of America and its structural identity
now, called _The Bridge_. --/--/
137: TO WALDO FRANK
_Cleveland, O._ _Feb. 27th, ’23_
Dear Waldo Frank: Such major criticism as both you and Gorham have given
my “Faustus and Helen” is the most sensitizing influence I have ever
encountered. It is a new feeling, and a glorious one, to have one’s
inmost delicate intentions so fully recognized as your last letter to me
attested. I can feel a calmness on the sidewalk--where before I felt a
defiance only. And better than all--I am certain that a number of us at
last have some kind of community of interest. And with this communion
will come something better than a mere clique. It is a consciousness of
something more vital than stylistic questions and “taste,” it is vision,
and a vision alone that not only America needs, but the whole world. We
are not sure where this will lead, but after the complete renunciation
symbolized in _The Wasteland_ and, though less, in _Ulysses_ we have
sensed some new vitality. Whether I am in that current remains to be
seen,--but I am enough in it at least to be sure that you are
definitely in it already. What delights me almost beyond words is that
my natural idiom (which I have unavoidably stuck to in spite of nearly
everybody’s nodding, querulous head) has reached and carried to you so
completely the very blood and bone of me. There is only one way of
saying what comes to one in ecstasy. One works and works over it to
finish and organize it perfectly--but fundamentally that doesn’t affect
one’s _way_ of saying it. The enclosed poem will evidence enough meaning
of that, I fear, in certain flaws and weaknesses that, so far, I’ve not
had the grace to change. The norm of accuracy in such things is,
however, at best so far from second-reader penetration, that bad as it
is, I can’t resist sending it to you now.
Please do not feel it necessary to answer me until you are perfectly
free from other preoccupations. I know what such things cost, and knew
before your last letter exactly why you delayed. (Now that I see this
written, it sounds all-too presumptuous; however, my appreciation was
“prematurely ripe,” for that idea did occur.)
Munson’s _Study_ came to me today. I think Liveright did a very good
job, better than I expected. The photograph seconded an impression I
remembered of you several years ago in New York. I may be repeating
myself when I mention that you came into Brown’s Chop House one evening
and greeted some friends near a table where Harrison Smith and myself
were dining;--only, of course this Stieglitz portrait gives me a much
deeper impression. --/--/
138: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Cleveland_] _March 2nd, ’23_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ The last several days have been equally among the
most intense in my life. The annoyance comes in only on the swing of a
repressive _fate_. To be stimulated to the nth degree with your head
burgeoning with ideas and conceptions of the most baffling interest and
lure--and then to have to munch ideas on water heaters (I am writing
another book for house fraus!) has been a real cruelty this time,
however temporary. The more I think about my _Bridge_ poem the more
thrilling its symbolical possibilities become, and since my reading of
you and Frank (I recently bought _City Block_) I begin to feel myself
directly connected with Whitman. I feel myself in currents that are
positively awesome in their extent and possibilities. “Faustus and
Helen” was only a beginning--but in it I struck new _timbres_ that
suggest dozens more, all unique, yet poignant and expressive of our
epoch. Modern music almost drives me crazy! I went to hear D’Indy’s _II
Symphony_ last night and my hair stood on end at its revelations. To get
those, and others of men like Strauss, Ravel, Scriabin, and Bloch into
_words_, one needs to _ransack_ the vocabularies of Shakespeare, Jonson,
Webster (for theirs were the richest) and add on scientific, street and
counter, and psychological terms, etc. Yet I claim such things can be
done! The modern artist needs gigantic assimilative capacities,
emotion,--and the greatest of _all_--_vision_. “Striated with nuances,
nervosities, that we are heir to”--is more than a casual observation for
me. And then--structure! What pleased me greatly about Frank’s comment
was the notice of great structural evidence in “F. and H.” Potentially I
feel myself quite fit to become a suitable Pindar for the dawn of the
machine age, so called. I have lost the last shreds of philosophical
pessimism during the last few months. O yes, the “background of
life”--and all that is still there, but that is only three-dimensional.
It is to the pulse of a greater dynamism that my work must revolve.
Something terribly fierce and yet gentle.
You have no doubt wondered why I have behaved so strangely about the
review for your _Study_. It is coming sometime. At present I have
developed a chronic hesitation against it which must seem almost
pathological. I am so enthused about it that I can’t seem to adopt a
level-headed, conventionally-critical attitude about it. Also, the space
for such considerations as I would [get?] into is too restricted in the
Double-Skull to permit much more than either a screed, ineffective or
broken, or mere jacket type of advertisement. I hope you won’t
misinterpret my delay at any rate. As I said in my last note, the
typography, paper, cover, photograph--everything in fact, is of the best
taste and distinction. This book is bound to do you as much good as
Frank. The latter is shown by Stieglitz’s picture to be an extremely
mystic type. Don’t think me silly when I call the head and the eyes
extremely beautiful. Frank has done me a world of good by his last
letter (which promised another soon including further points on “F. &
H.”) and, as I wrote him, now I feel I can walk calmly along the
sidewalk whereas before I felt only defiance. He gripped the mystical
content of the poem so thoroughly that I despair of ever finding a more
satisfying enthusiast.
And now to your question about passing the good word along. I discover
that I have been all-too-easy all along in letting out announcements of
my sexual predilections. Not that anything unpleasant has happened or is
imminent. But it does put me into obligatory relations to a certain
extent with “those who know,” and this irks me to think of sometimes.
After all, when you’re dead it doesn’t matter, and this statement alone
proves my immunity from any “shame” about it. But I find the ordinary
business of earning a living entirely too stringent to want to add any
prejudices against me _of that nature_ in the minds of any publicans and
sinners. Such things have such a wholesale way of leaking out! Everyone
knows now about B----, H---- and others--the list too long to bother
with. I am all-too-free with my tongue and doubtless always shall
be--but I’m going to ask you to advise and work me better with a more
discreet behavior. --/--/
139: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
[_New York City_] _Sunday_ [_March_]
Dear Lotte and Richard: --/--/ I am quite happy. A long walk this
afternoon in salt air and clear sunlight. Everyone carrying canes and
wearing bright clothes. Lunch tomorrow with Waldo Frank. Munson is
enthusiastic about my staying with them. They have a fresh and charming
apartment with room enough for me, so everything is FINE.
I sat a long while thinking about how beautiful you both were when I
left you last night. Yes,--of course, Life is very beautiful when there
are such people to meet and love as I love you both. Be very happy.
Along with me. I never felt better before.
140: TO WALDO FRANK
[_New York City_] _Easter_
Dear Waldo: --/--/ I don’t need to mention that it was great to shake
hands and talk with you. This I must mention, however,--that we have not
yet had a real meeting. My mind has been packed with things that must be
talked over with you when conditions are opportune. I am not intending
mysterious words. But I am looking forward to the time--perhaps the
times--that we shall get together and (in the wonderful slang phrase)
“spark.” Since reading _City Block_ I have not wavered in an
enthusiastic conviction that yours is the most vital consciousness in
America, and that potentially I have responses which might prove
interesting, even valuable to us both. My statements are awkward, and I
really do not know how to proceed about such conversations: they
“usually,” as you know, “just happen.” All this leads to a very simple
suggestion, however,--and that is that I hope you will let me know when
you are next in town when we can lunch or dine together. -- -- -- --
141: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK
_New York City_ _April 13th, ’23_
Dear Lotte: I am glad that you can use the smock. Richard’s illustration
of you using it is very effective, and the “covers the earth” drawing is
exemplary and inspirational indeed. --/--/
I am glad that you like _Our America_. Frank says some very wonderful
things in that book. It is coming out again next year and with new
additions. This time, as I understand him, he intends to mention my work
in it. Meeting some of the older poets and writers down here is an odd
experience. Most of them are very disagreeable, and don’t talk the same
language as we do, they are not concerned with the same problems. I read
“Faustus and Helen” to a group of people last evening, and very few of
them, of course understood anything that I was talking about. If it
weren’t for the praise and understanding I have received from people
like Frank and Munson and Allen Tate, etc., I would begin to feel that I
might be to blame. But this “new consciousness” is something that takes
a long while to “put across.” I want Richard to meet my friends, the
Habichts, who have their apartment filled with lovely things to touch
and look at, and who serve wonderful sherry and Benedictine. I have too
many invitations to really enjoy. Your friends quickly turn into enemies
here, unless you limit the time you give for social affairs. --/--/
142: TO ALFRED STIEGLITZ
[_New York City_] _April 15th, ’23_
Dear great and good man, Alfred Stieglitz: I don’t know whether or not I
mentioned to you yesterday that I intend to include my short verbal
definition of your work and aims in a fairly comprehensive essay on your
work. I had not thought of doing this until you so thoroughly confirmed
my conjectures as being the only absolutely correct statement that you
had thus far heard concerning your photographs. That moment was a
tremendous one in my life because I was able to share all the truth
toward which I am working in my own medium, poetry, with another man who
had manifestly taken many steps in that same direction in _his_ work.
Since we seem, then, already so well acquainted I have a request to make
of you regarding the kernel of my essay, which I am quoting below as you
requested. Until I can get the rest of my essay on your work into form,
I would prefer that you keep my statement in strict confidence. I would
like to give it a fresh presentation with other amplifications and
details concerning what I consider your position as a scientist,
philosopher or whatever wonder you are. You know the world better than I
do, but we probably would agree on certain reticences and their
safe-guarding from inaccurate hands. I shall be up to see you probably
very soon, and we can talk again. The reason for my not accompanying Mr.
Munson this afternoon, however, is that I want to get into certain
explanations of your photographs about which, now, I feel a certain
proud responsibility.
* * * * *
“The camera has been well proved the instrument of personal perception
in a number of living hands, but in the hands of Alfred Stieglitz it
becomes the instrument of something more specially vital--apprehension.
The eerie speed of the shutter is more adequate than the human eye to
remember, catching even the transition of the mist-mote into the cloud,
the thought that is jetted from the eye to leave it instantly forever.
Speed is at the bottom of it all--the hundredth of a second caught so
precisely that the motion is continued from the picture infinitely: the
moment made eternal.
“This baffling capture is an end in itself. It even seems to get at the
motion and emotion of so-called inanimate life. It is the passivity of
the camera coupled with the unbounded respect of this photographer for
its mechanical perfectibility which permits nature and all life to
mirror itself so intimately and so unexpectedly that we are thrown into
ultimate harmonies by looking at these stationary, yet strangely moving
pictures.
“If the essences of things were in their mass and bulk we should not
need the clairvoyance of Stieglitz’s photography to arrest them for
examination and appreciation. But they are suspended on the invisible
dimension whose vibrance has been denied the human eye at all times save
in the intuition of ecstasy. Alfred Stieglitz can say to us today what
William Blake said to as baffled a world more than a hundred years ago
in his ‘To the Christians’:
‘I give you the end of a golden string:
Only wind it into a ball,--
It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate,
Built in Jerusalem’s wall.’”
143: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK
[_New York City_] [_ca. May 7_]
My dear Lotte: --/--/ R[ichard Rychtarik] wanted me to ask Frank about
the privilege of translating some of the stories in _City Block_. I got
an answer from Frank this morning, suggesting that Richard translate the
book if I thought him able. Well,--translating is difficult, and
especially Waldo Frank is hard to translate, I am sure. I think it would
be fine if Richard went ahead with the stories. But before any are
published I think it would be wise to try them out on some other people
who do Czech trans. from _Czech into English_ and see how true the
original style has been preserved. You are going to be angry with me for
all this fuss, I am sure, but you see I have no way of judging how well
Richard understands English as a literary language. I don’t want to
misrepresent Richard to Frank either. Please let me know what you think
of my plan. I shall send you back the copy of _City Block_ that R.
brought. It is your copy _to keep_; Frank is going to send me another
for myself.
I am going over to the office of _The Dial_ now to leave Richard’s
drawings, etc., for their consideration. We can’t expect to hear
anything about them for two or three weeks. I’ll let you know as soon as
I do. --/--/
144: TO WILLIAM SOMMER
_N. Y. C._ _May 9th, ’23_
Dear Bill: At LAST a letter from you!!! And let me mention that it was
one of the most beautiful I ever got from anyone. AND I am expecting
more. I read it the second and third times during my meal last night
down in one of the Italian restaurants on the lower East Side. There you
get a bottle of wine (fine, too!) and a good meal (that delights the
eyes as well as the stomach) for about $1. And such service! The waiters
all beam and are really interested in pleasing you. As Rychtarik said
when he was here last week, it’s just like Europe. I don’t know where I
should have been by this time, however, had it not been for three or
four fine people,--Gorham and his wife, and Slater Brown (the friend of
Cummings, “B” in _The Enormous Room_) who, in spite of knowing me only a
couple of weeks, has put me up nights in his room during the recent
spell of grippe in the Munson household, and who has kept me in funds,
poured wine into me, and taken me to the greatest burlesque shows down
on the lower east side that you ever imagined. We went to one last
night, and I so wished you were along. (They do everything but the Act
itself right on the stage, marvelous jazz songs, jokes, etc., and really
the best entertainment there is in N. Y. at present.) I have bids in for
jobs at two very good agencies. The thing is a farce, however, the way
you are kept waiting to know the outcome of one interview after another
with various executives. J. Walter Thompson have had me on the string
for three weeks, and a letter this morning tells me that within the next
few days I must drag myself up there again for another interview with
one more Thompson executive. It is the same way at Batten’s. I shall
have to cast about for anything available from stevedoring to
table-waiting pretty soon if they don’t get a move on.
Of course I have been rushing around to a lot of other agencies, too,
but the ones I just mentioned are the only ones who have anything to
offer me at the present time. I am very glad that you reminded me about
the cost of the photographs as I certainly can use as much of that money
as you can afford to send me at the present time. Hill charged me $20.00
for the six reproductions. I can’t cash any check here, so if you can
send me whatever portion of this amount in currency through the mail (I
enclose an addressed envelope) I’ll be immensely grateful. There is, you
realize, no use whatever in my thinking about returning to Cleveland. I
should simply have to go through the same process there of looking
around for work, and under embarrassing conditions. You need me HERE,
now, more than _there_, too, Bill, as I want to do everything I can to
get your pictures shown around and maybe bought. And also, in almost
every way, N.Y. is getting to be a really stupendous place. It is the
center of the world today, as Alexandria became the nucleus of another
older civilization. The wealthier and upper parts of the city have their
own beauty, but I prefer as a steady thing the wonderful streets of this
lower section, crowded with life, packed with movement and drama,
children, kind and drab-looking women, elbows braced on window ledges,
and rows of vegetables lining the streets that you would love to paint.
Life is possible here at greater intensity than probably any other place
in the world today, and I hope and pray that you will be able to slip
down here for a week or so during the summer. You must plan on it. Later
on I shall probably take a small apartment with Brown, and then there
will be plenty of room for you to stay with us at no expense at all.
--/--/
145: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
[_New York City_] _June 5th, ’23_
Dear Charlotte and Richard: If you have seen or heard from my mother
lately you know already that I am all fixed up in my own room and as
happy as a bug in a rug! I wish you could see it for it is very
pleasant. Two windows opposite each other so there is almost always a
breeze, square high ceiling, newly-painted light-grey walls, black floor
and white ceiling, and all black furniture very plain but plentiful. I
have a fine large table to write on. When my luck turned it seemed to
turn equally favorably in every direction. I am not having to live in
any rooming house with an inquisitive landlady always looking through
the keyhole. A friend of my friend, Slater Brown, who has just left for
a long trip in Europe, has let me take his room with all his own
furniture and all for a very low price in comparison with the high rents
everywhere around here. It’s also right in the neighborhood where most
of my friends are living. Add to this good fortune a fine new Victrola,
and you see I am all ready to begin on _The Bridge_ again. It would not
have been possible to have done this if you had not been so generous and
helped me out so much,--but I can’t tell you how fine I feel to get my
feet on the ground again and put my nose up into the sky again for a few
minutes with the _Meistersinger_ Overture.
New York has been like a blazing furnace for the last two days, but I
shall be glad to stay here all summer working at my job and writing. I
feel that I am getting now just where I have longed to be for so long. I
can have absolute quiet and seclusion when I want it, wine when I need
it, and the intense and interesting spectacle of the streets and all the
various people. --/--/
146: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _June 10th ’23_
Dear Grace: --/--/ Really, I’m having the finest time in my life.
There’s no use trying to describe the people I go round with. Not that
there are so many--there could easily be, but I’m always cutting down on
all but the few I like the most. Last night marketing with Sue [Jenkins]
and Bill Brown down in the Italian section (where everyone looks so
happy!) was a perfect circus. We carried pots and pans, spinach,
asparagus, etc., etc., from place to place--only buying one kind of
thing in each store--jostling with the crowds, etc. I’ve never been with
young people I enjoyed so much, and they, of course, have had real
lives. Then there is Kenneth Burke up at the _Dial_ office, Matty
Josephson (who has suddenly been moved to value me highly), Edward
Nagle, Gaston Lachaise, Malcolm Cowley--but what’s the use going on with
so many mere names. You can see how much fun I am having--and all the
more because I have a job and a totally different world to live in half
the time. Did I write you that I am getting quite a reputation with my
“Faustus & Helen” poem? Although it is only now being printed in
Florence, those critics and writers who have seen it are acclaiming me
with real gusto. Waldo Frank asked me to luncheon with him recently and
said I was the greatest contemporary American poet with that piece
alone. And John Cowper Powys, whose _Suspended Judgments_ and _Visions
and Revisions_ you have read, is very enthusiastic. Since I got
presented with my Victrola I am ready to start again on _The Bridge_.
Waldo Frank is very anxious for me to have that finished, as he intends
to take me up to his publisher (Boni & Liveright), and have me published
in volume form. But, of course, such things _can’t_ be rushed as he
understands.
I have not seen or heard from Miss Spencer since I made her my initial
bow. She spoke of finding me something but evidently didn’t sprain
herself in the attempt. That’s all right, however. There was little
reason why she should have. I didn’t _ask_ her, anyway. I shan’t see her
again, as she is your friend and we have nothing special in common
anyway. Waldo Frank, Alyse Gregory & others used some influence in
getting me my job with _J. Walter Thompson_ (get the name right this
time!), but I never would have got it if my samples and conversation had
not convinced them. I begin to see N. Y. very much more intimately since
I’ve been working. It makes living here far more pleasant than ever
before. Such color and style (on men, too) I’ve never seen before--no
two alike. That’s what is so interesting--the perfect freedom of wearing
what you want to, walking the gait you like (I have a much less hurried
gait than you’re familiar with) and nobody bothering you.
I don’t know many at the office yet. It’s too immense and I’m confined
to a highly specializing dept., but I’ve already been invited out to tea
by the personnel secretary. They employ a lot of real writers as
copywriters at Thompson’s, and have an entirely different feeling about
art & business than you encounter any place west of N.Y. In fact it’s a
feather in your cap if you know a little more than you’re “supposed to”
here. I think I’ve gained immeasurably by coming here now instead of
dragging along in Cleveland month after month. --/--/
147: TO RICHARD RYCHTARIK
[_New York City_] _June 21st, ’23_
Dear Richard: --/--/ Dr. Watson, President of _The Dial_ (Magazine), has
seen your drawings, etc., and wants me to ask you if you would care to
sell him “one” of them, and the rights for reproduction for _two_
others in _The Dial_. He is offering the same price and terms to you
that he made to Sommer,--$25.00 for the original, and the reproduction
rights without any payment. So will you kindly let me know what you
think about the matter very soon?
I don’t know what selections he has made yet, and will probably have no
time to see him for weeks, as I have office hours and he is seldom at
_The Dial_ offices,--but regardless of these details, I think that it
would be wisdom for you to accept the terms, however modest, in view of
the amount of prestige it will possibly give you, in the first place to
be “hanging in his house,” and in the second place to have your work
shown to about 18,000 people through the pages of the magazine. Of
course, I am _very_ happy that he has liked your work so well. This
makes _Two_ artists’ work that I have had a hand in getting
exhibited,--both from my “home town.” --/--/
148: TO ALFRED STIEGLITZ
[_New York City_] _Fourth of July_
Dear STIEGLITZ: Your letter was the most welcome thing that has come to
me in these last two weeks since you left, however late and partial my
response may seem to be. You should have heard from me much before this
if I hadn’t been neck high in writing some climacterics for my _Bridge_
poem. That simply carried me out of myself and all personal interests
from the dot of five until two in the morning sometimes--for several
days during which I was extremely happy. Those were also the very days
when I wanted most to write you,--paradoxically as it sounds, I _was_,
of course, for you and I meet on the same platform in our best and most
impersonal moods,--SO, I’ve been with you very much. The thing which
hurts me now that I have the time to write letters, is that I not only
have left the creative currents that would have prompted me to better
statements than I am usually equal to,--but also that I’m in a low state
of reactions towards everything, following an evening with Mr. J----.
Malice seems to settle inertly but very positively in some people, and
as he is somehow attached to several really fine friends of mine whose
company I would hate to forego on such account, I suppose I must learn
to face this little clown with better results. So far, I can only say
that wine is no ally against such odds. It even turns to vinegar! and
that is much less pleasing than pure water. I don’t need to say any more
to you about this man, his vacant mind, vague eyes and empty hands.
We’ve given that enough attention. I rant here merely because I have
been cheated (willy-nilly) of pouring out a clearer cup today, as I had
planned. I, in the end, am really the one to blame.
When I say that I welcomed your letter it doesn’t mean that I was
unconcerned enough with its testament of pain and accident not to think
about you and your situation many hours. What the details of those
matters were certainly would not help me to realize any the better that
you have been going through a very tumultuous period and that it has
been very fortunate that you should arrive in the country when you did,
not that you escaped them,--but that you were able to _see_ them more
tranquilly. The city is a place of “brokenness,” of drama; but when a
certain development in this intensity is reached a new stage is created,
or must be, arbitrarily, or there is a foreshortening, a loss and a
premature disintegration of experience. You are setting the keynote now
for a higher tranquillity than ever. It is an even wider intensity,
also. You see, I am writing to you perhaps very egoistically, but you
will understand that I am always seeing your life and experience very
solidly as a part of my own because I feel our identities so much alike
in spiritual direction. When it comes to action we diverge in several
ways,--but I’m sure we center in common devotions, in a kind of timeless
vision.
In the above sense I feel you as entering very strongly into certain
developments in _The Bridge_. May I say it, and not seem absurd, that
you are the first, or rather the purest living indice of a new order of
consciousness that I have met? We are accomplices in many ways that we
don’t yet fully understand. “What is now proved was once only imagined,”
said Blake. I have to combat every day those really sincere people, but
limited, who deny the superior logic of metaphor in favor of their
perfect sums, divisions and subtractions. They cannot go a foot unless
to merely catch up with some predetermined and set boundaries, nor can
they realize that they do nothing but walk ably over an old track
bedecked with all kinds of signposts and “championship records.” Nobody
minds their efforts, which frequently amount to a great deal,--but I
object to their system of judgment being so regally applied to what I’m
interested in doing. Such a cramping cannot be reconciled with the work
which you have done, and which I feel myself a little beginning to do.
The great energies about us cannot be transformed that way into a higher
quality of life, and by perfecting our sensibilities, response and
actions, we are always contributing more than we can realize
(rationalize) at the time. We answer them a little vaguely, first,
because our ends are forever unaccomplished, and because, secondly, our
work is self-explanatory enough, if they could “see” it. I nearly go mad
with the intense but always misty realization of what _can_ be done if
potentialities are fully freed, released. I know you to feel the same
way about your camera,--despite all that you actually _have_ done with
it already. In that sense I hope to make it the one memorable thing to
you in this letter that I think you should go on with your photographic
synthesis of life this summer and fall, gathering together those
dangerous interests outside of yourself into that purer projection of
yourself. It is really not a projection in any but a loose sense, for I
feel more and more that in the absolute sense the artist _identifies_
himself with life. Because he has always had so much surrounding
indifference and resistance such “action” takes on a more relative and
limited term which has been abused and misunderstood by several
generations,--this same “projecting.” But in the true mystical sense as
well as in the sense which Aristotle meant by the “imitation of nature,”
I feel that I’m right.
I shall go on thinking of you, the apples and the gable, and writing you
whenever I can get a moment. So much has to be crammed into my narrow
evenings and holidays, that I am becoming a poor correspondent with
everyone, I fear. You will realize how much I am with you, I feel sure,
by other signs. I am sending you a roughly typed sheet containing some
lines from _The Bridge_.[29] They symbolize its main intentions.
However, as they are fragmentary and not in entirely finished form,
please don’t show them around. I only want you to get a better idea of
what I’m saying than could be “said” in prose. Some of the lines will be
clear enough to give a glimpse of some of my ideas whether or not the
Whole can be grasped from such fragments or not. -- -- -- --
149: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK
[_New York City_] _July 21st ’23_
Dear Charlotte: Your lovely letter came to me this morning ... I read it
on the way to work. And I am full of happiness that you think of me as
you do,--both you and Richard. Yes, it is my birthday and I must be a
little sentimental,--especially as all my friends have recently left the
city for places more cool and green and watery. It has been a frightful
day, torrid and frying. And I have just come back from a lonely meal in
Prince Street,--the place where Richard ate with me, and where I have
been many times since he left. Ah, yes, _there_ is wine, but what is
wine when you drink it alone! Yet, I am happy here in my room with the
Victrola playing Ravel,--the Faery Garden piece which you and I heard
so often together up in my room in Cleveland. When I think of that room,
it is almost to give way to tears, because I shall never find my way
back to it. It is not necessary, of course, that I should, but just the
same it was the center and beginning of all that I am and ever will be,
the center of such pain as would tear me to pieces to tell you about,
and equally the center of great joys. _The Bridge_ seems to me so
beautiful,--and it was there that I first thought about it, and it was
there that I wrote “Faustus and Helen,” which Waldo Frank says is so
good that I will be remembered by that, whether or not I write more or
not. And all this is, of course, connected very intimately with my
Mother, my beautiful mother whom I am so glad you love and speak about.
Indeed it was fine of you to go over and see her as I asked you to do,
Charlotte and Richard! And may I also say, in the same breath, that your
letter was very painful? It really was,--because I have known all the
things you said about her unhappiness for many, many months. _And_ there
is really nothing that can be done: that is the worst of it. I am sure
if you think a minute about my Grandmother’s age you will realize from
that alone that my Mother could not possibly leave her to come here or
anywhere else. And my Grandmother, at her age, cannot move. My mother
has had her full share of suffering and I have had much, also. I have
had enough, anyway, to realize that it is all very beautiful in the end
if you will pierce through to the center of it and see it in relation to
the real emotions and values of Life. Do not think I am entirely happy
here,--or ever will be, for that matter, except for a few moments at a
time when I am perhaps writing or receiving a return of love. The true
idea of God is the only thing that can give happiness,--and that is the
identification of yourself with _all of life_. It is a fierce and humble
happiness, both at the same time, and I am hoping that my Mother will
find that _feeling_ (for it need not be a conscious thought) at some
time or other. She must _accept everything_ and as it comes (as we all
must) before she can come to such happiness, glorious sorrow, or
whatever you want to call it. You must never think that I am not doing
all I can to make my Mother’s life as bright as possible, even though I
do not always succeed. I am doing work of a kind which I should not
choose to do at all except that it makes me (or will make me) more money
in the end than the simpler things which would satisfy my own single
requirements--and just because I want to provide for my mother’s future
as much as I can. We shall be together more and more as time goes on,
and this separation at present is only temporary. You don’t know how
grateful I am that you have given her your sympathy and love, and that
has been _real_ or she would not have confided in you the way she has.
--/--/
I hope that I have not put you and Richard to too much trouble about
those books. They will be fine here with me in my room. Mother sent me
my trunk (that much debated question which you will remember!) this
week, and it was full of all kinds of dear familiar things that you have
seen and touched in my room. There is that ivory Chinese box, for
instance, which is here before me as I write. It looks very charming on
the black table next to the jade Buddha that Harry [Candee] brought me
from China.
I have not written much this last week,--too hot for one thing,--and
then there are always people dropping in in the evening. But I am
sending you a copy (to keep) of the last part of _The Bridge_ which is
all that I have done so far, that is, in a lump.[30] You will remember
enough of what I told you a long time ago about my general ideas and the
plan of the entire poem to understand it fairly well anyway. It is sheer
ecstasy here,--that is, all my friends who have seen it, say that. It
was written verse by verse in the most tremendous emotional exaltations
I have ever felt. I may change a few words in it here and there before
the entire poem is finished, but there will be practically the same
arrangement as what you see. If I only had more time away from office
work I should have made much faster progress,--but I am perfectly sure
that it will be finished within a year,--and as it is to be about four
or five times as long as the enclosed fragment when it is complete,--I
shall have been working about as fast on it as I have ever worked in the
past. I am especially anxious to finish it, however, because than I
shall have all my best things brought out in book form, and with a
jacket or cover by Richard Rychtarik, I hope. Waldo Frank is anxious to
introduce me to his publisher when the right time comes, and so there is
no doubt but that the book will come out eventually. In the meantime
there is a long essay that I hope to write on the photography of Alfred
Stieglitz. I ought to have about two weeks for that _away from
everything_, when I could shut myself up somewhere and not have my mind
taken away from it for a moment. In it I shall have to go very
deep,--into, perhaps, some of the most delicate problems of art in the
future. You see, I too, have my moments of despair,--for there is so
little time for me to think about such things. I am succeeding in my
position with the advertising agency quite well,--but all that means
_more_ work there, and even _less_ time for what I want to do. I am
forced to be ambitious in two directions, you see, and in many ways it
is like being put up on a cross and divided. I hope to succeed in them
both,--the reasons you will easily understand. This last week I got
promoted to the copy department, and on Tuesday night I shall take the
train for Chicago. Business of the company, of course, which will keep
me out of New York for probably about ten days or two weeks. Being with
the largest advertising agency in the world is giving me fine experience
that will get me higher-paid positions in other places after awhile. In
many ways I have been very lucky to get placed so well at my age, so I
complain about nothing except that I would like to have the days twice
as long as they are--for all I want to do. --/--/
150: TO ALFRED STIEGLITZ
[_New York City_] _Aug 11th ’23_
Dear Stieglitz: The imagination dwells on frangible boughs! For ten days
now I’ve been travelling through the middle west on _business_ for the
company. Investigating certain sales facts and figures among hardware
and paint dealers on “Barrelled Sunlight,” a kind of white paint! My
mind is like dough and _The Bridge_ is far away. Your card was a warm
signal to me on the morning of my joyful return. I never saw the Venus
in her sphere before--looking on the world with the wind from Delphos in
her hair! How do you do it? You have the distinction of being classic
and realistic at once. That, of course, is what _real_ classicism means.
You don’t know how much I think about my essay on you and your work!
Please don’t think me faithless. I fly in a rage when I think of the
sacrifices I pay just to feed myself in the hope of time--a rightful
heritage of all of us--and it takes time to say and think out the things
I feel in your photographs. I’ll try and write you more soon, but don’t
misunderstand any silences from me. _I am your brother always_--
151: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _Aug 11 ’23_
Dear Grace and Grandma: --/--/ I came near a collapse near the middle of
the week--the trip, hot weather, etc., certainly tested me and worries
kept me from much sleep--as things are. N.Y. is bad in the summer
anyway--takes all the vitality you have to give and gives you back
nothing to build with or repair. I hope things are going better now.
I’ll write maybe during next week--but worry about correspondence is a
burden sometimes when I have so much new work to think about. You’ll
understand me, I hope, in any case. I enjoyed your letter, Grandma, and
it wasn’t too long. You write extraordinarily well!
152: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
[_New York City_] _Sunday, Aug. 19th_
Dear Lotte and Richard: Not much has happened since I got back, but it
will interest you to know that ---- came around for lunch one day last
week--and we had a talk about the book, _Ulysses_! I didn’t openly
accuse him of _stealing_ it, just “borrowing” it,--but he certainly
revealed a very weak position, leaving me to think more than ever that
he is dishonest. He denied that he had been up to my room at all until I
reminded him that he had told me so himself just a few weeks before, and
that, anyway, my Mother had mentioned that he had been up there and had
spoken about “borrowing” the book himself. This seemed to throw him into
great confusion. He said he would look around among his things in his
trunk, then, and “see” if he had taken it and forgotten to mention it to
me. Imagine! Anybody who takes a book of such a size and value DOES NOT
FORGET ABOUT IT SO EASILY. It seems to me that in admitting a thing like
that he has practically admitted all I suspected. I told him to go ahead
and look for it,--but he has probably sold it, and he will also probably
keep away from me until I go after him in earnest. It would not have
been tactful of me to accuse him of stealing right away,--but if he has
done that I think he is going to be sorry for it. Isn’t it hard to
believe!!!!
I also talked to him about the way he acted about your pictures--and
told him that I had agreed with you both in your attitude. It seemed to
make him furious that you had spoken to me about it, and he said he was
going to write you--evidently an angry letter. Maybe you have got it by
this time. It is all too bad--it has really shocked me enormously to
have discovered such crooked hypocrisy in such a good mind. I was
anxious that you should know about my conversation with ---- because, if
he does write you as he said he would, you will know that I have tried
to be as honest as I know how to be. --/--/
It is a beautiful day here, but as usual, I am sitting in, reading and
writing. Just had breakfast with Gorham Munson and Liza, his wife. You
would really like Liza, Charlotte. She teaches dancing and is dark and
quiet and beautiful. The Munsons are about the only friends of mine who
are now in town--all the rest being away in the country. --/--/
153: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _Aug. 24th, ’23_
Dear Grace: --/--/ But I didn’t accuse him of anything further at the
time--and haven’t since,--hoping that he would possibly be able to get
hold of the book and return it to me somehow, if he got frightened
enough. However, I have a letter all written to him. It will be sent
just as soon as I get time to type it out; probably this week-end.
There’s nothing doubtful about what I say in it either. I’m only sorry
that no action can be taken against him. We are both out of the state
where the theft occurred--and the book has been banned by the mails,
anyway, so I wouldn’t get much favor in the courts on that account.
-- -- -- -- had the brass to come here the other day (this makes me think
him almost nutty) and instead of having himself announced at the outer
reception room--comes ranging around among the people in the office,
inquiring for me, and then comes up and stands and chats at my desk
without the least concern! AND--what do you suppose he wants of me.
--/--/ Just think of such an idiotic project--to say nothing of assuming
that I would care to risk my standing around here for such a project!
Then he keeps asking me out to the -- -- -- -- with a kind of desperate
insistence, as though he thought I could be recompensed for his
defaulting by satisfying some “social aspirations.” He certainly is
terrible, silly as well.
I feel one hundred per cent better since I got back to copy work. I’m up
on the fourteenth floor now with a wonderful view out over the Murray
Hill section and the East River right off the edge of my desk. I’m far
from being dissatisfied, as you suggested. The plain fact was, and still
is--that New York takes such a lot from you that you have to save all
you can of yourself or you simply give out. I need a good bed, but it
will be a long time before I can get one unless you feel like shipping
that little brass bed on the third floor down here to me sometime. That
would be fine, and could serve me always here, but you’ll probably think
it is out of the question to send it. It doesn’t make much difference
how early you go to bed if you can’t get to sleep--you know that. And
that has been the state of things with me for some time here. However,
I’m really feeling all right. It’s just tiredness--and worry that you
are very, very unhappy--what to do--etc.
I don’t know what is wrong with Charlotte and Richard. They haven’t
sent my books to me on the date they said they would, nor have I had a
word from them since Cleveland. If they are going to get upset and
offended about something that I don’t even guess having said to injure
them--then, they, like a whole lot of other people who go around just
aching to cut their own heads off, will have to do it. Perhaps they’ve
just been very busy, though; it’s certainly too early yet to make any
definite assumptions. --/--/
154: TO ALFRED STIEGLITZ
_New York City_ _Aug. 25th, ’23_
Dear Stieglitz: I am hoping that you have seen Waldo, as you mentioned
in your letter, by this time. The idea seemed so sensible to me, knowing
as I have, the uneasy frictions that have bothered both of you and
having regretted so much the evident misunderstandings all around. It is
very important for us all--that is, all who are trying to establish an
honest basis for what work we get a chance to do. It isn’t, as you say,
a matter of politics,--but something akin to our spiritual bread and
butter. Not all our manna comes from the skies. And we suffer
all-too-much from social malnutrition once we try to live _entirely_
with the ghostly past. We must somehow touch the clearest veins of
eternity flowing through the crowds around us--or risk being the kind of
glorious cripples that have missed some vital part of their inheritance.
It’s good to hear that you have been “at the camera” again and that you
are recovering, with physical and nervous rest, that extremity of
delicate equilibrium that goes into your best activities. I know what it
is to be exiled for months at a time. They’re the usual things with me,
and lately it has been especially hard to be cut up between the
necessities of a readjustment at the office (they’ve put me into a new
department and I enjoy writing copy again to some extent) and the more
natural propulsion toward such things as _The Bridge_. I’ve been in such
despair about this latter for some time!--not seeing my way to introduce
it in the way I want (the end and climax, what you have seen, is all
that’s done so far) and not getting the needful hours to ripen anything
in myself. If I can once get certain obligations disposed of in my
family, I shall certainly break loose and do only such simple labor for
my room and board as will not come into my consciousness after “working
hours.” Streams of “copy” and ad layouts course through my head all
night sometimes until I feel like a thread singed and twisted in the
morning. This has been, very likely, as strenuous [a] year and as
wasteful a one as I shall encounter for a long time, although you can
never foretell such things as long as you have a family and connections.
But I am looking forward to a more equable program when winter comes,
when people’s windows are shut, cats are quieter and the air more
bracing.
Every once in a while I [get] a statement or so noted down in regard to
my interpretation of you and your photographs. There are still many
things in the lucid explanation of them that simply baffle me. To use a
modern simile that occurred to me in that connection--it’s like trying
to locate “the wires of the Acropolis”; indeed, I may call my essay by
that name before I get through. A little recent study of Picasso and his
Harlequins has been illuminating on the inner realities and spiritual
quantities that both of you possess, and perhaps by the time you get
back to town I’ll have some other comparisons ready for you to deny or
substantiate. I certainly miss seeing you, now, and wish you might send
me one or two of those prints that are otherwise committed to the waste
basket sometime soon.
155: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _Sept. 8th, ’23_
Dear Grace and Grandma: Both of your last letters have been so sweet and
gratifying that I am very grateful. I am glad to think of you as located
for the winter, putting in coal, and assured of the comforts that I know
you ought to have. They have raised the rent on Gorham and Liza,--and
they have been trying to locate a new place at a more reasonable figure,
but they may not move at all--so discouraging is the search. That’s one
of the banes of New York--one is on a moving cloud here most of the
time, for, either the house you live in is being torn down for an
apartment, or else the landlord is gouging you constantly for your last
cent. I never want to have any of us without some property of our
own--land and building--whether we live in it or not, but just so that
“we have it” and are not entirely subject to the whims of fortune. If I
ever get any money, I know that I shall attend to that investment before
I travel or anything else. You’ve got to have an anchorage somewhere if
you are ever to have any repose of mind.
Of this latter-mentioned article--I can’t say I have had much recently.
Of all the abominable snakes I ever heard of -- -- -- -- is the worst. I
got a letter on Wednesday from -- -- -- --. He had evidently feared my
exposure of him to them--and to ward it off he took the pains to tell
her that I was a venomous person, upset by the heat of the City, and
trying to torture him for mere pleasure. She recommended a dose of
pills, a swim, etc., as a means of clearing up my head--and otherwise
insulted me. The next morn--comes a letter from -- -- -- -- himself--in
which he denies that his letter constituted a confession at all, said
that the money was sent merely out of consideration for my loss, etc.,
and other kinds of weak trashy statements. I shall not reply to him, but
I wrote -- -- -- -- that if she had any interest in the truth or cared to
alleviate her own responsibilities in imposing such opinions on me--she
might come into town someday next week and take lunch with me. I
mentioned that I hadn’t the time to write out the extensive evidence
that I had, but that I should be glad to discuss them with her viva
voce. The whole matter made me ill the next day--but the worst now is
over, whether I ever get anything out of -- -- -- -- or not. I shall not
press the claim further than the telling of the story to -- -- -- --; it
isn’t worth it. There is absolutely no doubt about the confession in the
letter, however, and I am keeping it well out of reach in my trunk.
--/--/ By the end of a summer in New York everybody is at the limit of
endurance; there is no place to rest, get away from the constant noise
and vibrations of trucks, etc., and there’s a kind of insidious impurity
in the air that seems to seep from sweaty walls and subways. Next year I
shall have at least a month in the open country or by the sea--I haven’t
had a real vacation now for several years, you know. The time spent in
idleness when out of a job was always a worse strain than the hardest
kind of labor, so that hasn’t counted for much with me.
--/--/ I see much of Gorham and Liza--they are restful to me and always
kind. I don’t think I should care to stay in New York long if they
weren’t here. --/--/
156: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK
_New York City_ _Sept. 23rd, ’23_
Dear Charlotte: --/--/ I am planning to move myself, and shall probably
share with the Munsons in their [new] apartment. That would enable them
to get a better place and I should have hot water and good heat for the
winter which the place I am in now does not provide. I am wondering if
you and Richard could spare me a loan of fifteen dollars to help me over
the expenses of moving my things. I have not yet received a raise in
salary at the office, and I have been getting so little that I am kept
down to the bare necessities of life all the time. When something extra
is demanded I have nothing to fall back upon and the situation is really
far from pleasant. If you could do this I shall be able to pay you
sometime soon, I think, and I would be a thousand times obliged.
I am getting along very well at the office, but I intend to speak up for
an advance in pay very soon. The wages they have been paying me have
been much less than my capabilities are worth, and I don’t think I shall
have much trouble in getting that raise if I speak about it to them.
They are putting new responsibilities upon me all the time, and I am
learning quite a good deal. But there is something necessary in life
besides learning, as we all know. It is quite a stylish and almost
snobbish set of educated people at J. Walter Thompson’s--they are very
lofty and certainly seem to think that the social superiority of the
place is enough to make up for low salaries. When they can pay one of
their art directors 30,000 a year they can afford to pay some of their
copywriters more than they do.
I am working still on _The Bridge_, but it is far from complete yet. In
the meantime I am working on some smaller poems that crop out from time
to time very naturally. The situation for the artist in America seems to
me to be getting harder and harder all the time. Most of my friends are
worn out with the struggle here in New York. If you make enough to live
decently on, you have no time left for your real work,--and otherwise
you are constantly liable to starve. New York offers nothing to anyone
but a circle of friendly and understanding brothers,--beyond that it is
one of the most stupid places in the world to live in. Of course, one’s
friends are worth it,--but sometimes, when you see them so upset by the
fever and crowded conditions, the expenses and worries--you wonder
whether or not there is much use in the whole business. I am, of course,
rather tired out when I say these things. I shall probably be in a
different and better mood later on when the weather cools, and when
there is some life in the air. I have been through the hardest summer in
my life--the hardest year, perhaps, when you consider the developments I
have been through and the material difficulties that I have encountered.
I want to keep saying “YES” to everything and never be beaten a moment,
and I shall, of course, never be really beaten.
--/--/ He is in a very strange state of mind now that is dangerous. He
and his wife, -- -- -- -- have separated. I have heard them each tell their
stories, and there is nothing nasty or petty about it at all--they have
simply agreed that they have failed in establishing a certain deep
relationship which they had felt was a part of the reason for their
being together, and they are still very good friends. It is complicated
for both of them, however, by the fact of their baby boy, which both are
very attached to.
I have been making a number of drawings lately. One of Jean Toomer, one
of Waldo, and one of an amusing young lady. They are all very
interesting, and even Gaston Lachaise, who was in to see me recently,
thought that they were worth while. If I had time I should do more, but
it is really only when I am not doing what I want to in my writing that
I am very much tempted to draw. So I shall probably not do any more
drawings for a year or so. --/--/
157: TO HIS MOTHER
_New York_ _Oct. 5th ’23_
Grace, dear! I had just got my pajamas on last night when there was a
rap on the door. I opened and in walked Waldo Frank--behind him came a
most pleasant-looking, twinkling, little man in a black derby--“Let me
introduce you to Mr. Charles Chaplin,”--said Waldo, and I was smiling
into one of the most beautiful faces I ever expect to see. Well!--I was
quickly urged out of my nightclothes and the three of us walked arm in
arm over to where Waldo is staying at 77 Irving Place (near Gramercy).
All the way we were trailed by enthusiastic youngsters. People seem to
spot Charlie in the darkness. He is so very gracious that he never
discourages anything but rude advances.
At five o’clock this morning Charlie was letting me out of his taxi
before my humble abode. “It’s been so nice,” he said in that soft crisp
voice of his, modulated with an accent that is something like Padraic
Colum’s in its correctness. Then he, blinking and sleepy, was swung
around and was probably soon in his bed up at the Ritz.
I can’t begin to tell you what an evening, night and _morning_ it was.
Just the three of us--and Charlie has known Waldo quite a while--they’ve
been in Paris together and have a few mutual friends.
Among other things Charlie told us his plans (and the story of it) for
his next great film. He has a five acre studio all his own now in
Berkeley, and is here in New York at present to see that the first film
he has produced in it gets over profitably. He doesn’t act in it. But he
wrote story, directed and produced it entirely himself. It’s running now
for just a week or so more at the “Lyric” theatre to box prices. Then it
will be released all over the country. _A Woman of Paris_ it’s called. I
haven’t seen it yet.
Our talk was very intimate--Charlie told us the complete Pola Negri
story--which “romance” is now ended. And there were other things about
his life, his hopes and spiritual desires which were very fine &
interesting. He has been through so much, is very lonely (says Hollywood
hasn’t a dozen people he enjoys talking to or who understand his work)
and yet is so radiant and healthy, wistful, gay and _young_. He is 35,
but half his head is already grey. You cannot imagine a more perfect and
natural gentleman. But I can’t go on more now. Stories (marvelous ones
he knows!) told with such subtle mimicry that you rolled on the floor.
Such graceful wit, too--O that man has a mind.
We (just Charlie & I) are to have dinner together some night next week.
He remembered my poem very well & is very interested in my work.
There’s nothing else worth telling you about since my last letter. I am
very happy in the intense clarity of spirit that a man like Chaplin
gives one if he is honest enough to receive it. I have that spiritual
honesty, Grace, and it’s what makes me clear to the only people I care
about.
158: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _Oct. 12th, ’23_
Dear Grace and Grandma: --/--/ It has been a very busy week. I have not
seen Chaplin as I expected to, he has been under the weather up at the
Ritz -- -- -- --. But Jean Toomer, Margaret Naumburg and Waldo Frank have
been very much in evidence, and to the extent of a very fine home-cooked
chicken dinner one evening at Margaret’s which almost left me gasping--I
ate so much. Toomer and I are great friends. I want to send you a copy
soon of his book of short stories and a play which has just come out. It
may interest you to read the inscription which he placed in the copy of
this book which he recently gave me:--“For Hart, instrument of the
highest beauty, whose art, four-conscinal, rich in symbols and ecstasy,
is great--whose touch, deep and warm, is a sheer illuminant--with love,
Jean.--New York, 24th Sept 23.” --/--/
Since the weather cooled I have felt almost a new being. Having had the
gas turned on in my radiator and tried it out several times, I am now
confident that I shall be able to keep quite warm during the winter. Two
friends of mine have offered me the use of their tubs and faucets
whenever I want a hot bath, which I shall avail myself of, providing I
cannot succeed in persuading the landlady to install a hot water heater
here. I do not think I shall have to buy any more clothes before spring
what with the suit you are sending and what I have on hand to use. This
certainly is fortunate, as my present salary at Thompson’s just
suffices for rent and food, really nothing more. I am waiting until the
end of this month, the sixth month, to inquire about the possibilities
of a raise. If I find that I am stalled off, I shall quietly investigate
for a position elsewhere. --/--/ I have been working very hard this week
on a stiff sort of proposition. So far they have given me only tough
little nubbins to handle--jobs that didn’t pay them anything and could
best be turned over to a cheap man,--these little left-overs are,
however, very often the most uninspiring and difficult things to handle.
--/--/ I think of you a great deal, and you must not be lonely. We are
all going on in the regular course of things toward a higher
consciousness of life and what it means. We have no reason or right to
suppose that it should be predominantly happy--seen completely, from end
to end, however, I think it is a great happiness. We must keep on
over-riding the details of pettiness and small emotions that dwarf it to
keep on seeing it that way, and that can’t be done without a real
conscious effort and vision. We know each other too well to let physical
separations mar very much. Christmas is not so far away now, either, and
then I shall see you for several days. --/--/
159: TO HIS MOTHER
_New York City_ _Oct. 20th, ’23_
Dear Grace and Grandma: --/--/ I’ve been feeling so altogether rotten
lately that my energies are about reduced to their minimum. In fact I am
seriously considering going to the Isle of Pines this winter for a
thorough rest and recuperation from the strain of the last five years.
This is no sudden idea in my head,--it is something I have reconsidered
many times for several months, and always with the growing conviction
that it is the thing to do. I think that in weighing the numerous
reasons you will agree with me quite thoroughly.
In the first place--my state of nerves and insomnia here due to the mad
rush of things, and the noisy nights around the place I am obliged to
live in, makes it imperative that I get away before I have a real
breakdown. I feel that this is certain to happen before the winter is
over unless I get some relief. And, as there seems to be no prospect of
a raise in my salary at the office, I cannot afford necessities here
that make life bearable and sufficient to keep me in a state of health.
And then, besides all this, the Island needs some personal attention
from someone in this family. You, neither of you, are able to go, and if
you were, it would cost you three or four times as much as I will need
to live there. (My expenses would be just the boat fare and after that
about 5 dollars a week for board with the Simpsons.) I need absolutely
no more clothes or equipment in any way than I presently have, so that
needn’t be bothered about. I would have a chance to breathe in some
clear air, swim and use my body a little freely. I could live very
simply and constructively--and really make it pay besides by seeing the
lay of the land, how things are being cared for, what marketing
opportunities are developing in the way of cooperative fruit markets,
etc.
I think this and other letters of mine have said enough about living
conditions in New York as it has now become--to make it plain that you
will never want to settle here. I have never accented these points in
any particular relation to you--but I am more and more certain that you
will never want to _live_ here. Rents are terrific, food very high and
unless you have unlimited funds you have to content yourself with trying
to keep clean in a dinky stuffy apartment without a porch or any of the
outdoor privileges that go with the poorest shanty. I think we have been
not fools, but fooling ourselves, to have worried so about selling the
island place. That is the best place to live I know of,--the place where
you will be far happier than ever tied up in an overcrowded city--paying
out every month more money than your food would cost you for a year on
the Island. Besides,--that grove is going to pay, and _pay well_
sometime. It will pay you well enough to afford a month’s change in New
York every year. And that’s enough! I have learned that from plentiful
experience.
After the winter I can come back here to New York and get plenty of jobs
that will pay more than what I have now. I can come back with a fund of
health and energy that simply couldn’t be gained here even if I weren’t
working at all. I think I deserve this much assistance not only as a
son--but as [a] man who has done his best to cope with all situations
that have come up, and I have been faced with some hard ones. This isn’t
a dodge--it’s a sane precaution, and if you really care for me in [the]
right sort of way you will give it your approval, I’m sure.
Please don’t think that I’m flat on my back or anything like that--by
what I’ve said. I have been at the office every day and doing my regular
work. It’s the steady and growing strain of it all that I feel--without
relief or rest, and I don’t want to disregard too many red signals--at
least with the obvious means we have of checking danger of this
seriousness. I don’t want you to waste a lot of money by coming down
here in the belief that I need bedside attention, I only want you to
know the facts as they are. If I went I should certainly spend a week
with you beforehand. But, of course, I’ll never consider living in
Cleveland again permanently--no matter what happens.
Write me soon what you think of my suggestions. I think we should
certainly not let that island property slip away. It’s a clean
home with beautiful surroundings and sunshine with quiet and
tranquillity--compared to this metropolitan living with its fret and
fever--it’s a paradise.
160: TO ALFRED STIEGLITZ
_New York City_ _Oct. 26th, ’23_
Dear Stieglitz: I hardly know how to begin--such confusion reigns at
present. It’s the usual state, however, with the additional complication
that my nerves are a little frazzled. In fact they got so on edge
writing that damned advertising under the pseudo-refined atmosphere of
the office I was working in that I had to resign the other day to save
my mind. I have the prospect of coming back after a six week’s vacation
if I want to--but I don’t want to, and as things stand at present,
haven’t got the money to carry me through the rest and contemplation
that I need. Rather wound up, you see!
Your mention of the “sky” pictures really excited me. The greatest
beauty comes out of repose, and I knew that as certain disturbances
settled (were fought through) you would recapture the basis (on a higher
plane than ever) for new penetrations and syntheses of vision. I had
hoped to go down to a plantation that my grandmother and mother own in
the West Indies this winter, in fact that was largely the basis of my
leaving the job. My intention was to get the unbroken time there to
write the essay on your work which I have never had the opportunity of
doing here. I was also expecting to finish my _Bridge_ poem (which,
done, would complete the material for my first book of poems). But these
things must evidently wait. It is certain that they cannot be undertaken
while my mind is divided between them and an office job. They are both
of them too large conceptions to be accomplished under such tour de
force conditions. Now, my mother writes me that the place may be sold at
any time and that it is out of the question for me to go at all. _If_ I
can get somebody to lend me the money, however, I may possibly go right
ahead, regardless. Both of my parents are interested in money only in
connection with my actions, and I have never been persistent enough in
the past to really clear that notion away.
Munson said that he had a fine letter from you, and he has probably
answered it by this time, telling you a number of things about his
present position with regard to _Broom_ and _Secession_. He is the
noblest young man I know in this country. Experience seems only to
sharpen a native integrity and an almost clairvoyant sense of spiritual
values. He was obliged to leave the city for his health, and while I
miss him a great deal, I hope that he will remain where he is for the
rest of the winter. Waldo [Frank], as you know, leaves for Europe
tomorrow. I am sorry that he couldn’t get time to make you that visit. I
have seen him going through a good deal, both in work and experience,
and there is no use of trying to write out any details of these things.
We shall talk about it some time. Margaret [Naumburg] has also meant a
great deal to me lately. Isn’t this little handful of us fighting
though?!
161: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_New York City_] _Oct. 28th, ’23_
Cheero, Old bird! I have just seen the “last” _Secession_! and I am in
no position, I must admit, to quarrel with you about your decision to
destroy the garbled pages of “Faustus and Helen.” A beautiful bit of
business--“blues in your breasts,” and the two lines that our hero
decided were inessential to the poem! That damned note at the end with
its ill-advised quotation from your personal comment is still worse. But
never mind, I don’t care at all if you will make the necessary clipping.
Some few friends of W[heelwright]’s have probably already received
copies to treasure as their vision may permit, but I should like to keep
as many people in America free from misconceptions about me as possible.
Why don’t you wire the consulate in Florence to stop W. from any further
rape of _S._--it is a positive elopement that seems to have no prospect
of termination. I am thinking of starting abroad with _The Dial_,
calling it “The Pile,” hemorrhoid, or something like that! My cable, of
course, failed.
Waldo left today in a better state of health than he was in when you
were here. I don’t know whether or not it was due to evasion of certain
difficulties. I have no right to make any judgments of that kind, after
all, until his writing indicates it. I am always his enthusiastic friend
and brother, whatever happens. We had lunch together day before
yesterday and he was in thorough approval of my resignation and trip to
the Isle of Pines. I have since heard from my mother, however, that the
place is liable to be sold at any time, and as that would contribute to
a feeling of real unease in going there, I have about decided to come up
to Woodstock for awhile for a rest and air, and then come back to town
for either free-lancing or a return to advertising. I might get
something at Harcourt Brace now, if Smith warms up a little. Certainly I
am not at all regretful for what I have done, it being a purely organic
necessity. I should have been “flat” if I had tried to keep up that
damned hypocrisy of advertising much longer--at least for the time
being. I am going to exact some meager contributions from my family--and
not be sentimental about it. They want me to come home, but that is, at
present, out of the question. The money it would cost for train fare
would more than pay for my recuperation at Woodstock. I wish you would
ask Brown and Nagle if it would be convenient for them to have me stay
with them for awhile, beginning about next Saturday. Underwood expects
to come here for a month and asked me to look him up a room. If I can
get him to take this at 45 Grove, I shall have my rent free. Jean
[Toomer] may arrive any day, also, and he is sure to want it if Wilbur
[Underwood] doesn’t.
This is a mad letter. I am trying to get it off--along with the
transcription of the English equivalents of the Sayn quotations from
Frank and the _Fugitive_ finales--in time to get a bath at Lisa’s and
over to the Lights in time for a free dinner. Please don’t forget your
vote on the _Fugitive_ prize, the extra hundred is worth having these
days! I’ll tell you all that amounts to anything about the _Broom_
meeting when I see you. At present Cowley feels that you have broken
relations with him by your last letter which he read the night I dined
with them. He additionally feels that you may naturally presume that his
presence at the Burke farm on the day that B. resigned had a good deal
to do with Ken’s action--which he says is not the case at all. I didn’t
say that you had all along been wishing that K. would resign! I wouldn’t
make any compromises with C. I like many things about him, but he is
still in his adolescence when it comes to certain reactions. We really
have two groups to the former ONE of _Secession_, and there is no use
trying to evade that fact,--as, obviously, you are not trying to do.
162: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _Nov. 1st, ’23_
Dear Grace and Grandma: --/--/ Tomorrow afternoon I leave, stopping off
for a couple of days at Ridgefield, Conn., as a guest of Eugene O’Neill
(the author of _Anna Christie_, _Emperor Jones_, _Beyond the Horizon_,
etc.). I met O’Neill at some friends last week end when he was in town.
He likes my poetry very much and invited me to come to stay with him. He
has a regular estate, I am told,--an establishment that is quite
complete, and breakfast for guests is never served out of bed. If
everything goes right they are to drive me up to Woodstock on
Sunday,--about three hours through beautiful hills and foliage. My
address from then on will be _Woodstock, N.Y. care-of Slater Brown_.
--/--/
I am depending on you to help me some, as I said in my last letter. I
think you will agree that a thoroughly out-of-doors life for a month is
not only a sensible thing for me, but really due me after all the time I
have denied myself such a natural privilege. If you don’t understand
such a rightful desire on my part, then I can only say that your vision
is warped. It was fine of you to ask me home, but I know you will
realize that the atmosphere of Cleveland is anything but conducive to
rest _for me_. The amount to which I am asking you to help me will not
exceed the carfare to and from Cleveland--at most. Brown is poor and can
only offer me the hospitality of the house he has taken,--and extra
board he is unable to provide, so I am anxious to do my part and be
decent about not stretching his hospitality unreasonably. So please send
me fifteen dollars in cash or check at Woodstock sometime next week.
Even if you have to pinch a little bit, I think that the things I am
trying to do deserve a few sacrifices. I make as many as I can myself,
and still keep sound and living,--and I hope you will [be] faithful
enough--whether you see my complete ends or not--to lend me some
assistance. I hope you are both well and happy. Don’t worry about me. I
know damned well what I’m doing.
163: TO HIS MOTHER
_Woodstock_, [_New York_] _Nov. 8th, ’23_
Dear Mother and Grandmother: Felling trees and piecing them up for
warmth is a new sport to me, but I have taken to it with something like
a real enthusiasm. This is my fourth day here in the mountains, but
already I feel like a new person. My muscles are swelling and blood
simply glowing. It is quite cold, even snowed today and the top of the
nearest mountain is hooded white.
Slater Brown and Nagle make wonderful people to live with. I told you
how fond I was of B. when I was home last summer. I am made to feel not
at all a guest, as to a large extent I am not, of course, but they want
me to stay all winter here with them now. I may and I may not, depending
on how I find I can manage to earn enough money by poems and articles.
Certainly I should like to become a giant again in health, as I
naturally am. And I have never had an outing like this before in my
life.
We do all our own cooking. Brown has developed a surprising faculty for
supplying tempting and enormous meals. You have no idea what an appetite
is developed with wood chopping, sawing, and much walking in the brisk
air. I have a heavy army shirt of wool and corduroy trousers. I got all
this along with some woolen socks for surprisingly little in an army and
navy store in New York before I came out here. It was a good thing, now,
that you sent that heavy underwear of mine in the trunk when you sent
it.
The house we are living in is, of course, already furnished by a family
that lives here only in the summer. There are four bedrooms, a bath,
dining room, large studio with a huge open fireplace where we burn our
logs, and kitchen provided with an oil stove. There’s just enough
furniture and not too much, simple and in pleasant taste. The town is
about two miles away. Walking in for our provisions is very
pleasant--over rolling land, set in a valley by low mountains on all
sides around. We are quite set away from everybody--no people passing to
speak of and in a quietness that is a tonic after the endless noise and
reverberation of New York which you feel there even in your sleep.
I certainly am hoping that nothing serious has happened to prevent you
from writing to me. I have been expecting a letter from you for several
days now. -- -- -- --
164: TO ALFRED STIEGLITZ
_Woodstock, NY_ _December 5th, ’23_
Dear Stieglitz: Your fine description of the snow makes me glad that I’m
going to stay here until January--by which time I am sure that I may see
a few pure flakes myself. So far, we have only had a gentle sleet--once
and at nightfall. Today it rains and rains, and our usual wood foraging
is broken.
Slater Brown and Ed Nagle are my hosts here in the shadow of the
mountains. They were kind enough to ask me up here after I had to give
up the trip to the West Indian plantation because I found out that my
mother was trying to sell it as soon as possible. We’re about a mile and
a half from the village and very much by ourselves. My first taste of
the country for years--and a month of it has put me in a steadier mood
than I remember since childhood. But enough of this god damned
autobiography! When I get back to town I may drive trucks, stevedore,
steward on a boat or even go back to advertising. I shan’t be serious
enough about any of ‘em to worry now. I’ll certainly be glad to see you
again and peer at some of your new pictures if you’ll let me. We can
have some walks in the snow, too, I hope. Winter in New York is
stimulating, and most of our talks, so far, have been carried on under
the torrid auspices of summer.
There was a great crowd out here from the City for Thanksgiving, and the
preparations, celebration and “aftermath” are still rather buzzy in my
head. Altogether, it has kept me from writing you much sooner. When your
letter came yesterday I felt and still feel very remiss, the most so now
that my imagination, sunk in a kind of agreeable vegetable existence,
refuses to offer you any real evidence that life in the country has been
of personal benefit to me. But it’s rather pleasant to be irresponsible
and purely bovine once in five years or so. About all I am doing besides
the many chores is--grow a mustache (very slight so far!). You will
probably see Munson very soon. He left here about ten days ago, and, I
think, intends to remain the rest of the winter in Town writing as
usual. His honesty IS outstanding and he has a veneration for that
fundamental beauty in yourself which is not easily swerved. I’m hoping
that you see more of Kenneth Burke, too. He is using my room at 45 Grove
St. at present and is perfectly free with his time so far as I know.
Burke (between us only) keeps fighting off a true spiritual revelation
which is really his birthright, though he can’t consciously recognize
it. So he falls a prey to Spengler and the cynics of more reasonable
tongue--and lives in a rather unhappy and delicate state of scepticism.
He sees the surface of your work and admires it intensely, but he simply
thinks I’m cucu when I remain unconvinced that he has really SEEN one
picture of yours.
Please let me know if you hear of any job--of any sort--that I could
begin to “fill” about Jan. 1st. I think I’ll write Zigrosser if he knows
of anything, too. --/--/
165: TO HIS GRANDMOTHER
_Woodstock, N.Y._ _December 5th ’23_
My dear Grandma: Your interest in my culinary triumphs is certainly very
much appreciated. I’ve been waiting quite a while for the moment to tell
you about the Thanksgiving dinner, etc., and have just about got
adjusted again, the house in order and our simple program restored
although the last guest left on Monday. Altogether, the party and every
detail of the festivities was quite a success. Some things were very
funny and some were a little aggravating. I think I did most of the
cooking when it came right down to the last moment, as both my confreres
were so occupied with their lady friends and rather daffy that they went
around like dizzy roosters, and keeping the rest of the company
entertained and out of the kitchen was some job, too.
The people we bought the turkey from had already cleaned it and plucked
it, and had promised to make the stuffing. But at the last moment they
went back on the stuffing, and so it was left to me entirely. You should
have seen me going at it, sewing it up tight afterward and everything!
Everyone said the stuffing was great, and I liked it myself. I rubbed
the outside all over with salt and butter, and then the ten pound bird
was put into a wonderful roasting machine that Lachaise brought out from
New York which he got in the French bazaar. You put the bird on a long
spit which had a crank and catches. One side of the cage was entirely
open and that was turned toward the fire in the big studio. I never ate
more luscious turkey than this process produced. You must have seen one
of these roasting devices because similar ones have been used in New
England for many many years. It’s a large, fat oval shape and looks a
little like a big tin pig on its legs. We kept turning the bird around
inside until it was a rich brown and thoroughly done. The meal began
with potato and onion soup made by Nagle. Then turkey with mashed
potatoes, cranberry sauce, squash and gravy. Celery too. Then I made
some fine lettuce salad with onions and peppers and French dressing.
Dessert was composed of pumpkin pie and mince pie and the marvelous
fruit cake. We had cider in abundance, Marsala wine and red wine as well
as some fine cherry cordial. Nuts, raisins, etc. Quite a dinner, you
see. And everyone went wild about the cake. We had all the walls hung
with candles as well as the table. Sat down at five and didn’t get up to
dance until eight. I danced fat Mme. Lachaise around until we both felt
almost exhausted. Then there was a girl who could match me on my Russian
dance and we did that together at a great rate. I forgot to mention that
we had a Victrola, of course, which Lachaise bought in Kingston just the
day before. Lots of jazz records, etc. Most of the guests had left by
the following evening, but we have spent most of the time since in
getting things straightened around again and catching up on our supply
of wood. --/--/
166: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK
_Woodstock, New York_ _December 10, ’23_
Dear Lotte: I guess you and Richard have deserted me ... anyway I don’t
hear from you any more. --/--/
You should not forget me. I am free now--at least more so than ever
before in my life, but that doesn’t mean that I forget such people as
you and Richard who have been so fine to me and whom I shall love
always--even though I haven’t any way of proving it but to just keep on
saying so. I hear that my Mother has taken a job of some kind and is
working very hard. I am sorry to hear it, but I also know that she did
not need to do it unless she felt like it. Everything is being sold as
soon as possible. Only I refuse to sell myself any longer than I
absolutely have to. I shall beg and steal when necessary to avoid it.
This letter is very intimate, and I have written it at the risk of a
great deal of misunderstanding from you, I well know. Who
knows,--perhaps you have some quaint ideas about me by this time. But I
do hope that you will write me soon if you feel like it--and tell me all
about yourselves, how you are playing and how R is painting. I am sure
you are gaining on Time! One must.
167: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Woodstock, New York_ _Dec. 10th, ’23_
Dear Gorham: Both Nagle and B. were enthusiastic about your
investigation in obstetrics (needn’t voice my own disgust, I trust!). I
am still a little blushing about my premature delivery of two poems and
a quite personal letter to Miss Gregory as (already) Editor Managing of
_The Dial_, asking for reviews, etc., etc. However, I do hope through
her gentle accession and the rape of a former -- -- -- --to inveigle my
brain children into a little more acceptance thereabouts--in time.
I approve of your going, as announced, to Croton. Do not become as other
infectious bugs there--however much on second thought the worst vermin
seems to haunt nearer, far nearer precincts adjacent to King Street,
Lincoln Highway and the Battery for daily duels. (What you started
rolling on your return to NY or what Burke had started just before that
I am wild to know about. Cowley wrote the most mystifying hint of
volcanic disorders at the end of a letter he wrote to B. anent _Broom_
and its publication in Kingston, _which fell through_, by the way).
There have been three days of agony around here, just terminated, during
which beads of sweat were wrung and sighs heaved perpetually, but B’s
review of Cummings for _Broom_ at last is in the mailbox and I will get
a chance to write a few letters, I hope.
Last Friday I climbed the mountain (Overlook) and called on the
caretaker who lives in the house beside the ruins of the hotel. He is
very anxious to leave, has been there for seven months, etc., and I am
seriously thinking of taking the place myself at pay of 40 bucks per
month and all expenses gratis. It would be a hard winter, perhaps a
terrific experience, but I should like to keep away from the city and
its scattered prostitutions for awhile. The man who owns the place lives
in Brooklyn and I expect to hear detailed terms from him in a few days.
B. is very keen about going with me, but his previous arrangements with
Nagle may check that on grounds of honorable understanding. Certainly I
should much prefer to have B. with me there, but the whole plan is in
embryo now, and nothing may come of it. The prospect so far as money
goes is so threatening and hopeless as I see it in New York that I may
take this strenuous means of asserting myself against the traditional
conflicts of my past. --/--/
Fisher has been over a couple of times for dinner and an evening. I
couldn’t read the James book at all under present aspirations and
interests, but I have been amazed much at the finesse and depth of Pater
in his _Plato and Platonism_ which Fisher has subsequently loaned me. I
think it beats _The Renaissance_ all hollow for style and ratiocination.
What are you reading--and, more important, writing? I have been very
lazy, but am growing more tight and particular--perhaps a favorable
change after my somewhat flamboyant period in NY just before I left. I
enclose the new version of “Recitative” (which may not be final, but
which I think is really better than the original confession).[31]
-- -- -- --
168: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Woodstock_ _December 20th, ’23_
Dear Gorham: I had a kind of dirge all written to send you this morning
before the mail came: fortunately I reconsidered sending it before one
of us went into town, returning with your good news. I’m not worried
about the _Fugitive_ prize because I had not been planning at all on it
anyway, and I am enormously pleased at your news about _The Dial’s_
acceptance of you. IT WAS ABOUT TIME, however. What you have won there,
too,--you may be sure--has been gained against a deal of prejudice
against you, due mainly, of course, to your liaison with Waldo’s work,
etc.
The folks at Cleveland have disappointed me much, not only by sending me
only half as much money as I asked for and require, but by a great deal
of wailing. I guess I told you before you left here that my mother has
taken a position, since explained to me as helping a friend of hers in a
very de luxe antique and what-not establishment just started. It
involves nothing but standing around and talking to people, I’m sure,
yet mother is reported to return home every night so exhausted and
wrecked that she can hardly speak. She has not personally written me for
a month now. All the reports and symptoms come from my grandmother. But
would it have been so much different had I been at Thompson’s during
these two months, I am tempted to ask. They won’t stop to think or
plan,--either of them,--beyond the next day ahead. And woes continue
indefinitely. --/--/
Brown tells me and Nagle so little about _Broom_ that I don’t know how
well founded your report from Burke may be. Brown loves his little
secrets (of all sorts) and it’s pleasant to leave his surface sobrieties
unchallenged. Certainly Matty is not going to let go of his sheet until
it is either so dead as to be hopeless or else so loaded with debts that
his successor would be crushed under them. But there is much mail every
week to B. from _Broom_, and Cowley, Matty and B. seem to have an
enviable little love nest all to themselves.
Jean [Toomer] hasn’t written me for a long time, and I have the
suspicion that he a little resents my not writing to Margaret Naumburg.
The fact is--I’ve often thought of it and delayed because I somehow felt
that I wasn’t ready to say the sort of things to her which would
interest her. I have certainly, as far as that goes, no flattering chart
of developments within myself to report to anyone. This sojourn has
meant little more to me so far than a purely physical rehabilitation.
That is something, but not a very absorbing topic to write about.
Fisher has been over a number of evenings since you left--for tea, too,
several times. He has a great fondness for Brown and myself, too, I
think. I certainly enjoy him most alone, as the other day when I came
over to his place in the afternoon and stayed until nearly midnight.
This poet, Greenberg, whom Fisher nursed until he died of consumption at
a Jewish hospital in NY, was a Rimbaud in embryo. Did you ever see some
of the hobbling yet really gorgeous attempts that boy made without any
education or time except when he became confined to a cot? Fisher has
shown me an amazing amount of material, some of which I am copying and
will show you when I get back. No grammar, nor spelling, and scarcely
any form, but a quality that is unspeakably eerie and the most
convincing gusto. One little poem is as good as any of the
consciously-conceived “Pierrots” of Laforgue. --/--/
169: TO HIS MOTHER
_Woodstock, NY_ _Dec. 21st, ’23_
Dear Grace: --/--/ We are, all of us, in something of a strained state
this Christmas but I don’t think we need to be so much wrought up about
it as you and Grandma apparently are. After all, Christmas is only one
day in the year--and as a special day, I don’t get half so excited about
it (and haven’t for some years) as I used to. It’s too bad that we can’t
all be together, but that can’t be helped. It wouldn’t have made any
difference so far as I could see, had I remained at Thompson’s during
all this time--so far as [the] money side [of] it goes. I was just
keeping things going as it was, and had nothing left over for travelling
expense, and had I remained I might have incurred much more expense by
this time by being flat on my back. I think you take my little rest and
vacation a bit too strenuously. I’m going back to NY on the second or
third of January (if I can get the carfare) and after that I won’t ask
for any more money. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I can
probably wash dishes or work on the docks or something to keep skin and
bone together. I shall keep my old room at 45 Grove Street (which is as
cheap as any that can be found anywhere) as long as I can bamboozle the
landlady. After that I’ll have to depend on my good coat, or the
kindness of friends. I’ve been able to store up a sufficient reserve of
physical and nervous force while out here in the country to last me
quite awhile, I think. I am not at all discouraged about anything, and I
think that if you and Grandma will use your natural wits at a little
better planning--you’ll be able to get along fairly comfortably without
working so hard. One can live happily on very little, I have found, if
the mind and spirit have some definite objective in view. I expect I’ll
always have to drudge for my living, and I’m quite willing to always do
it, but I am no more fooling myself that the mental bondage and
spiritual bondage of the more remunerative sorts of work is worth the
sacrifices inevitably involved. If I can’t continue to create the sort
of poetry that is my intensest and deepest component in life--then it
all means very little to me, and then I might as well tie myself up to
some smug ambition and “success” (the common idol that every Tom, Dick
and Harry is bowing to everywhere). But so far, as you know, I only grow
more and more convinced that what I naturally have to give the world in
my own terms--is worth giving, and I’ll go through a number of ordeals
yet to pursue a natural course. I’m telling you all this now, dear,
because I don’t want you to suffer any more than inevitable from
misunderstandings--for once we see a thing clearly, usually nine tenths
of our confusion and apprehension is removed. Surely you and I have no
quarrels, and I think you understand me well enough to know that I want
to save you as much suffering from Life’s obstacles as can be done
without hypocrisy, silliness or sentimentality. You may have to take me
on faith for some things, because I don’t know whether it is possible
for all people to understand certain ardours that I have, and perhaps
there is no special reason why you, as my mother, should understand that
side of me any better than most people. As I have said, I am perfectly
willing to be misunderstood, but I don’t want to put up any subterfuges
before _your_ understanding of me if I can help it. You have often
spoken to me about how you lamented the fact that you didn’t follow
certain convictions that you had when you were my age because it wasn’t
easy enough; and I know what strong obstacles were put in your way. I,
too, have had to fight a great deal just to _be myself_ and _know
myself_ at all, and I think I have been doing and am doing a great deal
in following out certain natural and innate directions in myself. By
Jove--I don’t know of much else that is worth the having in our lives.
Look around you and see the numbers and numbers of so-called
“successful” people, successful in the worldly sense of the word. I
wonder how many of them are happy in the sense that you and I know what
real happiness means! I’m glad we aren’t so dumb as all that, even
though we do have to suffer a great deal. Suffering is a real
purification, and the worst thing I have always had to say against
Christian Science is that it wilfully avoided suffering, without a
certain measure of which any true happiness cannot be fully realized.
If you will even partially see these facts as I see them it will make me
very happy--and we can be much closer and more “together” that way than
merely just living in the same house and seeing each other every day
would ever bring about alone. I have been thinking much about you and
about dear Grandma--and I shall have you with me much on Christmas day.
We’ll be dancing a little, and are invited around to a couple of
celebrations at other houses here, but there will be no such pretentious
preparations as for Thanksgiving and no extra guests here. --/--/
1924
170: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK
_New York City_ _Jan. 6th, ’24_
Dear Charlotte: Your lovely gift and long beautiful letter made me feel
a little bit ashamed that I had written you such a hasty and doubting
letter. Isn’t it funny that just about the time one doubts humanity and
begins to take some kind of active resentment against it, along comes
fresh proof that there are, after all, many noble people that make life
worth all kinds of trouble for the reward of having known them, kissed
or shaken hands! I have been looking into your eyes--whether you knew it
or not; you looked into mine in that letter--and I’m grateful for the
confidence that you had in me, even though something made you doubt me a
little. I really am just the same old person--just as moody and
unreliable as ever I was in Cleveland when we used to exchange our
troubles and get rid of them in some music or over a book or a picture.
What I said about “prostituting my mind,” etc., I really meant. I _do_
resent it--and because so many others as good and better than myself
must also do the same in order to live and breathe doesn’t help things
at all. I shall keep right on talking that way--and probably not
practice what I preach at all. I seemed very bitter in my letter because
my mother seemed to think that a vacation was an extravagance--while I
knew that it was the only thing for me to do in order not to go all to
pieces. I feel now like a new man--better than I can ever remember
feeling and realize that the country and hard work out in the keen
sparkling air are the finest things in the world. Of course I should
like to have stayed in the mountains even longer, but I know that I must
now get to work again and earn some money. And I don’t mind it a bit,
either, feeling as I do.
I have two appointments tomorrow and I don’t think I shall have such a
slow time finding work as before. It is a better season, “business is
better” and I have had “experience in N.Y.” which counts some. --/--/
171: TO ISABEL AND GASTON LACHAISE
[_New York City_] _Jan. 9th --’24_
Dear Mme. and Gaston! There are no memories stronger than the spiritual
outlines of rock and branch so bare and fine as winter mountains yielded
me while I was with you and two precious others recently. So, in a
moment of enthusiasm for all things great I must inscribe a greeting and
regret (thus floridly!) that we can’t presently walk and talk “all
together.” And, as a sort of apology, offer the enclosed poem[32] to
your appreciation, or extenuation of such in relation to at least one
other admiration of yours--reflection to my better moods. Especially do
I send it--because I feel it had its first thought in the dance of
music, flesh and stone wherein you live always--you two! -- -- -- --
172: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_New York City_] _Jan 9, ’24_
Dear Gorham: Back in the welter again. I’ve been so pressed with various
desires and necessities that the thought of writing any one at all has
seemed nearly impossible. I’ve lunched and dined with Burke and the
Cowleys, seen the new Stieglitz clouds, Sunday-breakfasted with Jean
[Toomer] and Lisa [Munson], argued an evening with Rosenfeld and Margy
[Naumburg], chatted with O’Neill, Macgowan & R. Edmond Jones--Wescott,
Matty, Light, and been to concerts with Jean--etc., etc. All this
besides running around and looking for jobs. As all these contacts have
brought so much in my mind to talk to you about, I began to and still do
despair of including anything but the above catalogue in this letter. It
will, after all, be only about a week longer before I see you and then
we can have an extensive outburst. Meanwhile--I somehow feel about as
solitary as I ever felt in my life. Perhaps it’s all in the pressure of
economic exigencies at present--but I also feel an outward chaos around
me--many things happening and much that is good but somehow myself out
of it, between two worlds. Of course none of this would be were I
creating actively myself. It certainly helps things a lot that you are
working on so well and it is very gratifying to see Burke and Cowley
gravitating constantly more parallel to your initial theories and
convictions. Cowley’s gaucheries in admitting his mistakes and _tactics_
are really funny. But I can’t write you more details now.
Along comes a letter from my father this morning offering me a position
with him as travelling salesman! This is unacceptable, of course, even
though I now can’t complete the rent on the room for the rest of this
month and simply don’t know what is going to happen. If worse comes to
worse I can go back to Woodstock and stay with Fisher who urgently
invited me to stay a month or so whenever I liked. Just now I haven’t
made up my mind about anything. I have no more illusions about
advertising, yet that is the only thing I can talk about at all.
Leffingwell (at Thompson’s) is out of town, so I have not been able to
attempt any reinstatement there. The lady at _Machinery_ says she wants
to use me there sometime and _may soon_, but the vacancy so far doesn’t
exist there. Hal Smith at Harcourt seems to be neither sufficiently
interested in me nor my work to fulfill any of my hopes there. And so it
goes. There’s no point in going into more details.
Jean’s new hygiene for himself is very interesting to me. He seems to be
able to keep himself solid and undismayed. Certain organic changes are
occurring in us all, I think, but I believe that his is more steady and
direct than I have been permitted. My approach to words is still in
substratum of some new development--the same as it was when we talked
last together--and perhaps merely a chaotic lapse into confusion for all
I dare say yet. I feel Stein and E.E.C.[33] as active agents in it,
whatever it is, and I’ve a short poem to show you soon which presents
more interesting speculation to myself than it does to anyone else.
Suffice to say that I am very dissatisfied with both these interesting
people and would like to digest their qualities without being too
consciously theoretical about it.
Stieglitz liked the drawings I brought back--and you’ll like the one of
Brown I think. I’d like to paint and draw half the time, and write the
rest. “Prince Llan” is published and I admire its strenuous prose.
--/--/
173: TO HIS FATHER
_New York City_ _January 12th, ’24_
My dear Father: Your letter has been on the table for longer than I had
expected. I had wanted to answer it more promptly in view of your real
consideration in offering me such a favorable opportunity in your
business, but I’ve been so altogether occupied since I came back from
Woodstock in looking around here for a new position, interviewing
people and answering advertisements, that there has been only the
evenings--when there was either someone in to call, or I was too tired
to write you as I wanted.
By all this you will probably have guessed that I don’t find it
practical to accept your offer, kind as it is, and beyond all that I
must also add in justice to us both that it would also not be honest of
me to do so, either. I realize that in order to be understood in both
the above reasons it is necessary that I at least attempt to explain
myself in more detail than I may have gone into with you ever before,
and as that is rather an unwieldy process within the limits of a letter
I may only touch on a few points about myself and try to make them
clear, leaving the rest to some later date when you may care to look me
up in New York, provided I am here at your next visit. In what follows,
father, I hope that you will take my word for it that there is no
defense of my personal pride involved against any of the
misunderstandings that we may have had in the past. I have come to
desire to talk to you as a son ought to be able to talk to his father,
that is, in a pure relationship, without prejudices or worldly issues
interfering on either side. That was the basis of my first letter[34] to
you in three years--that I wrote a little over two months ago, and I
hope it may be the basis of your interpretation of what I am writing you
now. I, at least, am doing the most honest thing I know to do in
whatever I have said to you and in whatever I may say to you since that
time. That’s a pledge from the very bottom of my heart.
In your letter you carefully advise me to turn a deaf ear to your offer
if I find my advertising work so absorbing, pleasant and profitable
that I might in later time regret a transfer into so widely divergent an
enterprise as your business. You were perfectly right in presupposing
that I had a considerable interest in this sort of work, for in less
than three years I had got into the largest agency in the world and was
to all outward appearances very much engrossed in carrying myself
through to a highly paid and rather distinguished position.
But if there had been any chance to tell you before I should have stated
to you I had no interest in advertising beyond the readiest means of
earning my bread and butter, and that as such an occupation came nearest
to my natural abilities as a writer I chose it as the quickest and
easiest makeshift known to me. Perhaps, in view of this, it will be
easier for you to see why I left my position at J. Walter Thompson’s at
the last of October, unwise as such an action would be understood from
the usual point of view. I went to the country because I had not had a
vacation for several years, was rather worn with the strain of working
at high speed as one does in such high geared agencies, and above all
because I wanted the precious time to do some real thinking and writing,
the most important things to me in my life. The director of the copy
department asked me to see him when I came back to New York, but he has
not returned yet from out of town and I don’t know whether or not I
shall return there. I told Grace that they had asked me to return
definitely because I didn’t want her to worry about me: she has enough
worries as it is. But so much for that....
I think, though, from the above, that you will now see why I would not
regard it as honest to accept your proposition, offered as it was in
such frankness and good will. I don’t want to use you as a makeshift
when my principal ambition and life lies completely outside of business.
I always have given the people I worked for my wages-worth of service,
but it would be a very different sort of thing to come to one’s father
and simply feign an interest in fulfilling a confidence when one’s mind
and guts aren’t driving in that direction at all. I hope you credit me
with genuine sincerity as well as the appreciation of your best motives
in this statement.
You will perhaps be righteously a little bewildered at all these
statements about my enthusiasm about my writing and my devotion to that
career in life. It is true that I have to date very little to show as
actual accomplishment in this field, but it is true on the other hand
that I have had very very little time left over after the day’s work to
give to it and I may have just as little time in the wide future still
to give to it, too. Be all this as it may, I have come to recognize that
I am satisfied and spiritually healthy only when I am fulfilling myself
in that direction. It is my natural one, and you will possibly admit
that if it had been artificial or acquired, or a mere youthful whim it
would have been cast off some time ago in favor of more profitable
occupations from the standpoint of monetary returns. For I have been
through some pretty trying situations, and, indeed, I am in just such a
one again at the moment, with less than two dollars in my pocket and not
definitely located in any sort of a job.
However, I shall doubtless be able to turn my hand to something very
humble and temporary as I have done before. I have many friends, some of
whom will lend me small sums until I can repay them--and some sort of
job always turns up sooner or later. What pleases me is that so many
distinguished people have liked my poems (seen in magazines and mss.)
and feel that I am making a real contribution to American literature.
There is Eugene O’Neill, dramatist and author of _Anna Christie_,
_Emperor Jones_, _The Hairy Ape_, etc.; Waldo Frank, probably the most
distinguished contemporary novelist; and others like Alfred Stieglitz;
Gaston Lachaise, the sculptor who did the famous Rockefeller tomb at
Tarrytown and the stone frescoes in the Telephone Building; and Charlie
Chaplin, who is a very well-read and cultured man in “real life.” I wish
you could meet some of my friends, who are not the kind of “Greenwich
Villagers” that you may have been thinking they were. If I am able to
keep on in my present development, strenuous as it is, you may live to
see the name “Crane” stand for something where literature is talked
about, not only in New York but in London and abroad.
You are a very busy man these days as I well appreciate from the details
in your letter, and I have perhaps bored you with these explanations
about myself, your sympathies engaged as they are--so much in other
activities, and your mind filled with a thousand and one details and
obligations which clamour to be fulfilled. Nevertheless, as I’ve said
before, I couldn’t see any other way than to frankly tell you about
myself and my interests so as not to leave any accidental afterthought
in your mind that I had any “personal” reasons for not working in the
Crane Company. And in closing I would like to just ask you to think some
time,--try to imagine working for the pure love of simply making
something beautiful,--something that maybe can’t be sold or used to help
sell anything else, but that is simply a communication between man and
man, a bond of understanding and human enlightenment--which is what a
real work of art _is_. If you do that, then maybe you will see why I am
not so foolish after all to have followed what seems sometimes only a
faint star. I only ask to leave behind me something that the future may
find valuable, and it takes a bit of sacrifice sometimes in order to
give the thing that you know is in yourself and worth giving. I shall
make every sacrifice toward that end.
P.S. When you next write better address me care of G. B. Munson, 144
West 11th Street. I may not be able to hold on this room longer than the
end of Jan.
174: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _Jan 24--’24_
Dear Grace and Grandma: --/--/ Along came a note from B. W. Huebsch, who
evidently had some proposition to talk to me about. It only said to
phone him, which I did today, and we’re to have lunch together on
Saturday just for the personal pleasure. I told you, I guess, that I
find him one of the smartest men in New York--and he certainly is the
most cultured publisher here. I am thinking of submitting my book to him
when it is ready, in preference to Gorham’s publisher who is pretty
commercial and pettifogging.
To give you many details of my activities and contacts since I got back
from the country would take four or five pages. I was pretty blue for
awhile and poor, as you know, but that didn’t prevent my plunging into a
lot of varied company, meeting new people and revisiting the old, dining
here and there and enjoying free tickets to modern concerts, plays and
exhibitions of modern painters, etc. New York is abristle with its first
acceptance of European art and artists this year. It’s become
fashionable for the high-hatted uptowners now to buy Matisse’s
paintings, Picasso, and all the other cubists, and there’s a great
amount of “patronizing” going on. And talk, talk, talk!!! My visiting
list has reached its limits. I’ll be glad to quietly come home evenings
and work when I get into the treadmill again. I know about the most
interesting and vital people in New York, but there isn’t time to take
advantage of all that constantly. Some day when we get together you will
be astonished at the flow of anecdotes and amusing trifles that’ll just
naturally begin to rise out of me, but which can’t be written about.
--/--/
175: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _Jan 29th, ’24_
Grace dear and Grandma: --/--/ I started in yesterday morning, and have
been working like a tiger since then, of course. So far I like boss and
office very much. There is only one other copywriter besides myself, and
he is an old friend of Gorham’s. The two stenogs and office boy are the
only otherwises. I, personally and alone, occupy the nicest niche I ever
sat in--15 stories up, and the corner of the building with windows, of
course, on two angles. Perfect privacy and quiet and a desk and chair
that are quite massive and comfortable. Every hour or so the office boy
comes in, inquiries if I want anything; otherwise I press a neat button
on the corner of the desk and service is immediate.
I always get mixed up in some strange topic. This time it is a book on
cheese, how happy it makes you and how good it is for tissues, stomach,
and bowels, etc. A large importing house wants it, and I’ve been having
to write it in no time. I hope to finish it tonight. Life certainly is
amusing. I’ve been quite happy up there the last two days. --/--/
I don’t believe that I told you about my second interview with B. W.
Huebsch, the publisher. It was at his request, and when I got there and
found what he wanted I fairly whooped. His office isn’t ready for it
yet, but he said that he had been wishing that in time I might enter his
employ as a kind of personal assistant to him and his responsibilities.
The combination of my advertising and literary judgment, he said, was
rather rarely found, and he thought I would be able to read manuscripts,
attend to certain details of printing, and superintend the publicity
where certain others would be too limited for that range. I felt
considerably complimented, especially after so brief an acquaintance
with him. As you [know], that sort of work is what I have been looking
for for years in New York.
Well, inasmuch as I told him that I was at least temporarily bound to
work at this agency, I would have to postpone his offer at least a few
weeks. But he wants me to take lunch with him a couple of weeks from now
and let him know how I like my present work, and discuss the prospects
with us both as they stand then. Right now, I am only interested in
making as good as I can at this job, and I’m not going to let that
prospect, alluring as it is, absorb me much. However, it’s fine to have
it to occasionally ponder, and, of course, something may develop.
I had loaned my room during the last few days to Elizabeth Smith and the
writer she was working for. Last night when I came in she was almost in
tears,--said he had just paid and fired her, and that he couldn’t stand
the room. Well,--Eliza was a little foolish in not finding herself a
separate room away from the club sorority, Smith Girls Home, or whatever
it is--so that she could have carried on his work under pleasanter
conditions. I know that in time I should certainly have had to ask [her]
to seek other arrangements because--after all, on Sat. afternoons, I
would have felt the lack of a place to go and work. She’s out of the
Macy book store possibilities, too, now--and running all over town for
something else today. It’s too bad, but I did my best,--even to the
extent of putting down money for a phone installation (which she said
was necessary) when I don’t have any use for it myself. She’ll find
something, though, I’m sure. --/--/
176: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _Feb 3rd, ’24_
Grace, dear: --/--/ Yesterday afternoon I had a long talk with CA
[Crane] up at the Waldorf. He phoned me at my office yesterday morning
and asked for that time. He had been here since the morning before, but
had been so tied up with engagements, he said, that there had not been
time even to phone me before. Frances [Crane] was also along, but I
didn’t have to see her. They are returning home tonight.
We talked from 3 until five--and in the end it was very satisfactory. He
began in the usual arbitrary way of inquisition into my attitude toward
business life, etc., just as though there had been no exchange of
letters and recent understandings on that subject, and did his best to
frighten me into compromises. I parried these thrusts very politely,
although it was very hard many times not to jump up and begin
declaiming. However, I realized this time that my ordinary language
about such topics is simply beyond his comprehension, so I quietly kept
on doing my best to explain myself in terms that he would understand and
not resent any more than possible. He finally ended by accepting me
quite docilely as I am: in fact there was nothing else to do, especially
as I did not so much as hint that there was anything I hoped he would do
for me--or was ever planning that he would do for me.
Then he talked to me, as usual about his own affairs, and finally came
around to asking my advice on a new product of his, its proper naming,
and the best way to advertise it. He is going to send me data on the
subject, and wants me to write some ads for him about it! You see, from
this alone (and I have also other grounds to judge by) that he really
respects me. He inquired in detail about you and Grandma and seems to
have the right sort of interest in you. He also came around to agree
that I was quite exemplary of both sides of my family in not being made
of any putty--knowing what I want to do, and sticking it out despite
adversities. At parting he spoke of his anticipations of more extended
contact with me on his next visit here, urged me to write him often, and
thrust a greenback in my pocket. So that’s that!
The work at the office goes smoothly enough to reassure me somewhat. My
copy on the cheese book went over without any changes whatever, and that
makes one write the next job a whole lot faster and imaginatively. Your
own dear special has just come, and I’m awfully glad to know that things
are alright and that my letters are worth something to you in spite of
the haste they always have to be written in.
Tonight is the opening of a new play at the Provincetown Theatre and I
am invited to attend with Sue [Jenkins], who is the wife of James Light,
the stage director. Through Light and O’Neill I know the whole crowd
over there now, and it is very interesting to watch this most
progressive theater in America in the details of its productions,--going
behind scenes, watching rehearsals, etc. I have changed my opinions, or
rather prejudices, about Claire Eames since meeting her there and
watching her work in two recent productions. She isn’t at all stiff or
pompous,--and as an artist she is very flexible and exact. O’Neill, by
the way, recently told a mutual friend of ours that he thinks me the
most important writer of all in the group of younger men with whom I am
generally classed.
Last night I was invited to witness some astonishing dances and psychic
feats performed by a group of pupils belonging to the now famous mystic
monastery founded by Gurdjieff near Versailles (Paris), that is giving
some private demonstrations of their training methods in New York now.
You have to receive a written invitation, and after that there is no
charge. I can’t possibly begin to describe the elaborate theories and
plan of this institution, nor go into the details of this single
demonstration, but it was very, very interesting--and things were done
by amateurs which would stump the Russian ballet, I’m sure. Georgette
LeBlanc, former wife of Maeterlinck, was seated right next to me (she
brought them over here, or was instrumental in it, I think) with
Margaret Anderson, whom I haven’t seen since she got back from Paris in
November. Georgette had on the gold wig which the enclosed picture will
show you, and was certainly the most extraordinary looking person I’ve
ever seen; beautiful, but in a rather hideous way. --/--/
177: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _Feb 13th, ’24_
Dear Grace: There’s a pack of troubles to listen to shortly so don’t
mind too much.
In the first place, I have been sick with the grippe for three days, but
am getting better. In the second place I lost my job on Monday
last--because, plainly, the man who had employed me had over-estimated
the volume of his business. I had heard that he was prone to
extravagances of such sort from one of the other men in the firm before
I took the job, but I took the chance. He couldn’t say a thing against
my work or copy as an excuse, but he had to invent some fantastic
pretenses that I saw through right away as grounds; it was a dirty deal,
and the only hope I have is that Huebsch is still considering me for the
position there, which, if it eventuates, will certainly be better than
anything I have ever had yet. To make matters worse, just a moment ago I
got a letter from the man from whom I have been renting this room and
its furniture. He is coming back to take possession again on the first
of March! I have only fifty dollars on me in the meantime and my 30
dollars rent for this remaining month on the room has not been paid.
So, you see how matters stand. I am going to try some feature articles
for the newspapers while I am looking for another job, but I have not
yet got paid for them yet, nor even made connections, nor written them.
_I shall do my best._ Right after this letter I am going to write CA
[Crane] and ask for a _loan_ of a hundred dollars to carry me over. If
he can’t do that at 6% interest I think he is rather careless, to say
the least. Otherwise I shall fare as best I may among my friends. They
have been so kind, and they so respect my genius that probably you need
not worry about anything serious happening to me. I feel quite
indomitable. I shall not return to Cleveland to live permanently, at any
rate, until I am such a wreck that I might as well go there as anywhere
else. I am so sorry about all this because I had been planning on saving
the first sixty dollars possible to save and returning for a week end to
see you and dear Grandma. You don’t know how I have longed to see you:
But we must wait. It may be [a] long or a short time still before that
is possible. There are opportunities for quick and plentiful money in
the newspaper field if I am lucky. --/--/
178: TO ALLEN TATE
_NYC_ _March 1st ’24_
Dear Allen: Somehow I imagine that you aren’t finding it so bad to stand
on the platform and dispense judgment and information after all!
Whatever your attitude may now be, I must say that I am damned glad
that you got the job,--first, because its remunerations may bring you to
me here in NY, and less selfishly, because I think that the activity
will put you in better spirits, whatever erosions and disgusts the job
may incidentally incur.
I’m dead tired.... You will note by the above [address] that I am
finally moved. It has taken more time and consternation than seems
believable,--all for just a few clothes, books, knicknacks and pictures:
but while I’m against my will now in a furnished room, I must admit that
it seems good to get to a comfortable bed that hasn’t ridges in the
middle! and to have someone to clean things up for me (the old room I
had was conducive to more dissipation and unease in some ways than any
place I have ever been, and I seem to have had to get away before
realizing it!). Forgive all this domestic bosh, please,--and consider my
mind for just what it is at present,--a melon sort of pulp, recuperating
into better shape.
Your comments on my poems were so sharp, yet at the same time so
pleasing to me, that I had to read them to Munson when he came in
yesterday. “Possessions,” it gives me much joy to know, hit you squarely
as you say: I cannot help thinking that more of “Recitative” will get
over better at some later date if you happen to re-read it. It _is_
complex, exceedingly,--and I worked for weeks, off and on, of
course,--trying to simplify the presentation of the ideas in it, the
conception. Imagine the poet, say, on a platform speaking it. The
audience is one half of Humanity, Man (in the sense of Blake) and the
poet the other. ALSO, the poet sees himself in the audience as in a
mirror. ALSO, the audience sees itself, in part, in the poet. Against
this paradoxical DUALITY is posed the UNITY, or the conception of it (as
you got it) in the last verse. In another sense, the poet is _talking to
himself_ all the way through the poem, and there are, as too often in my
poems, other reflexes and symbolisms in the poem, also, which it would
be silly to write here--at least for the present. It’s encouraging that
people say they get at least some kind of impact from my poems, even
when they are honest in admitting considerable mystification. “Make my
dark poem light, and light,” however, is the text I chose from Donne
some time ago as my direction. I have always been working hard for a
more perfect lucidity, and it never pleases me to be taken as wilfully
obscure or esoteric.
Your second version of “Light” was much improved, I think. But still I
don’t like it as well as that charming [the rest of this letter is
lost].
179: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
_New York City_ _March 5th, ’24_
Dear Charlotte and Richard: --/--/ This afternoon I went around to an
exhibition of sculpture by Maillol (who is an honest workman, but not
very creative), and in the same rooms were some large canvasses by
Rousseau (le douanier) the first I have ever had the chance of seeing.
Next door was a limited but splendid exhibition of Picassos, Braques,
and Duchamps. This is a very active year in New York for painting,
shows, etc. Modern painting seems to have come into its own here at
last. Stieglitz’s wonderful new cloud photographs are also on show at
the Anderson Galleries this week along with Georgia O’Keeffe’s work. And
there is the Independents at the Waldorf and an exhibition of Marins
which I have not seen yet. What with one’s work, one’s friends, books,
writing, eating and sleeping, things are certainly rushed! It almost
makes me long for quiet Cleveland. It really is good to be thoroughly
bored once in awhile, don’t you think so?
I have seen a great deal of Eugene O’Neill and his wife lately. They
have been wonderfully kind to me, invited me out to their house in the
country. O’Neill thinks my poetry is better than that of any other
American writing today, and in many ways we seem to agree about things.
I wish you could both see the charming play called _Fashion_ which they
are running now at the Provincetown Theater. An old play written
seriously in 1840, but the funniest thing in the world to see now. Such
costumes and settings by Robert Edmond Jones! You may have seen in the
papers what a terrible row is being stirred up all over the country by
the prospect of acting O’Neill’s new play, _All God’s Chillun Got
Wings_, in which a white woman marries a Negro. There will be some kind
of mobbing or terrors on the first night, and I expect to be there with
my cane for cudgeling the unruly! He is frightfully upset about it, and
receives terrible threats and insults through the mail from the KU KLUX
Klanners. This country is very immature as yet. Such actions prove that
thoroughly.
I didn’t hear Bloch when he was here, and have been awfully sorry about
that. In fact I have been to only three concerts this winter. One was a
miserable performance by Hofman of his own feeble compositions. The
other two were more stimulating, but rather exhausting. Bartok, Varèse,
Arnold Bax, Casella, Szymanowski, Lord Berners, and Schoenberg, the last
one named is my preference among them all as being the only one who
approached the magnificence of Bloch’s work as I still remember it from
Cleveland performances.
I have just finished reading a new novel by Waldo Frank in mss. which is
very exciting,--a sort of spiritualistic detective story that carries
one into abysmal terrors. Frank has been staying with the Arabs in an
oasis in the Sahara Desert for several months, and is probably now in
Spain. Munson and I have had some fine letters from him, although he is
in a broken state of mind and has had much trouble this last year.
--/--/ By the way, I think you would both enjoy reading a new book of
his, a collection of essays, which has just come out. It is called
_Salvos_, and contains his notable essay on Jacques Copeau, and the
Theatre de Vieux Columbier.
Munson is very busy writing his new book.... It will be a series of
criticisms on present-day influences and personalities in American
letters. _The Dial_ will soon publish one of them,--on the critic, Van
Wyck Brooks, who got the _Dial_ prize this last year. Did I write you
that I met and talked an evening with Paul Rosenfeld a few weeks ago? He
had some good things to say, but flopped into a frightful sentimentality
before the evening was over. When attacked he becomes like an
over-nervous prima donna and is really quite funny. I’m afraid we shall
never become intimate although I hear he recently asked Frank’s wife if
she thought I would like to be asked out to dine with him!?--
I am writing,--a little now and then. About the same speed as always,
never as much as I should like but enough to help me keep some faith in
myself. In a few days you will get the next number of _Secession_ with
my “Faustus and Helen” printed complete at last! I think you will also
enjoy the essay by Frank. I enclose the last poem I have written, which
you may not like at all. I haven’t much idea what you will say. I would
to God that I could get more done on my poem, to be called _The Bridge_,
but it cannot be the least bit hurried, not when one has to spend so
much time at the office. --/--/
180: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _March 8th_
Dear Grace and Grandma: --/--/ It has been like spring here. The weather
veering from bright skies into showers. The wind blew a little snow this
morning, but not a handful, and now there is brilliant sunlight, the
wind continuing in almost a gale. It is always so pleasant to hear you
mention spring in your letters: the note is so genuine. And while I like
winter, too, and don’t respond as entirely to that season as you do, I
sympathize with you much. It always makes me hope that we shall have a
place in the country some time where I can come and go, and bring
friends occasionally that will charm you, while you can have endless
days and weeks for quiet reading and gardening. That beats life in the
city all to pieces! --/--/
My dear, you know I can’t tell you much more about CA’s letters than I
have been doing without retyping them or forwarding them on for you to
return.[35] I am telling you all there is in them that is definite
enough to matter, and while I have thought of sending them to you to
read successively as they came,--something has made me feel that while
there might be no harm in it, no real injustice, at the same time and in
the sum of things, I think it a little confusing, somehow not quite
right. I can’t put it into better words, but perhaps you will feel what
I mean, and not misunderstand and think me obtuse or ungrateful, or
unfeeling toward you. You see, it’s just because this present
relationship between himself and myself was started on such an entirely
fresh basis, without any more elements of the past entering into it than
could be helped. And also, because, really I don’t yet have much idea as
to how he really feels about me. He is a long time answering my letters,
and I now haven’t heard from him for over two weeks and don’t know when
I’m going to. I don’t feel that there is anything at present between us
but a fragile thread of feeling and communication: perhaps there never
will be anything more. At any rate we can speak on the street without
getting upset about it. --/--/
181: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _March 23 ’24_
Dear Grace: --/--/ Before anything else I want to thank you for the fine
long letter you wrote, its assistance and thoughtfulness and its
unwavering confidence in me--the last-named most of all! And the suit
came, too--and seems to look better than ever on me.
Your advice about self-reliance, etc., is, of course, quite right. But
there are times when everyone I know has had to ask for a little help.
This has been one of those times with me:--otherwise you would not have
known by this time quite where even to write me. I went over and saw
O’Neill, but finally didn’t ask him for any loan whatever. Instead,
almost right out of the sky the next day came a cash gift from a friend
of mine who was managing editor of _The Dial_ when my first poem was
accepted there, and who simply had heard from others that I was in a
predicament. Consequently, my rent is now paid for two weeks more, and I
can keep on feeding a few more days. I’ve been invited out for dinner
considerably, and have accepted more generally than I should if I had a
job--for the obvious reason that free meals are a considerable help. The
Habichts last Sunday evening, Claire and Hal [Smith] on Friday night,
and I generally eat with Gorham and Lisa one night a week, if not
oftener. Then there are numerous other friends of mine about whom it is
useless to mention much as they are too unfamiliar to you. I certainly
am developing some interesting and perhaps valuable connections here as
time goes on, and my natural manners seem to induce a certain amount of
popularity and comment. How strange it seems to me sometimes to be
gradually meeting and talking with all the names that I used to wonder
over years ago,--and to find how, in most cases, I am valued as an
individual--for the attributes most natural to myself! It does give me
more confidence than I ever thought I should have.
--/--/ I have a revived confidence in humanity lately, and things are
going to come very beautifully for me--and not after so very long, I
think. The great thing is to Live and NOT Hate. (Christian Science, in
part, I think; and a very important doctrine of belief. Perhaps the most
important.)
I hope that CA will realize just a little bit of this truth before it is
too late for him to think of anything at all,--even his business! But we
are really so far apart, I’m afraid, that I have few ways of knowing
whatever he does think about practically anything. I shall keep on doing
my best to NOT DENY him anything of myself which he can see as worth
realizing (which means _possessing_, also), meanwhile not depending on
him either in thought or deed for anything whatever. He has not answered
my letter yet. And despite what you say about his probable need for
quiet and recuperation, he must be reading his mail all the time. The
trouble is that he might much prefer me off the scene anyway,--and it’s
just possible that such a thought was behind his urging me when he was
last here to go to the Isle of Pines (not a bad idea, I think, myself),
but I realize your feelings on the subject. His problems are many, and I
think he may realize in time that they are more than strictly those
concerned with his business, however much and fast they multiply. What I
love to think about is the way YOU have come through! And myself! It’s a
great game. We may realize that we are always losing, but it means a lot
to realize that, also, all the while you are losing you are also
gaining! And I think we both understand what that means. --/--/
182: TO WALDO FRANK
_Brooklyn, NY_ _April 21st, ’24_
Dear Waldo: For many days, now, I have gone about quite dumb with
something for which “happiness” must be too mild a term. At any rate, my
aptitude for communication, such as it ever is!, has been limited to one
person alone, and perhaps for the first time in my life (and, I can only
think that it is for the last, so far is my imagination from the
conception of anything more profound and lovely than this love). I have
wanted to write you more than once, but it will take many letters to let
you know what I mean (for myself, at least) when I say that I have seen
the Word made Flesh. I mean nothing less, and I know now that there is
such a thing as indestructibility. In the deepest sense, where flesh
became transformed through intensity of response to counter-response,
where sex was beaten out, where a purity of joy was reached that
included tears. It’s true, Waldo, that so much more than my frustrations
and multitude of humiliations has been answered in this reality and
promise that I feel that whatever event the future holds is justified
beforehand. And I have been able to give freedom and life which was
acknowledged in the ecstasy of walking hand in hand across the most
beautiful bridge of the world, the cables enclosing us and pulling us
upward in such a dance as I have never walked and never can walk with
another.
Note the above address [110 Columbia Heights], and you will see that I
am living in the shadow of that bridge. It is so quiet here; in fact,
it’s like the moment of the communion with the “religious gunman” in my
“F and H” where the edge of the bridge leaps over the edge of the
street. It was in the evening darkness of its shadow that I started the
last part of that poem. Imagine my surprise when E---- brought me to this
street where, at the very end of it, I saw a scene that was more
familiar than a hundred factual previsions could have rendered it! And
there is all the glorious dance of the river directly beyond the back
window of the room I am to have as soon as E----’s father moves out,
which is to be soon. E---- will be back then from S. America where he
had to ship for wages as ship’s writer. That window is where I would be
most remembered of all: the ships, the harbor, and the skyline of
Manhattan, midnight, morning or evening,--rain, snow or sun, it is
everything from mountains to the walls of Jerusalem and Nineveh, and all
related and in actual contact with the changelessness of the many waters
that surround it. I think the sea has thrown itself upon me and been
answered, at least in part, and I believe I am a little changed--not
essentially, but changed and transubstantiated as anyone is who has
asked a question and been answered.
Now I can thank you for the wisdom of your last letter to me, and most
of all for your confidence in me. (It is strange, but I can feel no
place for paragraphs in this letter!) (Yet one goes on making
paragraphs.) It came at the very moment of my present understanding, and
it is as though it, in some clairvoyant way, included it. Only, I so
much wish you were here these days for you are the only one I know who
quite encircles my experience. I shall never, of course, be able to give
any account of it to anyone in direct terms, but you will be here and
not so far from now. Then we shall take a walk across the bridge to
Brooklyn (as well as to Estador, for all that!). Just now I feel the
flood tide again the way it seemed to me just before I left Cleveland
last year, and I feel like slapping you on the back every half-hour.
Malcolm Cowley was very nice in telling me about an opening in the
office of Sweet’s Catalogues (architectural and engineering), and for
the last two weeks I’ve been up there at five dollars a week the better
salary than Thompson’s gave me. The work involves no extraneous elements
like “human interest” and such bosh, albeit a great deal of care and
technical information: but so far I’ve been able to straddle it, and
here’s hoping.
If it hadn’t been for the delicacy and generosity of people like Gorham,
Sue Light, Stewart Mitchell, and at the last, E----, I might have been
back in Cleveland long ago. My family did, I suppose, what they could,
but finally stopped at everything but my carfare back. I’m glad now that
I refused that. My father is still silent after over two months since,
when I asked him for a slight loan. The past would evidently like to
destroy me, at least I can interpret things in no other light.
But you, Cummings and Gorham are good people to talk to, and I guess I
[can] get along without the past entire! And my eyes have been kissed
with a speech that is beyond words entirely.
Allons! but I have written few poems during all this rumpus. I enclose
what I have,--the “Lachrymae Christi” written two months ago, and a kind
of sonnet written last week and, still unfinished.[36] -- -- -- --
183: TO HIS MOTHER
[_Brooklyn_] _May 11th, ’24_
Dear Grace and Grandma: I am told that this section of Brooklyn around
here (Brooklyn Heights) is very much like London. Certainly it is very
quiet and charming, with its many old houses and all a little different,
and with occasional trees jutting up an early green through the
pavements. I have just come back from breakfast and saw some tulips
dotting the edge of one of the several beautiful garden patches that
edge the embankment that leads down to the river. It certainly is
refreshing to live in such a neighborhood, and even though I should not
succeed in acquiring a room that actually commands the harbor view I
think I shall always want to live in this section anyway. Mr. ----, who
has such a back room in this house, has invited me to use his room
whenever he is out, and the other evening the view from his window was
one never to be forgotten. Everytime one looks at the harbor and the NY
skyline across the river it is quite different, and the range of
atmospheric effects is endless. But at twilight on a foggy evening, such
as it was at this time, it is beyond description. Gradually the lights
in the enormously tall buildings begin to flicker through the mist.
There was a great cloud enveloping the top of the Woolworth tower, while
below, in the river, were streaming reflections of myriad lights,
continually being crossed by the twinkling mast and deck lights of
little tugs scudding along, freight rafts, and occasional liners
starting outward. Look far to your left toward Staten Island and there
is the Statue of Liberty, with that remarkable lamp of hers that makes
her seen for miles. And up at the right Brooklyn Bridge, the most superb
piece of construction in the modern world, I’m sure, with strings of
light crossing it like glowing worms as the L’s and surface cars pass
each other going and coming. It is particularly fine to feel the
greatest city in the world from enough distance, as I do here, to see
its larger proportions. When you are actually in it you are often too
distracted to realize its better and more imposing aspects. Yes, this
location is the best one on all counts for me. For the first time in
many many weeks I am beginning to further elaborate my plans for my
_Bridge_ poem. Since the publication of my “Faustus and Helen” poem I
have had considerable satisfaction in the respect accorded me, not yet
in print, but verbally from my confrères in writing, etc. Gorham has
made the astounding assertion that that poem was the greatest poem
written in America since Walt Whitman! Malcolm Cowley has invited me to
contribute about a dozen poems to an anthology that he is planning to
bring out through a regular publisher, and I am inclined to assent, as
the other contributors are quite able writers and it will be some time
before my _Bridge_ poem is completed and I bring out my efforts in
individual book form. --/--/
184: TO HIS MOTHER
[_Brooklyn_] _June 19th ’24_
Dear Grace: The “wind-up” of your last letter was far from gratifying
and I am sorry that anything so common as my usual lack of time for
writing should have given you the impression of indifference or
ingratitude on my part. Now--lest I get no other seconds before Sunday
in which to write you, I’m going to get this off--for tomorrow evening
I’ll be tied up with a kind of picnic to Coney Island that the office is
giving and there won’t be a moment before midnight for myself.
--/--/ I wish I could be more interested in politics, but I guess it
takes a different kind of mind than mine and a different education. You,
however, seem stimulated very much by the spectacle and it makes me
almost wish that you would become more active in some work of that sort.
As for myself this last week--I’ve been most unhappy. My uric acid
resulted in urethritis which has been very painful and nerve-wracking. A
steady diet of buttermilk has finally relieved me, however, and I am
going to continue it for some time yet. I’m looking better now than when
you saw me in Cleveland but get neuralgic immediately as soon as I
deviate the slightest from my diet. I was in a perfect panic for several
days, fearing I had a venereal disease, but a complete examination of my
body and urine disproved any trace of that. I know now, however, just
how one is paralyzed with fear at any such suspicion. Believe me, it’s
awful! --/--/
185: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Brooklyn_] _July 9th, ’24_
Dear Gorham: --/--/ I do want to thank Lisa [Munson] especially--however
late--for the last and very pleasant evening at your place. Allen
[Tate] enjoyed it, he told me, more than any evening he had had in NY,
and I admit to a gratifying sense of excitement when I left that
recalled some of the earlier Munson-Burke-Toomer-etc. engagements that
took place before the grand dissolution, birth control, re-swaddling and
new-synthesizing, grandma-confusion movement (of which I am probably the
most salient example) began. Allen has a very good mind and a kind of
scepticism which I respect. I got very few chances to really talk with
him, but I suspect that at least we have established an idiom or code
for future understandings which may make our correspondence at once a
simpler and more comprehensive pursuit. The boy left NY in a frightfully
feverish state, however, and I am a little worried about what’s
happening to him since. He was to have written over a week ago. I shall
be pleased to know what he eventually comes to think about this
bronco-busting city. I liked his sense of reserved opinion on some
matters, and it may well be that a place like NY means less to him than
to the usual young literary man.
I have just re-read your Eliot article in _1924_, and hope I may
congratulate you again on some very accurate estimates and constructive
motives. The little magazine is better than I thought it might
be,--really quite sensible looking, and better in its initial contents
than several issues of _The Trans-Atlantic Review_ that I have seen.
(Even Seaver’s poetry surprises me!) It certainly is to be hoped that
the _Secession-Broom_ crowd can supply it to the point of crowding out
the ever willing members of the milky way that flutter into every little
magazine around the place.
I envy you the long walks and cool evenings. The office and all it means
gets rapidly unbearable again with this anvil weather. I feel less
querulous today, however, as E. is back with me again--to stay an
indefinite brevity but under much more favorable circumstances than
before. -- -- -- --
186: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _Aug. 12th ’24_
Dear Grace & Grandma: I hope you got the postcard--it was all I could
muster up for the time being. Three more hellishly hot days since and at
4 this morning it began to rain. I hope it pours for days--as I have
been having queer feelings in my head from lack of sleep, swilling
spells and all the nervous tremors that go with such a state of
disorder. You may be glad to be in a place where you can have some
privacy, go riding in the country and take your time about things. If
you were once to pile into a steaming, rushing mob in the subway where
the stinks of millions accumulate from day to day--you’d see how I feel
about the next day’s work after a sleepless night. And when one goes to
one’s room afterward, believe me, it isn’t to write letters! There isn’t
much you can do in N.Y. in the summer but work & complain. I seem to be
doing both, I guess. --/--/
I don’t know what CA’s doing these days as I never hear from him. And
I’m not going to try to keep up a one-legged correspondence. I think of
him entirely too much however--as a poisonous and unnatural person--whom
it puzzles me to feel any attitude whatever toward, because from all
angles he is so baffling. If he would lose all his money and feel
himself disgraced I might come to have some feeling for him better than
hatred. But now--I can only think of him in profane terms. But enough of
this! I’m in a trap that will probably confine me the rest of my life,
so I might as well laugh at such a world as my imagination qualifies me
for.
When people like Gorham & Waldo Frank ask me why I don’t write more, it
fairly makes me rage. They--with money supplied them and their time all
their own!
But there’s no use in my going on like this when I know it will
displease you. You _will_ have _letters_ though!
187: TO HIS MOTHER
[_Brooklyn_] _Aug 17th--24_
Dear Grace and Grandma: --/--/ The last few days have been cool enough
to allow me a slight recuperation from the mood in which I last wrote to
you. I also admit feeling better, due to a long talk I had the other
evening with Waldo Frank, just back from abroad, on the present
situation and hopes for the artist in America, etc. In order to make
some money, Frank has signed up for a literary lecture tour beginning
next March, which will take him through the middle west and to
Cleveland. He is planning on calling on CA for a little persuasive
exercise in arousing CA’s interest in me. I told him that I certainly
wanted him to meet you, whatever else he did while there, and that he is
planning on. You, I’m sure, will give him readier welcome than the
chocolate maggot.
Frank has been showing some of my work to several of the finest writers
in France (most all of whom read English very well) and says there will
even be a little audience there for my first book (when it comes out!).
But that will be years from now, at my present rate. Even so it’s not
so bad. Conrad and Anderson did not begin to write until they were over
thirty-five. And Frank seems to think that I have written a few classics
already. I can allow my best, and that only, whatever happens; there are
too many others writing trash and near-trash these days for me to envy
them. --/--/
188: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Brooklyn_] _9/6/24_
Dear Waldo: Your love and thought were so welcome! For I had wanted to
see you; and I was afraid that I had proved not very encouraging of
(perhaps) your ideas of myself--I refer to my doldrums when we met last.
And now--I can’t tell you how glad I am that you know and realize me
more firmly. And, I know, I can thank you for all this without
apologizing for my real despair and torture at the time--and that still
tracks me a good share of the time.
The above[37] is an attempt at an approximation to the accompaniment of
your own words--an “even so” and “All hail!” to a love that I have
known. If it can give you anything like the illumination that the poem
by Jimenez has given me--I shall not be sorry I copied it out for you.
189: TO HIS MOTHER
[_Brooklyn_] _Sept. 14th, ’24_
Dear Grace and Grandma: I have just come back from a breakfast with Sam
[Loveman], and he has left to spend the rest of the day with the widow
of Edgar Saltus (whom you must have heard him talk about enough to
identify). I have been greeted so far mostly by his coat tails, so
occupied has Sambo been with numerous friends of his here ever since
arriving; Miss Sonia Green and her piping-voiced husband, Howard
Lovecraft (the man who visited Sam in Cleveland one summer when Galpin
was also there), kept Sam traipsing around the slums and wharf streets
until four this morning looking for Colonial specimens of architecture,
and until Sam tells me he groaned with fatigue and begged for the
subway! Well, Sam may have been improved before he left Cleveland, but
skating around here has made him as hectic again as I ever remember him,
and I think he is making the usual mistake of people visiting NY, of
attempting too much, getting prematurely exhausted, and then railing
against the place and wanting to get back home. This last alternative is
really what I am expecting him to do, although he has not yet finally
decided. But he does think that NY is too swift for him--and perhaps it
is, I don’t know. Sam is so often in an unsettled state of mind,
however, that it is hard to know in what direction to urge him. --/--/
So far, his most coherent and welcome conversation has been about you,
Grace, and several matters that you seemed to think were inadvisable to
put on paper to me.
But why you have been so cautious, or sweetly shy, I’m at a loss to
understand, because I certainly would never be timorous about writing
you any news about myself, however intimate, and feeling quite sure
enough that you would not be apt to quote it either far or near--just
from the very facts of our relationship. However, I don’t want you to
think that I in the least minded hearing such delightful news quite
orally from dear old Sam: good news is too welcome, however it comes.
And now I want you--or rather want to reassure you about something that
I have intended to write for some time, and in which you must believe my
fullest and most intense sincerity is voiced.
When grandma wrote me awhile ago about Mr. Curtis and his devotion to
you--describing as she did, such a human and very lovable person, I was
exceedingly happy. But when--later in the course of the letter she
mentioned that you felt that no alliance was worth anything that “broke”
our relationship--that made me very worried and sad. (I have spoken to
you about this attitude of yours before, and you should not persist in
assuming [that] what I feel is a somewhat biased and un-natural attitude
toward it. I also feel that you are unduly influenced by what Zell
[Deming] has to say on such subjects, and you should know that she is a
very different type of personality than you and is in a very different
relationship to life. The same differences--you should be aware of in
whatever opinions you hear from other people on the same subject. And
remember that people--sometimes no matter how much they like you--are
quite ready to sacrifice your personal happiness to prove or falsely
prove their own merely personal theories, etc.) What I want to repeat to
you again--and with emphasis--is that I, first, have an incessant desire
for your happiness. Second, that I feel you are naturally most happy--or
would be, given the proper opportunity--as a married woman. And thirdly,
that I have perfect faith in your ability to select a man that loves you
enough, and who has spirit and goodness enough to not only make you
happy,--but to please _me_ by his companionship. And you must remember,
that _whoever you chose and no matter what the circumstances might be,
no such element could ever affect our mutual relationship_ unless you
positively willed it,--which doesn’t seem likely by the undue
circumspection you feel about the matter.
You must remember, dear, that nothing would make me happier than your
marriage--regardless of such matters as money. And for God’s sake don’t
marry--or at least _seek_ to marry a mere moneybag. It has always hurt
me to hear you jest about such matters. A few material limitations are
not so much to the heart that is fed and the mind that is kept glowing
happily with a real companionship. That’s what I want to caution you
now,--and I must speak plainly before it is too late, because you have
made as many mistakes in your life as the average, and I don’t want you
to persist in what is a very sentimental attitude, I fear, regarding my
reactions to your natural inclinations. As the years go on I am quite
apt to be away for long periods, for I admit that the freedom of my
imagination is the most precious thing that life holds for me,--and the
only reason I can see for living. That you should be lonely anywhere
during those times is a pain to me everytime I contemplate the future;
you have already had a full share of pain, and you must accept--learn to
identify and accept--the sweet, now, from the bitter. And that you are
able to do that if you follow your trained instincts--I have not the
slightest doubt. I’m not urging you to do anything you don’t want to;
you, I hope, will see that clearly enough. I only want you to know that
life seems to be offering you some of its ripeness now, and that if you
will stop trying to reconcile a whole lot of opposing and often very
superficial judgments--and recall some of the uninjured emotions of your
youth which have revived, very purely in your heart, I know--you will
better decide _your happiness_ and _mine_ than if you allow a clutter of
complex fears and unrelated ideas to determine your judgment. I shall
always love you just the same, whatever you do; and you know that. I
can’t help but say that I shall respect you even more as a woman,
however, if you learn to see your relationship to life in a clear and
coherent way; and you are doing that, I must say, with more grace and
rectitude every day. --/--/
190: TO HIS MOTHER
_Brooklyn, NY_ _9-23-24_
Dear Grace: I allowed myself the luxury of three roses last Sunday, and
I intend to make it as much a habit as my more persistent taste for
“smokes” and wine will allow me--so pleasant have they made the room
these last three days. But you are already aware of how much flowers
affect me. And I am feeling better gradually as the cool days increase
and the sneezing and nervous fever attending it begin to subside. You
ask me about my summer, and I feel like answering that I am glad you
feel that you have known little about it for summer in a place like New
York (and especially when you are rushed with work as I have been) is
provocative of little but groans and sarcasms. Now it’s over and
“Sweet’s Architectural Catalogue” is ready for press. I may be laid off,
because of this latter fact, because there is very little to do there
for three months following the grand climax of the publication of that
monstrous volume; but whatever happens it wouldn’t be as bad as the
stifling days and nights and the strain of working with your head as raw
as beefsteak. Of course I had always some solace from my happy times
with friends, and I had a little swimming at Long Beach and one weekend
visit to the country, but you know about that already. O’Neill has been
at his place in Provincetown, Mass., all summer, so I have not seen him
as you thought. My happiest times have been with E----, and I am looking
forward to his return again from another South American trip next week.
He is so much more to me than anyone I have ever met that I miss him
terribly during these eight-week trips he takes for bread and butter. He
doesn’t know his father has died during his absence, so it will be a
considerable shock to him on landing.
-- -- -- -- I can scarcely imagine the old house as a foreign property,
perhaps no more standing. It’s so deep in my consciousness and so much
the frame of the past. When it comes to my things, please chuck what
books are in the glass-doored bookcase (never mind the others) in the
drawers of my desk, the only article of furniture which I should like to
keep. If you can’t keep that you might box the books and mss. and send
them on to me here. There are photos, clippings, letters, etc., in the
desk which I should like to try to hold on to. I have gotten so used to
never being sure of next week’s rent, however, that I feel like never
accumulating an extra sheet of paper because it’s painful for me to
think of giving up things that have become a sort of part of me. I
should rise above such feelings, I know, but I haven’t been able to thus
far.
Sam [Loveman] is still here, and sleeping in the back room. His catarrh
improved. What his present plans are--I don’t know, as I have scarcely
had a word with him since last Friday night. He doesn’t evidently think
about spending much time with me.... He has really had enough
opportunity, and even broken engagements on the spur of the moment. It
is all right with me, because I realize that Sam touches life at very
few points where I do, and this even comes into our abstract discussions
of literature, quite naturally, of course, because I see literature as
very closely related to life,--its essence, in fact. But for Sam, all
art is a refuge _away_ from life,--and as long as he scorns or fears
life (as he does) he is witheld from just so much of the deeper content
and value of books, pictures and music. He sometimes talks about them in
terms as naive as an auctioneer would use. Yet he is instinctively so
fine and generous that I will always love and pity him, however much my
admiration is curtailed. I don’t think he will remain in New York much
longer. He is really bound to his family more than we’ve ever realized,
although I have thought of that a good deal. He must have the assurance
of his mother’s attendance and he fancies that the “quiet” of Cleveland
is a more normal environment for him. Well, if he feels that way, it’s
so. Feeling, his own feeling, is the only scale there is to use in such
a matter, and I shall not urge him to stay here against his will--which
couldn’t be done anyway.
I have only written three short poems all summer, although I have had
four previous ones published: two in _The Little Review_ and two in
_1924_, a magazine published in Woodstock. These have brought me the
usual amount of select applause, but no money. I have sent a recent work
to _The Dial_, from which I hope to God I get twenty dollars because I’m
in bad need of a new suit--and that would help. Becky must have mis-read
the _Times_ if she saw any reference to me or a book of mine in it. I am
being urged frequently to publish a volume, and I think I would have no
trouble in finding a friendly publisher, but so far I have been witheld
by my own desire to complete a long poem I am working on,--you have
heard me speak of the _Bridge_ poem--before gathering my things
together. I need one good sized slice in the basket, and _The Bridge_ I
expect to fulfill that part. But a long poem like that needs unbroken
time and extensive concentration, and my present routine of life permits
me only fragments. (There are days when I simply have to “sit on myself”
at my desk to shut out rhythms and melodies that belong to that poem and
have never been written because I have succeeded only too well during
the course of the day’s work in excluding and stifling such a train of
thoughts.) And then there are periods again when the whole world
couldn’t shut out the plans and beauties of that work--and I get a
little of it on paper. It has been that way lately. And that makes me
happy. --/--/
191: TO HIS MOTHER
[_Brooklyn_] _Oct. 21st, ’24_
Dear Grace and Grandma: The last day of my vacation, and somehow the
best! So cold and sharp it is, you might think it time for turkey. You
know how keenly brilliant the atmosphere around these parts can
be--frequently in any season. On such days one gets an even better edge
to this glorious light here by the harbor. The water so very blue, the
foam and steam from the tugs so dazzlingly white! I like the liners best
that are painted white--with red and black funnels like those United
Fruit boats across the river, standing at rest. And you should see the
lovely plumes of steam that issue from the enormous height of the
skyscrapers across the way. I’ve been toasting my feet at an electric
stove, a kind of radio heater that I have in my room, and glancing first
at the bay, then with another kind of satisfaction at my shelves of
books and writing table,--for a long time unable to think of anything
but a kind of keen sensual bliss, that is in itself something like
action--it contains so much excitement and pleasure. --/--/
192: TO HIS MOTHER
[_Brooklyn_] _Nov. 16th--24_
Dear Grace: Another very active week. Luncheon with someone different
every day,--and nearly always someone to take up the evening. But I have
been so interested in several incompleted poems that I’ve sat up very
late working on them, and so by the advent of Saturday felt pretty
tuckered out. There’s no stopping for rest, however, when one is the
“current” of creation, so to speak, and so I’ve spent all of today at
one or two stubborn lines. My work is becoming known for its formal
perfection and hard glowing polish, but most of these qualities, I’m
afraid, are due to a great deal of labor and patience on my part.
Besides working on parts of my _Bridge_, I’m engaged in writing a series
of six sea poems called “Voyages” (they are also love poems), and one of
these you will soon see published in _1924_, a magazine published at
Woodstock and which I think I told you about heretofore.
It darkened before five today and the wind’s onslaught across the bay
turns up white-caps in the river’s mouth. The gulls are chilly-looking
creatures--constantly wheeling around in search of food here in the
river as they do hundreds of miles out at sea in the wakes of liners.
The radiator sizzles in the room here and it is warm enough for anyone’s
comfort, even yours. I feel as though I were well arranged for a winter
of rich work, reading and excitement--there simply isn’t half time
enough (that’s my main complaint) for all that is offered. And the weeks
go by so fast! It will soon be sneezing season again before I know it.
--/--/ He [Eugene O’Neill] seems to have Europe in applause more than
America. That is true of Waldo Frank’s work in France, also, where he
has been much translated and more seriously considered, far more so,
than here at home. The American public is still strangely unprepared for
its men of higher talents, while Europe looks more to America for the
renascence of a creative spirit.
Your letter came last night--was tucked under my door when I came in at
one o’clock. Its tenderness and affection were welcome adjuncts to a
good long sleep. I thought of you, too, just “turning in”--very
likely--after the dance you mentioned, and I was very happy to think of
your having had a lyric evening, dancing as you so enjoy doing. I’d like
to see the A----s and the P----s myself. They were a little unfair to
me--but good sports too, in a way, and unusually merry bosses. I still
like to think of those five o’clock booze parties we had in the office
and how giddily I sometimes came home for dinner. You were very charming
and sensible about it all, too, and I thank my stars that while you are
naturally an inbred Puritan you also know and appreciate the harmless
gambols of an exuberant nature like my own. It all goes to promise that
we shall have many merry times together later sometime when we’re a
little closer geographically.
My--but how the wind is blowing. Rain, too, on the window now! There was
a wonderful fog for about 18 hours last week. One couldn’t even see the
garden close behind the house--to say nothing of the piers. All night
long there were distant tinklings, buoy bells and siren warnings from
river craft. It was like wakening into a dreamland in the early
dawn--one wondered where one was with only a milky light in the window
and that vague music from a hidden world. Next morning while I dressed
it was clear and glittering as usual. Like champagne, or a cold bath to
look [at] it. Such a world!
193: TO HIS MOTHER
[_Brooklyn_] _Nov. 26th, ’24_
Dear Grace and Grandma: --/--/ Paul Rosenfeld, the critic, of whom, as
you know, I am not especially fond, has just called up and invited me
to a sort of reception he is going to give on Sat. evening for Jean
Catel, a French critic formerly on the staff of the _Mercure de France_.
When Rosenfeld gives this sort of party--whatever you may feel about
it--you at least know that everybody (spelled with a capital E) in
modern American painting, letters and art generally--will be there.
Well, I’m not only invited, but am urged to give a reading before them
all from my poems. Alfred Kreymborg and Miss Marianne Moore will also
read from their poems. So far I have declined to read anything--as I am
no vocalist, and I certainly fear the stage fright. But on the other
hand, I probably shall essay a poem or so, if I’m feeling at all assured
at the time, as I hate to be known as too shy a wall flower to speak to
even such a “picked” audience as that will be. While I lack almost no
assurance on the value of my poems, taken generally, I admit that I am
considerably flattered at this invitation occurring, as it does, before
I have published a single volume. (The other two have been known for
years.) And so, pray with me that the tongue be less stubborn than usual
in conveying my intentions from the written page. --/--/
194: TO HIS MOTHER
[_Brooklyn_] _Nov. 30th, ’24_
Dear Grace: --/--/ On Friday night I am quite certain that I suffered at
least a mild attack of the real ptomaine poisoning from something I ate
at dinner. I started to walk home after dinner, and before I got half
way I began to swell up and burn like fire. Just the usual and
bad-enough case of the hives, I thought at first. I finally managed to
get to my bed, but was deathly sick besides. My pulse was pumping so
that at the sink, as I was drinking some bicarbonate of soda, I lost my
sight and hearing in a kind of rushing and smothering of the blood, and
would have fainted had I tried to stand up any longer. Later on, when
the case had apparently subsided and I was lying rigidly still in bed,
it began all over again. It was perfectly maddening, and I never slept a
wink all night. All this convinces me that my malady was something more
than urticaria, and that I had eaten something positively poisonous. I
was able to evacuate in both directions during the night, however, and
somehow managed to go up to the office yesterday morning, retiring back
to bed again as soon as work was over and not getting up until it was
time to go to Rosenfeld’s. In the meantime I had refrained from
practically all food and taken a great deal of Alkalithia and milk of
magnesia, hot bath, etc. I was still very weak when I got to the party,
but as whiskey and soda was served I quickly revived, and everyone
thought I was a picture of health.
I’m very glad to have made the effort, after all, for I have reason now
to feel more assured than ever in regard to my poetry. The crowd was
representative as I had expected, delightfully informal, and proved very
receptive. I had met at least half of them before,--Stieglitz, Georgia
O’Keeffe, Seligmann, Jean Toomer, Paul Strand and his wife, Alfred
Kreymborg, Marianne Moore, Van Wyck Brooks, Edmund Wilson and Mary
Blair, Lewis Mumford, etc., etc. There was music by Copland, a modern
composer, and after that the readings by Miss Moore, myself, Kreymborg
and Jean Catel (who read a long poem in French by Paul Valéry) occupied
the rest of the time until one-thirty when the crowd broke up. I began
by reading three of my shorter poems: “Chaplinesque,” “Sunday Morning
Apples” (the poem to Bill Sommer which seems to be talked about
everywhere since it was printed last summer in _1924_), and thirdly, a
new poem which has not been printed, called “Paraphrase.” As I was urged
to read “Faustus and Helen” I finally did so. Kreymborg came to me
afterward and said that it was magnificent and even the conservative Van
Wyck Brooks clapped his hands, so Toomer told me. I certainly read more
deliberately and distinctly than I ever thought I should be able to, and
I find I have already been recognized with the applause of the most
discriminating. -- -- -- --
195: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Brooklyn, NY_ _Dec. 5th, ’24_
Dear Gorham: I’m extremely sorry to have caused you such doubts and
misunderstandings by what I said yesterday at lunch, and I’m further
glad to say that I do not deserve all of them. In fact before your
letter reached me I suddenly remembered my mention of the proposed
attack on you and Waldo, and that I had given you a very incomplete
account of it.
When this came up at the coffee house a week since yesterday I at once
interrupted it by offering to withdraw from any participation in the
issue whatever. Allen Tate was there at the time, and as a fairly
neutral party I think you can rely on him to check my statement as a
fact. At any rate I hope you will ask him about it when you next see
him. I have so consistently defended you and Waldo in that particular
company that I have so far derived little from the meetings but an
unnecessarily aggravated state of nerves and feelings.
From your standpoint, I have long been aware, there is no excuse for my
association with people whose activities are so questionable from
several angles. And especially since I have been as strong in
denunciations of them as anyone. (And let me add that I have taken no
pains to conceal these opinions from anyone whatever.) Yet, at the same
time, and whether fortunately or otherwise, I have not been so situated
that I could possibly maintain the complete isolation which it has been
your desired good fortune to maintain. While there is danger, and a good
deal of it, I dare say, in my position, I have also felt that in yours,
Gorham, lurked the possible blindfolding of certain recognitions, which,
attached personalities being removed, you would have naturally found
interesting and worthy. I can summon very little that is definite to
support my feelings about this at the present time. Issues are not at
all clear, and I am disgusted most of the time. You have set yourself to
a rigorous program, part of which I subscribe to in action, a larger
part of which I applaud you for as a critic, and another part of which I
feel is unnecessarily unwieldy, limited and stolid. Perhaps all this
assurance-plus is necessary in fighting as stringently as you have done
and are doing, but so far I am not crystallized enough, as it were, to
accept the whole lock-stock-and-barrel of it. To a certain extent, as
Wyndham Lewis says, one must be broken up to live. Which I defend myself
by interpreting--the artist must have a certain amount of “confusion” to
bring into form. But that’s not the whole story, either.
Regardless of these issues you will be assured, I hope, that I have so
far found nothing in either your work or Waldo’s which I would wish to
attack. Your generosity, meanwhile, certainly deserves my thanks for
appreciating the sometimes necessary distinctions between a personal
friendship with a man and one’s opinion of his work.
My rewards or discredit from participation in a magazine issued by your
enemies will be bound to be, to a certain extent, somewhat embarrassing,
yet, as you recognize, I still feel that I can owe myself that freedom
on a clear responsibility. I am growing more and more sick of factions,
gossip, jealousies, recriminations, excoriations and the whole literary
shee-bang right now. A little more solitude, real solitude, on the part
of everyone, would be a good thing, I think.
Let us have lunch together soon. I won’t take absolute “vows” before
that, for this letter is a very crumb of my feelings.
196: TO GORHAM MUNSON
[_Brooklyn?_] _Dec. 8th, ’24_
Dear Gorham: Reflecting on our conversation at lunch today I have come
to feel bound to suggest that you take whatever decisions or formalities
are necessary to “excommunicate” me from your literary circle. How much
further you may wish to isolate me depends entirely on your own personal
feelings, but I am not prepared to welcome threats from any quarters
that I know of--which are based on assumptions of my literary ambitions
in relation to one group, faction, “opportunity,” or another.
1925
197: TO HIS MOTHER
[_Brooklyn_] _Jan. 4th, ’25_
Dear Grace and Grandma: I might say that this is the first “day of rest”
that I’ve had since I came back,--but fortunately that doesn’t mean that
I am all fagged out by any means.[38] I’ve managed to get some regular
sleeping hours, have curtailed my liquor rations (since New Year’s eve)
and am feeling as well as anyone could ever ask. Just came back from a
luscious breakfast (I make a practice of a regular meal on Sunday
mornings because I sleep so late and also walk a good distance to the
restaurant) and have bought some gay marigolds and narcissi from the
funny little florist woman nearby who has a regular case on me, or
rather has an amusing way of flattering one. She’s a sight, alright!
Bumpy body, pocked face, mussy hair and a voice that simply barks at
you, it is so raucous. I can’t be seen passing her place without her
glimpsing me, and signaling. When I enter she jumps at me with such
phrases as--“Well my handsome Good Looking again! How’s my big boy?
Ain’t he a dandy!,” etc., etc., etc. I generally get enough from her to
make my room gay on a quarter, and indeed, today, with my Christmas
decorations still up and the snow-light coming in from the roofs of the
piers below me--it is festive. Allen Tate, Sue [Jenkins] and Brown are
coming over for tea this afternoon, so I won’t be the only one to look
past the little flying swan still dangling in the window.
Tuesday night as I sat alone in my room I pictured you at the
_Miracle_. You must tell me how you like it, and what you did on New
Year’s eve. Our party at Squarcialupi’s (what a name!) was a delight. I
was sent out to get some more Victrola needles about midnight, and
before I got back the whistles began to blow. Even though it was in an
uncrowded neighborhood--people began throwing their arms around each
other, dancing and singing. Whereat I went into such an ecstasy as only
that moment of all the year affords me. I hugged my companion and
started singing Gregorian chants or something of my own version
approaching them, and I hope in good Latin. O New York is the place to
celebrate New Year’s! There is such spirit in everyone, such cordiality!
Your telegram came next morning before I was up (I didn’t retire until
6) and I trust you got my answer on my way to breakfast. I am very happy
these days and the more so because I trust you are. --/--/
198: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _Feb. 10th, ’25_
Dear Grace: I suppose you’ve been reading about the great unprecedented
fog here, which still more-or-less continues. Well, it’s just been hell
for me over at Columbia Heights. I haven’t had 6 hours of solid sleep
for three nights, what with the bedlam of bells, grunts, whistles,
screams and groans of all the river and harbor buoys, which have kept up
an incessant grinding program as noisesome as the midnight passing into
new year. Just like the mouth of hell, not being able to see six feet
from the window and yet hearing all that weird jargon constantly. It
does no good to go to bed early under such circumstances, yet I’m forced
to do so, just because I’m too tired to do anything else. I hope tonight
will be somewhat better. --/--/
I’m hoping to hear from you today or tomorrow. Please give my best to
Charles [Curtis] which reminds me that I do not share your trepidations
concerning him which you expressed in your last letter. I don’t think
you ought to let such minor doubts annihilate the affection and devotion
that he has proffered you so beautifully. I’m really planning on your
marriage this spring, and I think you will be foolish to delay it until
later.
199: TO HIS MOTHER
[_Brooklyn_] _Monday_
Dear Grace and Grandma: It being the birthday of our country’s father
and a legal holiday, I’m not obliged to be at the office. But it
doesn’t mean that I haven’t been mightily busy. In fact, for the last
three days I have been working very hard to finish up a series of poems
for my book (if the printer ever gets around to take it seriously) and
they are about done. There are two more to be finished--and then I’ll
feel better, even if the book is a year in getting printed. You know one
makes up one’s mind that certain things go well together--make a book,
in fact--and you don’t feel satisfied until you have brought all the
pieces to a uniform standard of excellence. I have revised a good many
poems, and had to complete others that were half finished, and it all
takes a great deal of work. This sounds as though there were going to be
a great number of poems in the book, which, however, isn’t exactly so.
But the book will at least afford me some credit in the world, if not at
once, at least later on. --/--/
200: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
[_Brooklyn_] _Feb. 28th, ’25_
Dear Lotte and Ricardo: My grandmother sent me a picture of the artist
before the Public Hall garden model, clipped from the paper--and as
tonight is the night the beds were announced as being supposed to first
bloom, I think of you as walking in a perfect Venusberg of flowers and
shrubbery. Alas for me! I have only one white hyacinth in my window and
a bad breath from last night and luncheon today. But, for once, I was
able to retire to my room--away from friends and “enemies” and spend a
quiet and economical Saturday evening. I owe enough answers to letters
to keep me in a week, but I know well enough that tomorrow night will
find me in a Spanish restaurant near here, recently discovered, which
serves the finest ruby-colored and rose-scented wine in N.Y. besides
delicious smoky tasting sardines and hidalgoesque chicken. Waldo Frank
knows Spanish very well, and was able to convince the management,
thereby, that we were not revenue officers. Since then life even in “my”
retired neighborhood in Brooklyn has been gay. I know you think me
terrible, and given over entirely to pleasure and sin and folly.
Certainly I am concerned a great deal with all three of these--and even
so, don’t get _all_ I want. What worries me is that I’m so restricted in
other ways besides. Even, yea, on the holiest impulses. For didn’t I
promise to take Richard’s drawings or rather photos around to _The
Dial_--and haven’t I, so far, completely failed to make a move? Really,
I ought to sob in your laps for forgiveness. But to save your patience,
I won’t even mention excuses. I’ll only mention that the matter has
been frequently on my mind and that I’ll try to do something about it
very soon. I’ll also try to get back to you somehow without damage to
the drawings (originals, etc.) which I’ve kept so long.
It’s fine to know you have a new piano. Sam [Loveman] says that it’s a
beauty. If I ever get any money that is one of the first things I shall
put it into. After so many years of negligence, however, I doubt if I
shall be able to perform much on it! Which reminds me that I almost
never get to hear any of the fine concerts here, after all. Money, lack
of time and other things conspire to keep me away. Only once this winter
have I stared at the baton,--and that was Stravinsky’s. But he
disappointed both Waldo and myself by not including the _Sacre du
Printemps_ on the program. I don’t care for what I heard of his _latest
work_. Indeed, the _Petrouchka_ was the only fine thing on his program.
I can probably bet on your having heard him in Cleveland.
My book is indefinitely stalled as the printer has run out of money, but
I’ve been working hard to get finished with a f!!!?!!?!
_18 hours later_
_Sunday, March 1st_:
WELL! It isn’t often that one gets an earthquake inside a letter, but
this letter carries the evidence of one to you this time! Thank God I’m
living still to finish the ending of that last sentence. I had, as you
see, started the word “few” meaning to follow it with “poems”--when the
room began swaying frightfully and I had the most sickening and helpless
feeling I hope to ever have. By the time I got down the stairs people
were coming out of other rooms all over the house, etc. I ended up with
making a call and drinking wine, and so your letter has been waiting
almost twenty-four hours for me to recover. The feeling was simply
frightful. But you have probably read all the details in the papers by
this time. I understand it was even noticed in Cleveland.
201: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _March 10th, ’25_
Dear Grace: It takes this night work at the office to make me
continually sulky, and with two more nights of it again this week in
prospect, don’t blame me if I’m not exactly gay. I would have written
you on Sunday had I been in a better mood. I certainly resent going
around and around feeling as though my legs as well as nerves would give
out at any moment. I dread to think of the summer and all that it
means--and it’s not so far away. I have pretty definitely made up my
mind to take a job on a boat for S. America during that season, at any
rate, and avoid the otherwise exhausted state of mind and body that the
city, heat and my hay fever always cause. But more of that later. The
trip to Norway possibly may not come through at all as there has been
some difficulty in settling the estate of E----’s father, and things are
at present very much tied up. --/--/
Gorham, of course, I don’t see at all, nor hear much about. I understand
that he regrets his awkwardness in dealing with me as he did, etc. But
his change of personality which had long preceded this particular
situation at which I took offense, had already changed my feelings about
him considerably, and I strangely enough don’t miss seeing him half as
much as I had once thought I would under such circumstances. Of course,
I’m really his friend, as I know he is mine, but it may do us good to
separate a little while. Many of his ways and opinions had begun to bore
me a great deal, and that feeling may have been mutual, so far as I
know. --/--/
202: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _3/28/25_
Dear Grace and Grandma: --/--/ I have also been in a state of rush
regarding the completion of a few remaining lines and corrections on
poems to be included in my book, which the printer is beginning to set
in type. This little man, Jacobs, by name, certainly is devoted to the
cause of literature in going ahead as he is--paying for the cost of the
paper and binding as well as dedicating his time and strength--free of
charge--to the details of typography, setting, etc. For he is well
enough convinced that he will on no account reap any more remuneration
from the book than I will. Poetry of my kind is not popular enough
nowadays, you know, to sell.
Nevertheless, I am somewhat stimulated by the fact of the book being
actually now in progress. Getting that wad of my past work into
permanent collection and out of the way, so to speak, is an hygienic
benefit. Then--I shall feel myself all ready to begin the
honest-to-goodness efforts on my long _Bridge_ poem. --/--/
203: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
_Brooklyn_ _April 9, ’25_
Dear Charlotte and Ricardo: --/--/ It will be amusing to ask Sam
[Loveman] about this person when I next see him. We generally have
Sunday morning breakfasts together in a Spanish restaurant nearby and
talk over our troubles as well as pleasant reminiscences.
As you picture matters, the usual bacchanale of life around here and
among my friends still occupies me a good deal. Some of it is sweet and
clarifying--but as time goes on I tire of certain repetitions that occur
in it and seem to be developing certain reactionary tendencies toward
solitude and more austere examinations of myself. Above all, with the
regular amount of highly detailed work I have to do every day at the
office,--the “grind” in other words, and all the tempting other
activities outside my real self, I feel worn out most of the time and so
distracted that I lack the reflection and self-collection necessary to
do the work, the _real_ work that ultimately concerns me most. Still,
considering the slight time which I have for any real freedom I think I
have done a good bit of work during the last two years. But I cannot
profess to any real ability in measuring it. One struggles along blindly
most of the time. --/--/
You both should read _Port of New York_, a book by Rosenfeld dealing
with Stieglitz, Marin, O’Keeffe, Sessions, Hartley, Williams, etc.--I
differ with Rosenfeld on many matters, but the long chapter on Stieglitz
in this book is very fine indeed and [the rest of this letter is lost].
204: TO THOMAS SELTZER
_Brooklyn, N. Y._ _May 4th, ’25_
Dear Sir: In the same mail with this letter I am submitting the mss. of
a book of poems, _White Buildings_, for your consideration.
Mr. Samuel Jacobs, already known to you, I believe, by reason of his
composition work on the _Tulips and Chimneys_ book by Cummings, had
thought of bringing out this book himself, but recently has become
involved in other work to such an extent that he feels it would be
better handled by a “regular” publisher. He has, however, recommended
that I send the mss. to you. And his steady interest in the matter is, I
think, well evinced in the free cooperative services he says he is glad
to offer the publisher of _White Buildings_.
Mr. Jacobs has made me a cost estimate on an edition of five hundred
copies, quoting the prices of all work as done by his press, The
Polytype Press, 39 West 8th Street. In the following quotations, which
are based on an edition that should be admirable in every detail, Mr.
Jacobs has eliminated the cost of composition, which he says he would
like to do free of charge, on account of his personal interest in the
poems and in having them well set up. I quote from his signed
estimate:--
500 copies--_White Buildings_--64 pp.
Stock (Warren’s Oldstyle) $ 17.00
Makeup (by Pelley Press) 16.00
Lockup & Presswork 40.00
Casing and Shipping 2.00
Binding (@ 25¢ per copy) 125.00
TOTAL $200.00
In view of the fact that Mr. Jacobs’ reputation as a typographical
expert and producer of notably beautiful books is so well established by
this time, I feel that the above estimate is surprisingly modest. I have
taken the liberty of introducing it in such detail at this time because
it represents a considerable economy in proportion to the book’s
probable production cost through other hands.
As to the selling qualities of _White Buildings_,--I surrender that
prophecy to the publisher. That there are admirers of my work to the
number of five hundred, I am certain. And I can personally guarantee the
sale of at least 150 copies through the various mailing lists to which I
have ready access, and through the interest of my friends. Mr. Waldo
Frank has admired my poetry considerably, as well as Eugene O’Neill. I
have been assured that both of these writers will be glad to be quoted
to that effect on a jacket or announcement accompanying the book. And
these statements might have an appreciable effect on both sales and
reviews. Not to enumerate the reasons here, I have reason to expect that
_White Buildings_ will receive favorable review from at least six out of
ten writers who would be likely to treat with it, anyway.
The bulk of the book has already appeared in the following magazines:
_The Little Review_, _The Dial_, _Secession_, _The Double Dealer_,
_1924_, _The Fugitive_, _Broom_, etc. I am hoping that I may hear
something from you regarding your decision on this mss. within a month’s
time, as I may be out of the city for a period after that date.
205: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _May 7th, ’25_
Dear Grace and Grandma: The photos of the cherry tree in bloom were a
joy to have and keep. I like especially the one with yourself, Grace,
standing underneath. The attitude and expression you took were gracious
and lovely. The tree and the entire yard, for all that, have a great
place in my memories, and now that the place is liable to be sold at any
time I’m especially glad to have the pictures.
By this time I hope and pray that you are both fully recovered from your
attacks of grippe and indigestion and nerves. The recent weather has
been pretty decent here, and as far as myself is concerned, great
improvements have been made. I’m feeling even better than at Christmas
when I was in Cleveland, and guess my color shows it. Diet and general
caution have put me in fine shape along with some slight medicine the
doctor gave me. It certainly makes a big difference in one’s mental
reactions and attitude, as you said in your letter, Grace.
Last Monday I had luncheon with Bill Freeman, and with the result of
some statements that may interest you. We talked about everything else
under the sun _but_ business during the meal, but before we left the
table Freeman abruptly introduced the proposition which I had faintly
expected. He asked me if I ever expected to go back to Cleveland to
live, and I replied that at present I had no wish to do so, but that
such a thing was by no means improbable if, for certain reasons, I
should sometime feel obligated to. Then he went on to say that the
Corday and Gross Company needed someone of my type in their copy
department very badly, and that they would be glad to connect with me in
case I cared to go back. He further mentioned that I was the one
“brilliant” copywriter they had ever had there, that the company had
fully realized, long since, that they made a great mistake in letting me
be lured away without raising my salary, etc., etc. Well! I must say it
was a satisfaction to be so spoken of. I was glad to know, too, that
such an opportunity will always be at least plausibly open to me in case
I am ever again located in Cleveland for any length of time. I suggested
to Freeman that I might still do some writing for the company on a
free-lance basis, here, if they cared to commit some special job to me
now and then, and from his answer I judge that the possibilities on that
score are not exceedingly remote. I would certainly like to make a
little extra cash on the side, as you know how pared down my present
salary keeps me.
I went in and made application for a raise again the other day, this
time with the expressed desire of knowing definitely within a week, as I
said “the decision will affect my future plans.” Which is no threat
merely, but a fact. I think I will get the raise, but if I don’t--it’s
me for the sea during these summer months, and a change from office
routine for awhile. It is going to be hot enough without working nights
at the office here, the way we shall undoubtedly be forced to, at a bare
living sum! If I can’t be paid enough with all the time and effort here
at the office to save at least $5.00 a week, then I might as well, for
all I can see, be seeing a bit of the world while I’m young enough. Two
more years of this routine here will kill my imagination anyway, but I’d
rather stay around here awhile now until my book is published and out of
the way. --/--/
On the whole I think it’s better that the printer acted as he did, as it
will mean much more recognition from the general public to have the
insignia of a regular and recognized publisher on the volume than it
would to have just a printer’s sign. That would suggest to the general
public, whether true or not, that I had paid to have the book brought
out myself, which makes a bad impression on reviewers, and puts me in an
unpleasant position. That’s one thing I would never do,--at least with a
first book. It’s enough to put good food on the table, without having to
rub people’s noses in the plate who don’t want to eat! --/--/
206: TO HIS MOTHER
[_Brooklyn_] _Sunday afternoon_
Dear Grace and Grandma: --/--/ I am enjoying a quieter afternoon than I
had expected, due to the happy failure of some people to call whom I had
invited for tea. I have received so many courtesies at one time and
other from Gaston Lachaise and his Madame that I invited them along with
Slater Brown and Sue [Jenkins]. But each of the parties finally phoned
and called it off for various reasons. The Lachaises are soon to leave
for their country place near Bath, Maine, and have been nice enough to
urge me to an extended visit with them this summer if I can possibly do
so. Just a mile from the ocean--and a wonderful beach set in a cove of
rocks topped by pines! How I would love to go--and I really may decide
to. As I have been mentioning, the summer at the office and the extra
night work required looms up before me as almost unthinkable. I have
asked for a raise--but it has not been settled as yet. I think I
impressed it upon the boss, however, that if it isn’t forthcoming I have
other plans. I inquired again yesterday, but have been put off until
Tuesday. Well, we’ll see. I have got into such a rut of repetitious
feeling, thought and dissatisfaction with myself that it seems the only
salvation to break away for awhile into some change of work and
environment. I am still considering a trial of ocean. Even if it’s not
at all ideal it may jog me up a bit. I really need more air and
exercise at my time of life, and after four years or more of this
sedentary office routine you can hardly blame me. Sam [Loveman] would
take over my room and things while I’m gone. All in all, though, I’ve
repressed my instincts so much that I can’t seem to make up my mind with
any decision about anything. --/--/
I have not yet heard what Thomas Seltzer, the publisher, thinks about my
book, but I ought to before another week. When I told Waldo Frank about
submitting there he became somewhat excited, said that he had wanted to
bring it to his own publisher, Boni and Liveright, and made me promise
to turn over the mss. to him immediately if Seltzer didn’t take it. As
you perhaps remember, Waldo had originally intended to take the book to
Liveright, but told me some weeks ago that Liveright was not in the
proper mood to be talked to at the time, etc., etc. Well, I got little
satisfaction from waiting around indefinitely--so decided to start the
book on its rounds. It takes long enough to find a publisher, as a rule,
without depending on the moods of any one of them. Even now, if the book
were accepted today, it would probably be next spring before it could
actually appear. I’m figuring that publication in book form will give me
at least enough prestige to get a little money for my magazine
contributions. Besides this, I have begun to feel rather silly, being
introduced everywhere as a poet and yet having so little collected
evidence of the occupation. There won’t be any explosions of praise when
the book appears, but it will make me feel a little more solid on my
feet. --/--/
207: TO HIS MOTHER
[_New York City_] _May 28th, ’25_
Dear Grace: --/--/ I gave notice to the boss as soon as I found out
definitely that I was not going to get a raise. The time is set for a
week from this Saturday. You know my feelings and reasons well enough
from former letters, so it’s not necessary for me to repeat them now.
Later on in the summer I may take a boat job on the South American or
West Indian Routes, but at present I have been very lucky in being
invited out to a lovely farm near here (Brewster, N.Y.), to spend a
month or so. Brown has just bought it, and has urged me to come out and
help him plant the garden, etc. And this is just what I have been
needing, exercise, open air, and relaxation from the tension of the desk
(which had become very threatening to my health and nervous stability,
I can assure you). This invitation came subsequent to my resignation at
Sweet’s--so don’t think that I have been seduced by a tempting prospect
of any kind. I was ready for ANYTHING after the prolonged tension and
confinement here for the last year, and whatever happens I shall not
regret having left the office.
E---- has or rather will take my room over at Columbia Heights, and I
have reserved it for myself again after October, as it’s such a good
room I don’t want to loose my hold on it if possible. Write me there up
to June 6th, when I leave for the country, and I shall write you much
more in a few days. You certainly haven’t been very generous, yourself,
with correspondence lately. I hope you are both very well. C.A. [Crane]
looked me up here recently and offered me a job which I was all ready to
take. Whereupon he became so pettily dictatorial that I withdrew
quickly. In some ways it was all very funny, and I’ll write more about
it later. We parted on friendly enough terms, I guess. -- -- -- --
208: TO HIS MOTHER
_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _June 4th, ’25_
Dear Grace and Grandma: Practically everything is packed up. There has
been a real turmoil, too, I can tell you. The frightful and sudden heat
of the last 3 days brought on a fearful attack of uric acid
trouble--headaches, bladder trouble and urethritis. No sleep for three
nights and I have been dieting on buttermilk and crackers. Besides
trying to complete all arrangements by Saturday and still give some time
to the office, I have had 3 engagements with the dentist. I thought one
tooth had an abscess and had to have an x-ray taken to find out that it
hadn’t. There is one more trial with a filling tomorrow and then I’ll be
through. I’m about done out, however, and a feather could knock me over.
Furthermore, all these exigencies have about used up all the money I had
saved up, little enough! -/-/
I did enjoy that talk with you over the wires to Cleveland! Your voice
is so much better than ink and paper.
Have a good time in Chicago, and, by the way, why don’t you explain my
case to the Ross’s--that is--if any opportunity appears. They give
thousands to charities every year--and boast about being patrons of art.
Why don’t they help some artist who is trying to live--and still get
something done? A small allowance for me six months of the year would
mean almost nothing to them--and it would keep me alive and productive
in some cheap place in the country. You might mention Frank’s and
O’Neill’s and Anderson’s admiration for my work,--and that I have a book
about to be published.
They won’t be hard to convince on C.A.’s neglect of me, as they have had
their own evidence of that side of him.
Everyone thinks it a crime the way I have been treated. I’d be glad to
work six or eight months of the year if I could have the remaining time
for my natural creative activity. Please see what you can do about this.
I hope Grandma is not too overborne by this torridity.
209: TO HIS GRANDMOTHER
_Patterson, New York_ _June 17th, ’25_
Dear Grandma: --/--/ As for myself--things couldn’t be better. I have
great quantities of fine Guernsey milk every day from a neighboring
farm, the finest butter and eggs and fresh vegetables--and so much
outdoor exercise than I am brown as a nut already with the sun and all
greased up at the joints. Sleep nights like a top and the uric acid
trouble has disappeared completely--at least for the time being. When
you consider that this is only about my tenth day out here such results
seem astonishing, don’t they? I should have written you more if there
had been a moment, but you have no idea how busy we have all been. There
has been a great deal--tons--of wood to clear away from the house,
rubbish, also, and a lot of old plaster they threw out in making
alterations. Then we have been building bookcases, shelves and tables
for the inside, as well as scrubbing and rubbing down floors. Getting up
every morning at five-thirty. The air is so fresh and the birds so sweet
that you simply can’t stay in bed a moment longer. And how good
breakfast tastes! We have bought a good oil stove, which works on about
10 cents a day. All our cooking and lamp-oil comes to much less cost
than similar means in the city would cost. Brown has a Ford which he got
for 35 dollars! We go marketing about 7 miles away to the nearest town
every three or four days. This place, you know, is quite delightfully
isolated from other houses. It’s about 150 years old--and did I tell you
that a lot of wonderful old rope beds and furniture came right along
with it? --/--/
210: TO HIS MOTHER
_Patterson, N.Y._ _July 10th, ’25_
Dear Grace and Grandma: --/--/ Life has been going along here at Brown’s
farm as pleasantly as anyone could wish excepting that the last few days
I have had a considerable touch of the [rose] fever. I had expected to
evade the whole season, but I guess I’m in for a few days of it here,
despite the altitude and other favorable circumstances. We have the
house painting almost finished. I’ve already mentioned how I enjoyed
doing that. Brown and I have been making screens for the last couple of
days and now I defy a mosquito to attack my slumbers or a fly to fall
into my soup. Although planted very late in season Brown’s garden is
about up, peas and beans, and soon will follow a whole menu of delicious
vegetables for the table. This is the kind of place I am going to have
when I can afford it. Perfect quiet and rolling hills, almost mountains,
all around--with apple orchards and lovely groves of trees and rocky
glens all about the house. Yesterday afternoon we picked
blueberries--about four quarts in an hour--and there’s nothing better to
eat with cereals for breakfast I can tell you. It’s pleasant to pick
them, too--great patches of bushes laden to bending with the beautiful
milky-blue fruit that looks the freshest thing on earth. The
huckleberries will be out later--and there will be simply bushels of
them. Brown also has great quantities of raspberries, blackberries,
currants and gooseberries--as well as elderberries on his place. Also
plenty of sap maples and walnut trees. I haven’t yet stopped enthusing
about the place, you see, and when you mention buying land in Florida,
that dry and tourist-ridden place, I find it hard to agree with you.
Brown has even been so nice as to offer me a strip of land as my own and
a great pile of cut timber to build me a cabin--if I will stay here with
him and Sue [Jenkins]. You can’t beat his affectionate generosity in any
friend on earth. I wish you could know Sue, also. Well, someday you
will, I’m sure, as I’m not likely to lose my enthusiasm for them very
soon.
This Florida plan of yours prompts me to worry a little, Grace. You must
certainly be cautious about investing your money there the way things
are going at present. Of course I have been hearing all that you have
about the tremendous sums exchanged there in real estate, and maybe more
than you. That information is certainly nothing that one has to be
“tipped on” these days. Everyone--even the farmers around here--are
scraping their coins together and rushing down to Miami to buy little
lots, and I know well enough that at least _some people_ have made and
are making fortunes there. But doesn’t such a great campaign of
advertising as this now seems to be--doesn’t it arouse your suspicions
as to the validity of the proposition to the small investor? Remember,
Grace, that the stock market is run on the same plan and with the same
tactics--and the daily crop of suckers can be reaped in other fields and
byways than Wall [Street], and often is. If you had thought of investing
in Miami property a year or so ago it would undoubtedly have meant a
considerable profit. But--as I see the situation now--the whole
proposition there is like a whirling roulette wheel that with every
revolution spins a higher figure--but which has already begun to slow
down. I don’t see how the situation can be otherwise when there has been
such a wholesale flux of gamblers to the place as there already has
been. For certainly there is a limit to the value of property--and there
is a limit to the present national craze of flocking to Miami. I may be
wrong, of course, but it seems to me that most of the fruit down there
has been picked up already. It might net you something to try and sell
for others down there, but I would be awfully slow about making any
investments myself--at least until after I had been there long enough to
ascertain some direct information of my own about matters. In such “gold
rushes” watch out for the boom psychology that animates everyone
concerned--even the losers--into bursting their voices with salutary
legends of their luck and the general prospects of the place. It amounts
to as much a conspiracy as though they had all sat down together at a
great mass meeting and agreed to swear they each saw Jesus bathing on
the beach. Of course I can see your special interest in going to Miami
this winter to make money--but I’m blind to the other advantages of the
plan. Especially when you have as lovely a place--only a day and a half
further away--down on the island [Isle of Pines] to go to, and where
living expenses will be about one third as much. (Miami is a very
expensive place to stay, I understand, especially since this boom.)
Further--it seems to me you ought to take a run down there--for at least
two weeks--regardless of other plans. Or otherwise, after all this time,
who is to know what is becoming of the place? I’d jump at the chance to
go there myself. Please don’t resent my advice about these foregoing
matters. My opinions on such matters have to be got off my chest
naturally--as they are inevitable concomitants to my interest and
affection in you both. I certainly have no desire to stand in the way of
anything you wish to do.
My trip to South America is as hazy as it’s always been. It may be that
line of boats or some other across the Atlantic for me when I get back
to New York--I won’t be able to wait long for employment anywhere as I
have only about the carfare back to town. I may even take some other
kind of office job. My chiefest concern while I have been out here is to
avoid worries of whatever kind for awhile; doing that, you know, takes a
kind of discipline after one has been so constantly precautious and
apprehensive as I have been for the last five years. With my health and
nerves all ready to snap beneath _that_ strain I decided that life
wasn’t worth it--and the pretense of living under such an attitude of
mind year after year was certainly not worth continuing. So I am--at
least for awhile longer--content to drift a little, let things take care
of themselves, reduce my needs and requirements to a minimum and avail
myself of as much time for free breathing and meditation as possible.
The boat job would--on the South American line--permit me practically
three weeks of time (absolutely to myself) out of every eight. This time
would be spent in Buenos Aires at one end of the trip, and at New York
at the other. I might get some time to write and read again. I really
hope very much to make connections with this line for that reason, even
though the first job I could get wouldn’t amount to more than 65 dollars
a month. At least three-fourths of my living expenses while on the job
would be gratis, of course. And I even long to be entirely away from the
best of friends at time. It gives you a fresh picture of the world. One
trip would decide whether I cared for the job or not--six weeks and
12,000 miles. I could probably get a job as night watchman or as
engineer’s writer. But you have to take what places are open when the
ship comes in.
Exactly how much longer I shall stay here isn’t decided yet. But it will
probably not be more than two weeks from now. In New York I shall stay
with either Allen Tate or E----,--probably with the latter as E---- is
still staying in my old room at Columbia Heights. At any rate that will
be the place to write me. I’ll let you know more details of course, when
they are settled. In the meantime I have written to Freeman who is still
with the New York office of Corday and Gross if he has any free-lance ad
writing which I could do for them while I am out here. That will
probably amount to nothing at all, but the idea occurred to me and I
thought I ought to try it out at least. If I could pay my share in
household expenses here I should like to stay all summer as I have
certainly been made to feel extremely welcome. Otherwise I can’t go on
accepting things as they are. --/--/
Eugene O’Neill wrote me that he was enthusiastic about some recent
things I had sent him, and I have enough enthusiasm from other astute
and discriminating people in America to make me feel that my writings
are justified. Publishers shy at it, of course, because they know it
won’t make them money. Meanwhile the same flood of mediocrities in verse
continues to be printed, bound and sold year after year.
Your story of the Fourth sounded very jolly indeed. Nothing could beat
the hilarity of this place--with about an omnibus-full of people here
from New York and a case of gin, to say nothing of jugs of marvellous
hard cider from a neighboring farm. You should have seen the dances I
did--one all painted up like an African cannibal. My makeup was lurid
enough. A small keg on my head and a pair of cerise drawers on my legs!
We went swimming at midnight, climbed trees, played blind man’s buff,
rode in wheel-barrows and gratified every caprice for three days until
everyone was good an’ tired out. The guests are still recovering, I
understand, in their separate abodes in the city. It certainly is
infinitely pleasanter drinking and celebrating on a wide acreage, like
this farm, than in the tumult and commotion of the city. Aside from this
one blowout I have not had a drop since I have been here--and have not
felt like drinking, either. The desire for booze in the city comes from
frayed nerves and repressions of the office, I’m sure. --/--/
211: TO WALDO FRANK
_Patterson, New York_ _Friday_
Dear Waldo: I’m awfully sorry about the Jimenez translations: they are
locked in my trunk at Columbia Heights in my letter file. But I’m going
back to New York about a week from tomorrow and I’ll be glad to copy
them--and either send them on to you--or directly to _The New Republic_,
as you may direct. That would be--at most--only a few days later than
they would arrive had I sent them along with this letter. I don’t know
what you are accenting in your thesis on the poet, but I think [the]
short poem on the Virgin better than the one called “The Three.” I think
you sent me only these two.
Along with your letter today comes the news from my mother that
transactions are about completed for the sale of our home in Cleveland.
If this really eventuates I may be called upon to help them move--which
will defer my plans for sea roving at least until after September.
However, I may decide to evade the moving: I can’t at present see my way
to make any definite plans without risking some kind of unpleasant
entanglement. I wish that “wile” and “guile” were easier instruments for
my imagination to use! There is always some other immediate duty or
requirement for me to perform than creation. I’ve had only above five
hours at the writing table since I came out here, and now it’s about
time to look for a postage stamp--I mean the wherewithal for it--to post
this letter! Of course I’ve had a good time, find I enjoy painting
house, gardening, etc. BUT----.
At any rate your sanguine hopes for _White Buildings_ warms me. It came
back from Harcourt yesterday. They couldn’t make anything out of most of
the poems. My “obscurity” is a mystery to me, and I can’t help thinking
that publishers and their readers have never heard the mention of Sir
Thomas [John?] Davies, Donne, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Valéry or even Emily
Dickinson. Within a few days, probably, I’ll get time to make you a copy
of the mss. It has been loutish of me not to have delivered the poems to
you long before this, but hurry and general confusion have been mainly
responsible. In looking over the selection I hope you will (when the
leisurely moment arrives) have the impulse to make what comments and
criticisms occur to you. I am dissatisfied with at least half the poems,
but I realize that this will possibly always be so with regard to poems
written more than two years back. Reason seems to dictate, then, a
certain amount of necessary indifference, that is, if I’m ever to print
any collection of poems before the grave. --/--/
212: TO WALDO FRANK
_New York_ _July 23rd_
Dear Waldo: --/--/ After the quiet and freshness of the country the New
York or rather Manhattan mid-summer seems more than ever intolerable.
Rather ghastly, in fact. But Cleveland won’t be much better. Gorham was
thoughtful in writing me news of a possible position with Henry [Robert]
McBride as publicity man. I am going to see them about it before
leaving,--as it might be a decent sort of thing for me.
Dos Passos has just come back from the hospital, after about two months
of some influenza complication which has almost finished him. Cummings
looks bilious and harried. His connections with _Vanity Fair_ are broken
and like the rest of us he is looking for pennies. Jimmy Light has just
sailed past Columbia Hts. for England where he expects to put on some
O’Neill plays. He has sole direction of the Provincetown theatre (not
Greenwich Village branch) when he comes back in September. Have you
thought of sending your play to him? The repërtoire that is at present
planned doesn’t sound any too brilliant to me. Haven’t seen Jean or
Gorham yet,--but expect to tomorrow. Such is the news in a hasty
batch.... --/--/
213: TO WALDO FRANK
_Cleveland_ _Aug. 19th_
Dear Waldo: I have been trying to get time and clarity to write you for
the last two weeks--ever since I sent you the mss. of _White
Buildings_--but the nightmare hurly-burly and confusion here intercepted
me consistently. Three more weeks of it and I shall be able to get back
to Brown’s place in the country and collect myself. Our old home will be
rented by its new owner to a fraternity, my mother and grandmother will
be leaving for Miami, and Cleveland will become for me, I hope, more a
myth of remembrance than a reality, excepting that my “myth” of a father
will still make chocolates here.
There has been one bright afternoon, however--last Sat. when I went out
to Brandywine valley (between here and Akron) and revisited Bill Sommer.
The old baldpate was asleep on a sofa when I looked through the screen
door and knocked. Arose a great bulk in white undershirt and loose white
duck pants--the black eyes revolving in the pallid or rather,
dusty-white miller face like a sardonic Pierrot’s. The few hours I was
there were spent with him out in the old school-house studio, surrounded
by a flower garden and filled with plentiful new wonders of line and
color. I wish you could have seen several of the oil children’s
portraits that he has been doing! And there is a line drawing of a head
and hand that I am bringing back to New York that you will greatly care
for. While we were both chewing, smoking and listening to the crickets I
finally found out why Sommer has been so remiss about joining in with me
in my several efforts to expose him to fame and “fortune.” He hates to
let his pictures leave him. Against that impasse, I guess, nobody’s
efforts will be of much avail. It’s just as well, of course, if he has
triumphed over certain kinds of hope. I admit that I haven’t, at least
not entirely. I still feel the need of some kind of audience.
By the way--do you know if O’Neill is at present a resident anywhere on
Nantucket? He has promised to write some kind of notice for my book, and
I should like to get in touch with him. He wrote me from Bermuda, but
where he has settled since returning from there I don’t yet know. If he
has been near you I hope that you have got together.
I am enclosing an improved version of “Passage,”--the poem I wrote in
the country this summer. It should replace the version that is in the
mss. you have. To me it is still the most interesting and conjectural
thing I have written--being merely the latest, I suppose. I’m
particularly anxious to know what you think of its form. On sending it
to _The Dial_ I recently got this comment from Miss Moore:
“We could not but be moved, as you must know, by the rich imagination
and the sensibility in your poem, Passage. Its multiform content
accounts I suppose, for what seems to us a lack of simplicity and
cumulative force. We are sorry to return it.”
It seems almost as though Miss Moore might be rather speaking of her own
poems with such terms.... Allen Tate is writing a short essay (he
intends a longer one later) on my work to appear along with four of the
“Voyages” in the next copy of _The Guardian_. You will probably see it.
It does hearten me somewhat that you and a few others have been so
actively interested in what I’m trying to do. Certainly I have never
done anything to personally deserve it, but I think my personal and
economic embarrassments and frustrations have curtailed a good many of
my intentions. --/--/
214: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
_New York_ _Sept. 15th, ’25_
Dear Charlotte! dear Richard! --/--/ I am ready to send you one of the
Light masks (from last year’s production of _The Ancient Mariner_).
Jimmie promised me one of them, and I can think of no one better to send
it to than you. I’ll get a box tomorrow, pack it and send it along. You
can have some great fun playing with it in pantomime around the house.
The effect is unearthly--the mask belonged to one of the angels, in
fact, that are described as standing on the deck of the ship as it
reaches the harbor in Coleridge’s poem. --/--/
I am so afraid that the land up there will get away from me before I get
there that I can hardly sleep nights. I find that O’Neill is not in town
and the other person, the publisher, from whom I had planned to possibly
borrow the money is away also. Would it strain your pocketbook at this
time to lend me the amount, so that I can at once clinch the bargain? It
was so good of you to make the offer in the first place that I feel [I]
am possibly taking advantage of your friendship. But if I could just
settle the matter there before it is too late, I could later borrow the
money from O’Neill, or someone else and return you at once the money
borrowed. I will need a little over two hundred dollars as otherwise I
shall not have anything to pay the lawyer’s fees with for looking up the
deed, etc. Would $25.00 extra be too much? You must allow me to pay 6%
interest on the loan--and to send you a regular note for the money. I
would like the time stipulation about 5 years, but I would repay it as
soon as possible before that. I know you trust me, but I also want to
assure you of protection in the matter. --/--/
215: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
_Patterson, New York_ _Sunday_
Dear Charlotte and Richard: I think I have found an even better solution
for the “land problem” than the first proposition offered. A friend of
Brown’s, Miss Bina Flynn, has just bought a lovely place within a half
mile from Brown’s place, wonderful old Dutch house in good condition and
built about the time of the American Revolution and with 160 acres of
land around it. She needs money to help pay for it and has offered me 20
acres of the best of her land for $200.00. The piece that I have picked
to buy is on the top slopes of a hill that overlooks the valley and it
contains several open fields and a great deal of forest land. As it is
much more convenient (within better access from the main road), and as
it contains no useless swamps or wasteland as the other property
included, I think I am getting as much of a bargain, if not more. Twenty
acres is plenty to spread out in anyway, and there will be plenty of
room on it for whatever place you would want, too.
Miss Flynn is out here today transacting the purchase of her property
and I expect to settle with her very soon. More and more I become
convinced that this is the only way for me to live, that is, when I can
make arrangements to afford it as a permanent way of living, and I am
sort of planning to come out here next summer and put up a temporary
cabin which will at least do during the warm weather. I shall roll in
the grass with prayers and pleasure when I really get this tract of land
for my very own. And such beautiful country you will not find in many
sections of this vast continent. Enclosed is my note for the $225.00
which I intend to pay _much before_ the stipulated time. I shall, in
fact, probably take a job in New York or on the sea this winter which
will enable me to pay it back before a year is over--at the latest.
Today it is raining, but the ten days before it have been as divine as
anyone could wish for. We have had big fires in the evenings, long
walks, big meals almost entirely of lettuce, carrots, beets, turnips,
squash, etc., just taken from the garden. Sue [Jenkins] seems to be very
contented out here and is busy every moment making jellies, jams,
pickles, etc. The hills are covered with wild grapes, elderberries and
apple orchards. Don’t you think the quince is a beautiful fruit? There
are about a dozen quince trees on Brown’s property--all loaded with
their sort of kid glove golden fruit. Yesterday we had a great time
making six gallons of ale. It must ripen for about five days in a warm
corner of the chimney in a huge crock, and then we can begin to drink
it. Brown also has a complete distilling outfit out in the shed. He
makes wonderful apple jack from cider. But this is a forbidden drink for
me these days!
All my furniture and things arrived in perfect condition. In addition I
have been making tables and cupboards from old loose wood that has been
lying around for years. They really look like antiques, all right! But I
do love the weather stains and silver streaks on the surfaces. Most of
the wood is oak and quite strong.
So you see how the days go.... In addition I am getting back to enough
poise to read a good deal. It’s funny! Here I’ve been for over two
weeks, now, and without a cent of money to my name. But I haven’t felt
uncomfortable by any means. I know I can go back to a job now with a
much better feeling of independence than before. --/--/
216: TO SLATER BROWN
[_Brooklyn_] _Oct. 21st, ’25_
Dear Tories: There have been numerous “celebrations” besides the already
recounted one (by Bina) on the great transaction, and the Punch Palazzo
has had due patronage. The engrossing female [Laura Riding] at most of
these has been “Rideshalk-Godding,” as I have come to call her, and thus
far the earnest ghost of acidosis has been kept well hence. My real
regret, however, is that I just missed getting the pick of jobs of the
S. Am. line, last steamer--said occupation being deck yeoman at 20
minutes work a day, all freedom of ship, mess with officers or any first
class passengers that seemed colloquial, white uniform, brass buttons,
cap, meditation on the sun deck all day long, and seventy-five dollars a
month clear sailing! The chief officer had already approved me, but
before I could get over to the offices for final approbation they had
already sent someone else over to the ship. We must have passed under
the river. However, I noticed that my questionnaire (filled last June)
had won an OK sign in the upper right corner, and I have been told to
come around again on the 26th when the next boat arrives. I’m not
waiting for that, however, as I need instant cash and there is not one
chance in a hundred of a similar vacancy soon. Otherwise I have finished
“The Wine Menagerie” and have sent it off, along with “Passage,” to _The
Criterion_. Since the last (yesterday) _Guardian_ has come out _without_
the “Voyages” I am thinking of trying to become a literary ex-patriot.
It’s just as tiresome as ever. This issue contains a lot of tommy-rot by
Seaver and an “announcement” in the bargain that reads unforgivably:
“Voyages, four remarkable poems by Allen Tate” will appear in the next
issue! --/--/
Am on my way to _The Dial_ to have lunch with K. B[urke] and shall try
to bag a review or briefers from the Rt. Rev. Miss Mountjoy [Moore]. A
momentous morning: Frank is going to try to corner Liveright on my vol.,
also. --/--/
217: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Brooklyn_] _Oct. 26th_
Dear Waldo: Your advice and stimulation are still with me. Your solidity
and conviction seemed never more firm or luminous than during our last
talk.--I was glad to see you looking so well. I wrote this out this
morning, thinking it might go well in the book.[39] No other news yet.
218: TO WILLIAM SOMMER
_Brooklyn, N. Y._ _Oct. 27th, ’25_
Dear Bill: --/--/ I know you’ll be glad to know that there is a good
chance of my first book of poems, _White Buildings_, being published by
next spring. In fact Boni & Liveright (at Waldo Frank’s persuasion) have
practically agreed to bring it out if Eugene O’Neill will consent to
write a short foreword. They have lost so much money on the better kind
of poetry (which simply _doesn’t_ sell these days) that they want to
hook the book up with an illustrious name and catch the public that way
as much as possible. Gene is a good friend of mine and admires my
work--I know that--but whether or not he feels like performing this
favor I haven’t yet heard. Frank thinks he can engineer the matter
anyway--in time, but I don’t know. He would gladly write the foreword
himself if he thought his name would count sufficiently, and at any rate
will write a whole page of praise for it in _The New Republic_ when it
comes out. This and other favorable reviews that I am sure to get from
friends of mine ought to make quite a sensation for the book. I’m a
little up in the air with the uncertainty and excitement of the present
situation. It would be fine for me in so many ways if the thing did go
through!
Have been reading Ernest Hemingway’s _In Our Time_, a new book that is
full of startlingly simple and vivid description. --/--/
219: TO HIS FATHER
[_Brooklyn_] [_November 21, 1925_]
Dear Father: I was very glad to hear from you and it was generous of you
to thus come to my aid.[40] The only pity is that artificial theories
and principles have to come so much between us in what is, after all, a
natural relationship of confidence and affection.
You may not believe it, Father, but in spite of what opinions you may
hear that I have against you (and, not knowing what is told you, I still
refuse to acknowledge them, either way), I still resent the fate that
has seemed to justify them and God knows how much we all are secretly
suffering from the alienations that have been somehow forced upon us. If
we were all suddenly called to a kind of Universal Judgment, I’m sure
that we would see a lot of social defenses and disguises fall from each
other, and we would begin from that instant onward to really know and
love each other.
I feel rather strange these days. The old house sold in Cleveland;
Grandmother ill in Florida; Mother somewhere in Cuba or the Isle of
Pines; and I not hearing from either of them for the past month.
Altogether, it’s enough to make one feel a little foot-loose in the
world. But I’ll have a job soon, and will probably be reassured in the
mail that everything’s all right. At such times, though, I realize how
few we are and what a pity it is that we don’t mean a little more to
each other.
Please let me hear from you when the spirit moves you.
220: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
_Brooklyn, NY_ _Dec. 1st ’25_
Dear Charlotte and Richard: --/--/ The facts are hard, but true, I have
not yet succeeded in finding myself a job, and even after trying every
sort of position, like selling books in stores during the Christmas
rush, ship jobs, etc., etc., and I have just been kept going by the
charity of my friends. The nervous strain of it all has about floored
me, and I feel as though the skin of my knees were quite worn off from
bowing to so many people, being sniffed at (to see whether I had
“personality” or not), etc. How I shall love it when, some day, I shall
have a little hut built on my place in the country to live in--and get
out of all this filthy mess!
Even the publication matter of my book of poems has not come through the
way I had expected. O’Neill is writing the Foreword, after all, but he
took so long to notify Liveright (the publisher) about it that I must
now try to place it somewhere else. This may not be so hard, but it
probably means that it will not come out until next autumn, and I had so
hoped to have it printed before that....
So you see how it’s been! I don’t mean to wail, but it is hard to keep
up and going sometimes. --/--/
--/--/ I have an appointment tomorrow with a possible job. I certainly
hope to get it, and begin paying back what you were so kind in lending
me. _The Dial_ bought my “Wine Menagerie” poem--but insisted (Marianne
Moore did it) on changing it around and cutting it up until you would
not even recognize it. She even changed the title to “Again.” What it
all means now I can’t make out, and I would never have consented to such
an outrageous joke if I had not so desperately needed the twenty
dollars.--Just one more reason for getting my book published as soon as
possible!
221: TO HIS FATHER
_Brooklyn, N. Y._ _Dec. 3rd, ’25_
Dear Father: Your letter was appreciated in many respects and I don’t
want you to think that I wasn’t glad to hear from you. But there were
recriminations in it which assumed a basis for apologies and regrets on
my part which I don’t feel I at all suggested in my last letter and
which I certainly cannot acknowledge now or later. In fact, you always
seem to assume some dire kind of repentance whenever I write you or call
on you, and so far as I know I have nothing in particular to repent. I
simply said I was sorry that you could not see me in a clearer light,
and it seems I shall have to go on lamenting that to some degree for the
rest of my life. If I began to make recriminations on my behalf there
wouldn’t be any use writing at all, for though I have plenty to mention,
I don’t see what good it would be to either one of us to embark on a
correspondence of that sort. My only complaint right now is that you
seem determined to pursue such a course, and I can only say that if you
persist I have no answers to offer. You and I could never restore our
natural relationship of father and son by continually harping on all the
unnatural and painful episodes that life has put between us via not only
ourselves but other people during the last ten years, and if you are not
willing to bury such hatchets and allow me, also, to do so, then I’ll
have to give up.
For the last six weeks I’ve been tramping the streets and being
questioned, smelled and refused in various offices. Most places didn’t
have any work to offer. I’ve stepped even out of my line as advertising
copywriter, down to jobs as low as twenty-five per week, but to no
avail. My shoes are leaky, and my pockets are empty; I have helped to
empty several other pockets, also. In fact I am a little discouraged.
This afternoon I am stooping to do something that I know plenty of
others have done whom I respect, but which I have somehow always edged
away from. I am writing a certain internationally known banker who
recently gave a friend of mine five thousand dollars to study painting
in Paris, and I’m asking him to lend me enough money to spend the winter
in the country where it is cheap to live and where I can produce some
creative work without grinding my brains through six sausage machines a
day beforehand. If he refuses me I shall either ask Eugene O’Neill who
is now writing the Foreword to my book and won’t refuse me for some help
to that end, or I’ll take to the sea for awhile--for I’m certainly tired
of the desolating mechanics of this office business, and it’s only a
matter of time, anyway, until I finish with it for good. I can live for
ten dollars a week in the country and have decent sleep, sound health
and a clear mind. I have already bought ten acres near here in
Connecticut and it’s just a matter of time until I have a cabin on it
and have a garden and chickens. You see I have a plan for my life, after
all. You probably don’t think it’s very ambitious, but I do. As Dr.
Lytle said to me when I was last in Cleveland, “What does it all amount
to if you aren’t happy?” And I never yet have spent a happy day cooped
up in an office having to calculate everything I said to please or
flatter people that I seldom respected.
I wish you would write me something about yourself these days. Let’s not
argue any more.
222: TO OTTO H. KAHN
_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _December 3, 1925_
Dear Mr. Kahn: Yesterday I telephoned Mr. Sharpp, your secretary, to
request an interview with you regarding some temporary assistance which
I felt you might possibly care to render me under the pressure of my
present circumstances. Mr. Sharpp advised that I write you first,
explaining the exigencies of the situation and the application I wished
to make. I shall try to be as definite and as brief as possible.
My first collected poems are about to be published (probably next
spring) with a Foreword by Eugene O’Neill. Although my poems have
appeared from time to time in various magazines such as _The Dial_ and
_The Little Review_, I am not yet well enough known to reap any
substantial benefits from what I have written. I am twenty-six years of
age, and for the last seven years I have been entirely dependent on my
efforts as an advertising copywriter for my living. What real writing I
have done has had to be accomplished after office hours and sometimes at
the risk of losing my position. Last June, as a result of ill health and
nervous exhaustion, I had to resign my position with Sweet’s Catalogue,
regardless of my dependence on my salary there, and live in the country
until my health recovered.
For the past eight weeks I have been back in New York, endeavoring by
every means to secure work again as a copywriter. As I have been
unfortunate in not finding any openings I have recently attempted to get
any other kind of work available, but as I find myself now completely
without funds, my circumstances seem to be rather acute. One of my
friends has suggested that you might be sufficiently interested in the
creation of an indigenous American poetry to possibly assist me at this
time. As I have never before asked for such assistance I run the risk of
writing you quite presumptuously, and I certainly wish to beg your
pardon if my letter seems so.
Besides the poems collected into my forthcoming volume I have partially
written a long poem, the conception of which has been in my mind for
some years. I have had to work at it very intermittently, between night
and morning, and while shorter efforts can be more successfully
completed under such crippling circumstances, a larger conception such
as this poem, _The Bridge_, aiming as it does to enunciate a new
cultural synthesis of values in terms of our America, requires a more
steady application and less interruption than my circumstances have yet
granted me to give to it.
If the suggestion seems worthy and feasible to you I should like to
borrow the sum of a thousand dollars, at any rate of interest within six
percent. With this amount I could live in retirement and cheaply in the
country for at least a year and not only complete this poem, but also
work on a drama which I have in mind. As security I can only offer an
unconditional sum, amounting to five thousand dollars, which by the
terms of my deceased grandparent’s will, I inherit on the death of his
widow. I do not know whether such bequests are open to outside inquiry,
but the proper reference, in case you are interested, is Mr. Stockwell,
Trust Department, Guardian Savings & Trust Co., Cleveland; estate of C.
O. Hart.
As to the estimation my work deserves, I naturally do not feel free to
do more than quote a few statements from critics who have seen my poems
in print and read my mss. I include these on a separate sheet herewith.
Let me say in concluding that I should appreciate an interview with you
at your offices, Mr. Kahn, and that I honestly feel that my artistic
integrity and present circumstances merit the attention of one like
yourself, who is and has been so notably constructive in the
contemporary and future art and letters of America.
_Statements on my writings_--
“It is time that your poetry should appear in a volume. You know
what I think of it. I have done my best these years to spread my
recognition of your genius not alone here but abroad. But it has
been hard, without a volume of your work to go on. WHITE BUILDINGS
will be an event in American poetry--a major event. Not the sort of
event that journalists make paragraphs about, three times a week.
But the sort of event that literary historians make chapters
about--years later. You are a real poet.
“I promise you, that when your volume appears, I shall devote a
long article to your work, in one of our leading literary
magazines.” WALDO FRANK
“The publication of WHITE BUILDINGS is one of the five or six
events of the first order in the history of American poetry. It is
doubtful if any other first volume since Whitman’s, in 1855, has
so definitely exceeded promise and reached distinction on its own
account. Hart Crane’s poetry, even in its beginnings, is one of the
finest achievements of this age. So one must predict the reviewer’s
protest--‘Incomprehensible!’” ALLEN TATE--Reviewer for _Nation_,
_New Republic_, _etc._
“Many thanks for sending me copies of your recent poems. I have
taken them with me on my brief vacation and I have greatly enjoyed
reading them. They have refreshed my conviction that you are
writing the most highly energized and the most picturesquely
emotionalized poetry in ‘These United States.’ ‘Voyages’ is the
finest love suite composed by any living American.” GORHAM B.
MUNSON--Managing editor of _Psychology_, and critic; contributor to
_Dial_, _New Republic_, _Criterion_, _New Age_, _Europe_, _etc._
* * * * *
_Other references_--Eugene O’Neill, Greenwich Village Theatre, or
Ridgefield, Conn.; James Light, Provincetown Theatre; Miss Eleanor
Fitzgerald, Provincetown Theatre; Waldo Frank, 150 East 54th St.,
N.Y.C. Telephone: Plaza 2342; Marianne Moore; Jane Heap; Harrison
Smith; Paul Rosenfeld.
223: TO HIS MOTHER
[_Brooklyn_] _Dec. 9th, ’25_
My dear Mother: For almost six weeks, now, I have not heard from you or
Grandma. Though Mr. Curtis was thoughtful enough to notify me that you
have been taken ill, the circumstances did not seem to describe a
situation so severe that you could not have taken pen in hand and at
least have written me once yourself during that time--especially, it
seems to me, since you knew by my several letters that I was having a
difficult time and was without funds entirely. I have put off writing
you under these conditions; there was enough reason to so do simply on
the basis of your own indifference, or possible disgust with me. And I
admit that it was a shock for me to realize that you needed me so
little. I have gone through a good many realizations of various sorts
during the last six months and they are not without echoes of certain
things you said to me last summer, trying as I may have been.
I don’t know where you may be at this time, but in case you may for any
reason wish to write to me I am writing to say that I shall be probably
for the next year at the following address: c/o Mrs. Addie Turner,
Patterson, New York, R.F.D. I am unusually well provided for and shall
leave for the country next Saturday. Yesterday afternoon I had the
pleasure of being rewarded in some measure for some of the work I have
been doing. You have probably heard of the banker, Mr. Otto H. Kahn, who
has kept the Metropolitan Opera and various other artistic ventures
endowed for years. After an interview with Mr. Kahn at his home at 1100
Fifth Ave., I was given the sum of two thousand dollars to expend on my
living expenses during the next year, which time is to be spent in
writing the most creative message I have to give, regardless of whether
it is profitable in dollars & cents or not.
Mr. Kahn was keenly interested in what Waldo Frank and Eugene O’Neill
had said about my work, and it makes me very happy indeed to have this
recognition from a man who is not only extremely wealthy and renowned on
that account, but who is also very astute and intelligent. I am very
tired now--with all the strain and effort of the last two months, but I
shall probably pick up as never before when I get into the quiet of the
country and have the first real opportunity of my life to use my talents
unhampered by fear and worry for the morrow.
If you are not too prejudiced about me by this time, you may also be
interested in this turn of affairs.
Let me hear from you sometime soon.
I certainly hope you and Grandmother are feeling better.
224: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
[_Patterson, New York_] _New Year’s Eve ‘26 [25]_
Dear Charlotte & Ricardo: Here I am at this date and sixty-six miles
from a drink. Isn’t it tragic! And there will not be a whistle or a
shout to tell me it is a new year. I shall probably be fast asleep,
unless I get scared and stay up blinking over a book--for it must be a
bad omen to be asleep at the switch of the new twelvemonth. But tomorrow
night I shall make up for it. That is, if certain friends come out from
New York with all their bottles on them.
Life out here so far has been ideal--even if it has been below zero much
of the time. But I came prepared for all kinds of weather and dress
every morning in boots, woolens, and furs. I shall have my picture taken
and you shall see how very impolite I look.
Imagine paying only ten dollars a month for the rent of a whole house (8
rooms)! I share it with Allen Tate and his wife and have a suite all to
myself on the second floor--1 room I do not use at all, a bedroom with a
fine old “sleigh bed” and a study, spacious and light, in which the sun
streams every morning. My pictures and nick-knacks look wonderfully
jolly on the simple kalsomined walls and the books fairly glisten on the
shelves. This room is kept well heated by two oil stoves. Downstairs we
cook and heat with wood-burning stoves which means enough daily exercise
to keep us glowing.
Otherwise all I have to do is wash dishes. Mrs. Tate cooks lunch and
dinner and Allen gets breakfast! This routine plan is the only way for
all of us to get each his work done--I mean our writing. Mrs. Tate is
writing a novel (her second) and Allen is _supposed_ to be writing
reviews, etc. Nothing much _yet_, however, has been done by any of us.
There have been food supplies, appliances and sundries of all sorts to
order--and then came Christmas with flocks of people visiting Brown’s
place (about 1/2 mile away) and drinking and talking day and night.
Allen also has dissipated terribly with a gun he bought (called “_The
White Powder Wonder_”)! and has so far spent most of his time ranging
over the hills shooting at sparrows. He did get a squirrel one day,
however, and we had an exclamatory time over the stew it made. -- -- -- --
There are all kinds of game around here, even deer, and it’s a
temptation to hunt, of course.
Well, the expected results have already been noticed on my family! Long
and ardurous letters from uncles, aunts, etc. (not Zell [Hart Deming],
but she’s in Europe anyway), and a fat check from my father for
Christmas. They all want me to come out and visit again--which I see no
reason for doing at this time. I want to get into my work. My God, it’s
the first time anyone paid me to do it or even encouraged it in any
substantial way! Of course--to them the $2,000 seems like some kind of
shower bath without any connection with any conceivable
responsibilities. You can have responsibilities toward your time clock,
your cow or your maiden aunt, but you can’t mean to say that poems or
pictures demand anything but aimless dreaming! No. I’m not coming until
spring--unless there is serious need of me.
Mother, it seems, has been terribly ill in Miami, and did not even go to
the Isle of Pines. As she was scheduled to leave for there on a certain
day and, failing to, did not inform me I went on writing her there and
as I got no word of her from _anywhere_ I finally gave up writing at
all. Finally I got word through Mr. Curtis that he had been called to
Miami to take care of them both--but I still didn’t understand her not
writing me in all that time, and thought she must be angry about
something.
Everything was all mixed up. And I finally had a long letter from her
rejoicing in my good luck and full of the harrowing details of how very
ill she had been with all sorts of complications. Miami turned out to be
more terrible than even I had predicted--and what this folly has cost
those women in pain and in expense God only knows. Both in bed for
weeks. Six doctors, nurses, compartments on trains, etc., etc., Grandma
got back about 2 weeks before Grace was able to leave. The latter joined
her finally and they are living at the Manor--where they should have
been all the time, of course. I’m sure they would love to see you both,
and believe me, there were no complications, as I had thought, between
us.
I’m expecting you both to visit me here next summer. Plenty of room for
you--and you’ll be sure to relax. I bought some wonderful snow shoes
with some of Otto’s money and so I pray for heavy storms. --/--/
PART THREE
West Indies-Europe
(1926-1930)
1926
225: TO MALCOLM COWLEY
[_Patterson_] _Jan 3rd_
Dear Malcolm: The poem[41] has been read with approval--is flatteringly
apocalyptic and has the proper nautical slant.... Seriously, though, it
seems to stand on its own feet as a poem and I appreciate a very great
deal the tonality and direction of it in its more intimate aspects. You
and Peggy [Baird] have been more than good in remembering me--thanks for
the photo, too. --/--/
Are you reviewing _Doc. Transit_ anywhere? Schneider finally sent me out
a copy. It intrigued me more than any such tour de force since Poe,
though it has its obvious weaknesses. Some chapters, however, of great
imagination. I didn’t anticipate half so much from the earlier things
I’ve read by Schneider.
I’m coming in town probably about two weeks from now, and should like to
know what day or days about that period you’ll be there also. You know
what the Governor of North Carolina said to the Governor of S.
Carolina--! I’m such a rum-scallion that I never even planned to stay
put anywhere very long in the woods. Let me hear from you soon. --/--/
226: TO HIS GRANDMOTHER
_Patterson_ _Jan. 5th ’26_
Dear Grandma: I was sorry to hear from Grace yesterday that you have
been undergoing more pain and illness--and I only hope that this finds
you MUCH improved. I wish I could be near you--and have a long talk. We
certainly will manage that when I come out to Cleveland next spring.
Yesterday I finally got started into my _Bridge_ poem--really the first
full day I have [had] for the work since arriving. And from now on I
hope to have the necessary inspiration to keep steadily at it. One
really has to keep one’s self in such a keyed-up mood for the thing
that no predictions can be made ahead as to whether one is going to have
the wit to work on it steadily or not.
It is fine to get somewhere where I can sleep soundly again. I’m
beginning to feel very much rested. I’m so glad that you both are
located in a place where there is nothing more to do than to care for
your personal comfort. --/--/
227: TO HIS MOTHER
_Patterson_ _Jan. 7th_
Dear Grace & Grandma: --/--/ There isn’t much news--only the good news
(to me!) that I’ve been at work in almost ecstatic mood for the last two
days on my _Bridge_. I never felt such range and symphonic power
before--and I’m so happy to have this first burst of substantiation
since I had the good luck to be set free to build this structure of my
dreams.
I sent New Year’s greetings to Kahn and in the mail today comes the most
cordial answer--wishing as he puts it, “that you will prove yourself a
master builder in constructing _The Bridge_ of your dreams, thoughts and
emotions.” --/--/
228: TO WALDO FRANK
_Patterson, N. York_ _Jan. 18th ’26_
Dear Waldo: I am not through working on it yet, but I thought you might
care to see this last part of _The Bridge_, oddly enough emergent
first.[42] It is symphonic in including the convergence of all the
strands separately detailed in antecedent sections of the
poem--Columbus, conquests of water, land, etc., Pokahantus, subways,
offices, etc., etc. I dare congratulate myself a little, I think, in
having found some liberation for my condensed metaphorical habit in a
form as symphonic (at least so attempted) as this.
The bridge in becoming a ship, a world, a woman, a tremendous harp (as
it does finally) seems to really have a career. I have attempted to
induce the same feelings of elation, etc.--like being carried forward
and upward simultaneously--both in imagery, rhythm and repetition, that
one experiences in walking across my beloved Brooklyn Bridge. I’m now
busy on the Niña, Santa Maria, Pinta episode--Cathay being an attitude
of spirit, rather than material conquest throughout, of course.
I know I can depend on you to mention the flaws and shortcomings. This
section seems a little transcendental in tendency at present,--but I
think that the pediments of the other sections will show it not to have
been. --/--/
229: TO HIS MOTHER
_Patterson_ _Jan. 26_
Dear Grace: It _is_ a good thing I got your letter yesterday--or I
_should_ have been sore. I was so tired last night I simply fell into
bed at 10. We had spent most of the day shopping in town and I later
built me some bookshelves which are very simple but extend to the
ceiling--the kind I have always wanted. My study now is a picture to
enjoy. When I was in New York I bought some beautiful and rare Congo
wood carvings--and added to my Sommer paintings and your photograph they
make a marvelous room.
My hands are so stiff from wood-cutting that my writing looks funny. It
is very, very cold today, was yesterday and promises to continue. We all
go about shivering most of the time and I’m sorry to say get too little
freedom for our writing. Certainly the spring warmth will be unusually
welcome to all of us.
--/--/ We do not correspond--except at considerable intervals as I
hesitate to presume much on his [Otto Kahn] attention. There are so many
others whom he is always helping that his time is largely taken up
anyway. What with two personal secretaries and a whole corps of personal
office help--_besides_ his huge financial machine (his interests occupy
a building of about 22 stories) he must be a busy man. He wants to hear
from “time to time” as he puts it--about how my poem is progressing.
But, since writing him New Year’s I shan’t presume again until next
March or so. My second thousand is not payable until along in May. At
which time I shall probably personally talk to him again. Beyond this
money I have no expectations of more assistance, but if my poem when
completed seems good enough to him, it may be, of course, that he will
be further interested. I’m thankful enough for what I already have,
however!
Your news about Grandma is rather heartrending. I do hope she won’t have
to suffer much longer--and if she does that she will be given enough
sedatives to keep the pain dulled, no matter what the consequences. It
would be best if she really gives up more--for the remainder of her
existence--under any conditions--promises her only misery. --/--/
230: TO HIS GRANDMOTHER
_Patterson, New York_ _January 27th_
Dear Grandma: --/--/ I am hoping to hear from Grace tomorrow all about
how you are. Much better, I hope.
We had a brief flurry of snow again today, but not enough yet to permit
me to use my scrumptious snow shoes. I have been reading the _Journal of
Christopher Columbus_ lately--of his first voyage to America, which is
concerned mostly with his cruisings around the West Indies. It has
reminded me many times of the few weeks I spent on the Island to hear
him expatiate on the gorgeous palms, unexpected pines, balmy breezes,
etc., which we associate with Cuba. -- -- -- --
231: TO GASTON LACHAISE
_Patterson, New York_ _Feb. 10th, 26_
Dear Lachaise: Constantly your seagull has floated in my mind--ever
since I saw it, and it will mean much to me to have it. I can’t thank
you enough. I am enclosing an amount which I hope will to some extent
defray the cost of materials, and you must let me know if more is
needed.
I envy you your occupation out here in the extreme cold of the last two
weeks--wiggling a pen or tapping a typewriter is hardly as conducive to
good circulation or warmth while every breath one takes comes out like a
steaming snort from a dragon! At present the snow is so deep that we are
obliged to use snow shoes or skis to get anywhere. Fortunately we are
well supplied with wood and oil and provisions.
When I get to New York--probably not for six weeks or so--I hope to find
you in. If the white bird is done before then you can express it out to
Patterson, or I’ll be glad to carry it back when I come in. -- -- -- --
232: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
_Patterson, New York_ _March 2nd_
Dear Charlotte et Ricardo: --/--/ In spite of many inconveniences,
however, I am glad of coming out here. Temperate living, good sleep and
considerable outdoor exercise have had their usual effects. The cold has
kept us hopping, though, and I’ll be glad to greet the first warm days
that come. Then there will be both more time and more comfort for
reading and _The Bridge_. The finale of which is just about
completed--but the antecedent sections will take me at least a year yet.
At times the project seems hopeless, horribly so; and then suddenly
something happens inside one, and the theme and the substance of the
conception seem brilliantly real, more so than ever! At least, _at
worst_, the poem will be a _huge_ failure! If you get what I mean. When
I am a little better satisfied with certain details of the part already
finished I’ll send it on to you, although I really shouldn’t--as
isolated from the rest of the poem it would probably not be interesting.
Mother wrote me that you called on her. She was extremely pleased, and
remarked how beautiful and youthfully radiant my Charlotte was! --/--/
233: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Patterson, N.Y._ _March 5th_
Dear Gorham: The long siege of snow--the mail delivery has been
discontinued for six weeks, and isn’t resumed yet--despite occasional
sportiveness with snow shoes and skis, has been a burden. Especially as
I was swindled on a fifty-gal. drum of kerosene I bought for the stoves
in my study, and have had to risk chapping hands every time I came near
the typewriter to say nothing of tumbling through many a chilly night
with chilblains from cold floors, damp, etc. It really would have been
alright had I had pure kerosene, though. Nothing but the swindler is to
blame.
None-the-less, I’ve read considerably--Aeschylus (especially the
_Oresteia_) was a revelation of my ideal in the dynamics of
metaphor--even through the rather prosy translations[43] one gleans the
essential density of image, impact of substance matter so verbally
quickened and delivered with such soul-shivering economy that one
realizes there is none in the English language to compare him
with.--Then Prescott’s _Ferdinand & Isabella_, _Journal of Columbus_, a
book on Magellan by Hildebrand (this was rather inexcusable), Melville’s
delightful _White Jacket_ as well as a marvelously illustrated book[44]
on whaling and whaling ships, published by the Marine Research Society,
Salem, Mass.... In the midst of my readings of _Science & the Modern
World_, Whitehead,--along comes _Virgin Spain_. I’m about half way
through this at present and feel like telegraphing Waldo my immediate
uncontrolled and unstinted enthusiasm. As prose it certainly is his
climax of excellence--and as a document of the epic one of the most
lively testaments ever written. I had been dwelling with a good deal of
surprise in a pleasant conviction that Lawrence’s _Plumed Serpent_ was a
masterpiece of racial description. It certainly is vividly beautiful,
its landscapes, theatrical vistas, etc.--but Waldo’s work is a world of
true reality--his ritual is not a mere invention. Only my interest in
Maya and Toltec archaeology led me to order Lawrence’s book. It was poor
in this--at least regarding the details I had hoped for, but I was
rather astonished at the calibre of much of the prose.
As Waldo may have mentioned, the finale of _The Bridge_ is written, the
other five or six parts are in feverish embryo. They will require at
least a year more for completion; however bad this work may be, it ought
to be hugely and unforgivably, distinguishedly bad. In a way it’s a test
of materials as much as a test of one’s imagination. _Is_ the last
statement sentimentally made by Eliot,
“This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,--
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
is this acceptable or not as the poetic determinism of our age?! I, of
course, can say no, to myself, and believe it. But in the face of such a
stern conviction of death on the part of the only group of people whose
verbal sophistication is likely to take on interest in a style such as
mine--what can I expect? However, I know my way by now, regardless. I
shall at least continue to grip with the problem without relaxing into
the easy acceptance (in the name of “elegance, nostalgia, wit, splenetic
splendor”) of death which I see most of my friends doing. O the admired
beauty of a casuistical mentality! It is finally content with twelve
hours sleep a day and archaeology.
I am glad that you have switched over to the more profitable and
leisurely programme which you describe. And that you’ve gone back to
writing again with such vim. The social distractions of NY are so
terrific that I hope to never live there again beyond six months at a
period. I’m really just getting around to a working basis, the first
real platform of my life--here. In many ways it proves to be a
revelation of certain potentialities.
Do send me your comments on Crane. And may I be frank--without seeming
to reflect on any personal relationships of the past--in stating my
reactions? Not that I shall desire to exert any changes, but that there
may possibly arise (between ourselves) certain questions of direction,
aims, intentions, which I may feel are erroneously ascribed to me. At
least my agreements or objections may interest you. -- -- -- --
234: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Patterson, New York_ _March 17, ’26_
Dear Gorham: My rummy conversation last Monday offered, I fear, but a
poor explanation of my several theoretical differences of opinion with
you on the function of poetry, its particular province of activity, etc.
Neither was I able to express to you my considerable appreciation of
many accurate distinctions made in your essay which certainly prompt my
gratitudes as well as applause. It would probably be uninteresting as
well as a bit excessive for me to enumerate and dwell on these
felicitations, however gratifying to myself I may feel them to be. Your
essay is roughly divided in two, the second half including our present
disagreement, and inasmuch as I have never really attempted to fulfill
the functions therein attributed to the poet, your theories on that
subject can be discussed from a relatively impersonal angle so far as I
am concerned. Furthermore, it is _one_ aspect of a contemporary problem
which has already enlisted the most detailed and intense speculation
from a number of fields, science, philosophy, etc., as you, of course,
know. I’m not saying that my few hasty notes which follow are conclusive
evidence, but the logic of them (added to the organic convictions
incident to the memorized experience of the creative “act,” let us say)
is not yet sufficiently disproved for me by such arguments, at least, as
you have used in your essay.
Poetry, in so far as the metaphysics of any absolute knowledge extends,
is simply the concrete _evidence_ of the _experience_ of a recognition
(_knowledge_ if you like). It can give you a _ratio_ of fact and
experience, and in this sense it is both perception and thing perceived,
according as it approaches a significant articulation or not. This is
its reality, its fact, _being_. When you attempt to ask more of
poetry,--the fact of man’s relationship to a hypothetical god, be it
Osiris, Zeus or Indra, you will get as variant terms even from the
abstract terminology of philosophy as you will from poetry; whereas
poetry, without attempting to logically enunciate such a problem or its
solution, may well give you the real connective experience, the very
“sign manifest” on which rests the assumption of a godhead.
I’m perfectly aware of my wholesale lack of knowledge. But as Allen
said, what exactly do you mean by “knowledge”? When you ask for exact
factual data (a graphic map of eternity?), ethical morality or moral
classifications, etc., from poetry--you not only limit its goal, you ask
its subordination to science, philosophy. Is it not equally logical to
expect Stravinsky to bring his fiddles into dissent with the gravitation
theories of Sir Isaac Newton? They _are_ in dissent with this scientist,
as a matter of fact, and organically so; for the group mind that
Stravinsky appeals to has already been freed from certain of the
limitations of experience and consciousness that dominated both the time
and the mind of Newton. Science (ergo all exact knowledge and its
instruments of operation) is in perfect antithesis to poetry. (Painting,
architecture, music, as well). It operates from an exactly opposite
polarity, and it may equate with poetry, but when it does so its
statement of such is in an entirely different terminology. I hope you
get this difference between _inimical_ and _antithetical_, intended
here. It is not my interest to discredit science, it has been as
inspired as poetry,--and if you could but recognize it, much more
hypothetically motivated.
What you admire in Plato as “divine sanity” is the architecture of his
logic. Plato doesn’t live today because of the intrinsic “truth” of his
statements: their only living truth today consists in the “fact” of
their harmonious relationship to each other in the context of his
organization of them. This grace partakes of poetry. But Plato was
primarily a philosopher, and you must admit that grace is a secondary
motive in philosophical statement, at least until the hypothetical basis
of an initial “truth” has been accepted--not in the name of beauty, form
or experience, but in the name of rationality. No wonder Plato
considered the banishment of poets;--their reorganizations of chaos on
basis perhaps divergent from his own threatened the logic of _his_
system, itself founded on assumptions that demanded the very defense of
poetic construction which he was fortunately able to provide.
The tragic quandary (or _agon_) of the modern world derives from the
paradoxes that an inadequate system of rationality forces on the living
consciousness. I am not opposing any new synthesis of reasonable laws
which might provide a consistent philosophical and moral program for our
epoch. Neither, on the other hand, am I attempting through poetry to
delineate any such system. If this “knowledge,” as you call it, were so
sufficiently organized as to dominate the limitations of my personal
experience (consciousness) then I would probably find myself
automatically writing under its “classic” power of dictation, and under
that circumstance might be incidentally as philosophically “contained”
as you might wish me to be. That would mean “serenity” to you because
the abstract basis of my work would have been familiarized to you before
you read a word of the poetry. But my poetry, even then,--in so far as
it was truly poetic,--would avoid the employment of abstract tags,
formulations of experience in factual terms, etc.,--it would necessarily
express its concepts in the more direct terms of physical-psychic
experience. If not, it must by so much lose its impact and become simply
categorical.
I think it must be due to some such misapprehensions of my poetic
purpose in writing that leads you to several rather contradictory
judgments which in one sentence are laudatory and in other contexts
which you give them,--put me to blush for mental attitudes implied on my
part. For instance, after having granted me all the praise you do
earlier in your essay for “storming heaven” as it were, how can you
later refer to that same faculty of verbal synchronization as to picture
me as “waiting for another ecstasy”--and then “slumping”--rather as a
baker would refer to a loaf in his oven. Granted your admiration for the
“yeastiness” of some of my effusions, you should (in simple justice to
your reader and your argument) here also afford the physical evidence
(actual quotation or logical proof) of the “slump,” the unleavened
failure. There really are plenty of lines in this respect which could be
used for illustration. What I’m objecting to is contained in my
suspicion that you have allowed too many extra-literary impressions of
me to enter your essay, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. The
same is true of your reference to the “psychological _gaming_”
(Verlaine) which puts the slur of superficiality and vulgarity on the
very aspects of my work which you have previously been at pains to
praise.--And all because you arbitrarily propose a goal for me which I
have no idea of nor interest in following. Either you find my work
poetic or not, but if you propose for it such ends as poetry organically
escapes, it seems to me, as Allen said, that you as a critic of
literature are working into a confusion of categories. Certainly this
charge of alternate “gutter sniping” and “angel kissing” is no longer
anything more than a meretricious substitute for psychological sincerity
in defining the range of an artist’s subject matter and psychic
explorations. Still less should it be brought forward unless there is
enough physical evidence in the artist’s work to warrant curiosity in
this respect on the part of the reader.
Your difficulties are extra, I realize, in writing about me at all. They
are bound to be thus extra because of the (so far as the reader goes)
“impurities” of our previous literary arguments, intimacies of
statement, semi-statements, etc., which are not always reflected in a
man’s work, after all. But your preoccupations on the one hand with a
terminology which I have not attempted and your praise on the other hand
of my actual (physical) representation of the incarnate _evidence_ of
the very knowledge, the very _wisdom_ which you feel me to be only
conjecturally sure of--makes me guilty of really wronging you, perhaps,
but drives me to the platitude that “truth has no name.” Her latest one,
of course, is “relativity.”
Apropos of all this the letter by Nichols in _The New Criterion_ will
interest you when you read it; there are interesting quotations from
Goethe, Santayana, Russell, etc. And I am enclosing a hasty bundle of
notes written at O’Neill’s request for what angles they might suggest to
him in writing a foreword for my book. (This, I hope, may be returned.)
Allen tells me that he has just mailed his note on me--for possible use
in _The New Masses_. I told him to do this, not remembering definitely
what you had told me about it before. It can do no harm anyway. I’m
enclosing copies of the poems which Potamkin had intended using. It
certainly was very kind of you to have suggested these matters to the
_Masses_ editor. Do let me hear from you soon.
PS--Needless to say, the notes for O’Neill contain repetitious matter
for you, and certain accents were especially made against biases and
critical deficiencies which I felt [might] lead to unwarranted
assumptions, misplaced praises, etc., on his part. But the definitions
of the “logic of metaphor,” “dynamics of inferential mention,” etc., I
think are quite exact.[45]
235: TO OTTO H. KAHN
_Patterson, New York_ _March 18, 1926_
Dear Mr. Kahn: You were so kind as to express a desire to know from time
to time how _The Bridge_ was progressing, so I’m flashing in a signal
from the foremast, as it were. Right now I’m supposed to be Don
Cristobal Colon returning from “Cathay,” first voyage. For mid-ocean is
where the poem begins.
It concludes at midnight--at the center of Brooklyn Bridge. Strangely
enough that final section of the poem has been the first to be
completed,--yet there’s a logic to it, after all; it is the mystic
consummation toward which all the other sections of the poem converge.
Their contents are implicit in its summary.
Naturally I am encountering many unexpected formal difficulties in
satisfying my conception, especially as one’s original idea has a way of
enlarging steadily under the spur of daily concentration on minute
details of execution. I don’t wish to express my confidence too
blatantly--but I am certain that, granted I’m able to find the suitable
form for all details as I presently conceive them, _The Bridge_ will be
a dynamic and eloquent document.
As I said, I have thus far completed only the final section,--about one
hundred lines. I am now going straight through from the beginning. There
has been much incidental reading to do, and more study is necessary as I
go on. As I cannot think of my work in terms of time I cannot gauge when
it will be completed, probably by next December, however.
There are so many interlocking elements and symbols at work throughout
_The Bridge_ that it is next to impossible to describe it without
resorting to the actual metaphors of the poem. Roughly, however, it is
based on the conquest of space and knowledge. The theme of “Cathay” (its
riches, etc.) ultimately is transmuted into a symbol of consciousness,
knowledge, spiritual unity. A rather religious motivation, albeit not
Presbyterian. The following notation is a very rough abbreviation of the
subject matter of the several sections:
I Columbus--Conquest of space, chaos
II Pokahantus--The natural body of America-fertility, etc.
III Whitman--The Spiritual body of America
(A dialogue between Whitman and a dying soldier in a
Washington hospital; the infraction of physical death,
disunity, on the concept of immortality)
IV John Brown
(Negro porter on Calgary Express making up berths and
singing to himself (a jazz form for this) of his sweetheart
and the death of John Brown, alternately)
V Subway--The encroachment of machinery on humanity; a kind
of purgatory in relation to the open sky of last section
VI The Bridge--A sweeping dithyramb in which the Bridge becomes
the symbol of consciousness spanning time and space
The first and last sections are composed of blank verse with occasional
rhyme for accentuation. The verbal dynamics used and the spacious
periodicity of the rhythm result in an unusually symphonic form. What
forms I shall use for the other sections will have to be determined when
I come to grips with their respective themes.
I would gladly send you the completed section for present reading, but
unless you especially wish to see it now I should prefer your judgment
on it later when a more synthetic reading will be possible.
I hope that this extended amount of particulars,--evidence, perhaps, of
an excessive enthusiasm on my part, has not been tedious reading. Your
interest and confidence have proved to be so great a spur to me that I
must mention my gratitude again.
236: TO WALDO FRANK
_Mid-channel_ [_Patterson_] _March 20th, ’26_
Dear Waldo: Just a word to say I have finished my first reading of your
_Spain_. It is a book I shall go back to many times. Its magnificence
and integrity are so rare that they constitute an embarrassment to our
times in some ways. “The Port of Columbus” is truly something of a
prelude to my intentions for _The Bridge_--which I seem to have got back
to today after a hideous experience in New York and in spite of a very
bad cold I seem to have caught from overheated city buildings.
I can’t resist sending you the first verse[46] at this early time, along
with the revised version of the finale. Your discipline and your
confidence are so dear to me that in moods like this today (adrift a
music that is almost a burden) I have to be a little uncontained and
remind you of my love. Will send the Kahn article next week when a fresh
copy arrives.... Temporarily--Don Cristobal--
237: TO MALCOLM COWLEY
[_Patterson_] _March 28_
Dear Malcolm: The news of your plans for the summer is good to hear!
We’re all anticipating the first of May--though you _will_ be a little
distant. Five miles walking says Mrs. Turner, coming out of her aunt’s
part with the tea.
After a perfect spasm of sentiment and “inspection” I was released from
the fond embrace of my relatives in Cleveland--only to fare into rather
more than less spasmodic embraces in N.Y.--a one night spree--on my way
back. Since which I have been reading the philosophies of the East until
I actually dream in terms of the Vedanta scriptures. Also am finding
Marco Polo pleasant to incorporate in the subconscious.
I’ve often wondered how you got home that night. After you left I was
roused from my stupor by an amazing scandal at the next table. Benét,
Wylie and some others discussing ---- who, it seems, doesn’t write at
all. Her father does the trick--works off “suppressed desires” that way,
etc., etc. I was very good after that and stormed over to the Albert,
lectured the clerk for not admitting my friends, and went to bed, tout
seul.
The next morning after the next I was discovering that my mother knows
how to mix the best cocktails I ever drank.
Are you going ahead with the Boyd proposal? I think you should--a fine
weapon against further attacks from that gent. again--and not, however,
implying any concession whatever on your part. --/--/
238: TO HIS MOTHER
_Patterson_ [_March 29, 1926_]
Dearest Grace: Your letter came yesterday. And I was _immensely_ glad to
hear from you. Altogether, the news seemed good, too, and I’m _so_ glad
you and Charles [Curtis] have made a definite decision! By _all_ means
make The Little Church the scene. Then I can be there and we can all
take a bus ride afterward. Of _course_ you’ll be acceptable--who ever
heard of such distinctions being made in any Protestant church against
widows and widowers, grass or otherwise! Then maybe you could make my
humble domicile one of the stops on your celebration.
I, too, think I made my visit at just the proper time. I’ll never forget
how really eloquently Grandma looked, how intelligent and fresh. And
_you_ looked so good to me, too. Remember, that suffering does, if borne
without rancour, it does build something that only grows lovelier with
time--and it is a kind of kingdom among those _initiated_, a kingdom
that has the widest kind of communion. You and I can share our
understanding of things more and more as time goes on. I loved you _so
much_ for many of the things you said when I was with you.
Yes, I hope you never will turn your back on me, as you say. And this is
not to say that there may come occasions for it--but there may, after
all, be times of temporary misunderstandings as there have been before.
I can be awfully proud of _you_, however less occasion I may [have] to
feel similarly about myself. I do some awfully silly things
sometimes--most of which you don’t know about, but which I sometimes
(not always) regret. Don’t let this stir your apprehensions, any,
however. I’m in no particular pickle at present.
We have had another snow and I’m just disgusted. I had counted on a
modified weather on my return and instead it’s been just one snow flurry
after another. Sore throat is some better, but I’m still threatened with
tonsilitis. No chance to start gardens yet. -- -- -- --
239: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Patterson_ _April 5_
Dear Gorham: It seems evident that I somewhat too egoistically argued
what I intended as simply a defense of the position and province of
poetry, as an art form, rather than any claims my work might or might
not have to critical praise. This has been my attitude throughout our
discussion, and though certain contentions are still unresolved, it
doesn’t in the least conflict with what you say in your last letter.
Indeed, I should say that your essay rather over-estimates my
achievements in some particulars. Please don’t think me ungrateful or
disgruntled, anyway.
Rorty was so swift in returning Allen’s NOTE that I have been wondering
if he had actually taken some interest in the “Voyages” I sent you. I
should have sent them direct to him had I known that he was subsequently
to write me a request for something. Sheer inadvertency on my part not
to have mentioned my intentions in sending them to you. Allen gave
Untermeyer and Kreymborg such digs that it’s not surprising that Rorty
summarily returned the mss. I shall be surprised if he fancies my work.
The Cowleys move up here May first. I hope to have a few “animations”
with Malcolm before I, the climate, the solitude, or whatever it is,
drives him into the kind of shell that Brown and Tate seem to have
retired into lately. My mood being pre-eminently N. Labrador these
days--I should like a little good company immensely. A life of perfect
virtue, redundant health, etc., doesn’t seem in any way to encourage the
Muse, after all. I almost feel like coming to town and seeking a job, at
least that would make me part-time useful, meantime there wouldn’t be
the suspense of weeks going by without a written line. I’m afraid I’ve
so systematically objectivized my theme and its details that the
necessary “subjective lymph and sinew” is frozen. Meanwhile I drone
about, reading, eating and sleeping. It’s really quite agonizing. For in
so many ways I know what I WANT to do.... The actual fleshing of a
concept is so complex and difficult, however, as to be quite beyond the
immediate avail of will or intellect. A fusion with other factors not so
easily named is the condition of fulfilment. It is alright to call this
“possession,” if you will, only it should not be insisted that its
operation denies the simultaneous functioning of a strong critical
faculty. It is simply a stronger focus than can be arbitrarily willed
into operation by the ordinarily-employed perceptions. Do you find
anything in my rough notes that’s interesting?
240: TO HIS MOTHER
_Patterson, New York_ _April 18th_
Dear Grace: It would be a relief to be able to talk with you an hour or
so today. I’m in such an uncertain position in regard to a number of
things that I feel as though it would be a fitting end to settle it with
powder and bullet. The whole benefit of my patronage from Kahn, my year
of leisure, my long fight with the winter, etc., out here is about to be
sacrificed -- -- -- --. I refer to Mrs. Tate, and Allen. But primarily it
has been Mrs. Tate who has influenced matters until they came to a head
the other day, since which time I have had a note from each of them,
respectively -- -- -- --.
I am accused of having victimized their time and their quarters by
intruding without regard to their wishes, etc. This is in part
justified,--justified, I say because the contingency of such a matter
was bound to exist between two families which had agreed on sharing a
common water pump. I had to have access to it as much as they did, and
had to pass through their kitchen occasionally on my way. When Mrs.
Tate--this occurred last week--instead of simply telling me that she
wished I would avoid such passage in the future--when she began putting
bolts on her doors, and all that--I could take the _hint_ without having
to be knocked down by a hammer, and so removed my shaving utensils,
etc., which had been beside the pump, into Mrs. Turner’s kitchen. Why
this should make them mad, I don’t know, and why it should make them mad
because I immediately began avoiding their parts of the house
_completely_ (not being invited to do otherwise) I can’t see, either.
Of course when I encountered them outside, and saw how sulky they
behaved, etc., I began to lose all respect for such behavior--made up my
mind to ignore them as much as decency permitted, although I realized
that with such an atmosphere about the place it would be very difficult
to proceed with any creative work. Matters came to a climax day before
yesterday, shortly after breakfast. I had been talking to Mrs. Turner
around on “our” side of the house about some plans for cleaning up some
rubbish, etc., when suddenly a door opens from the Tates’ kitchen and
Allen shouts out, “If you’ve got a criticism of my work to make, I’d
appreciate it if you would speak to me about it first!” Then the door
savagely banged, and Mrs. Turner and I (who hadn’t mentioned him or
anything that concerned him) were left staring at each other in perfect
amazement. I can’t easily describe how angry I was. I felt myself losing
all control--but I managed to address the Tates without breaking
anything. Mrs. Turner came in with me and corroborated the facts of the
matter, and it turned out that the Tates hadn’t heard actually a thing I
was saying--their imaginations, they evidently felt, were perfectly
justified in building up a perfect tower of Babel out of nothing.
Nothing was touched on at that fiery moment, but the immediate
circumstances of what I had said and what I hadn’t, Tate finally
admitting that he was all wrong. My feelings remained little cooled,
however. The rest of the time since then has been simply hideous. The
next morning (I, not sleeping, had heard the Tates getting out of bed
during the night and pounding out something on the typewriter), I found
a couple of the nastiest notes under my bedroom door that I ever hope to
get from anyone. Mrs. Tate began by saying that they had arrived in the
house first; that they had invited me to share quarters with them in the
first place because I was penniless in New York at that time, and that
as soon as they found out that I had been fortunate in acquiring funds
they immediately had begun to doubt the advisability of inviting me out,
but _of course_ hadn’t felt privileged to say anything about such
matters before this. I’m not quoting _insinuations_ in any of this, I’m
using practically their own words. Then she went on to say that they had
allotted me one room only (this is an absolute lie; they assumed that I
was to have a bedroom and my study besides) and that I had from the
moment of arrival proceeded to spread myself and possessions all over
the house, invading every corner; and so on,--finally ending up with the
assertion that I had been busy ever since I arrived in trying to make
them menial servants of my personal wants! The contents of Mr. Tate’s
letter were about the same, a little more gracefully phrased, that’s
all.
As a matter of fact, I have never, so long as I’ve been here, requested
a single favor from either of them. You know the story about the cooking
arrangements already--how I changed over to Mrs. Turner --/--/. Since
then--even though I derived no benefit from the wood stove that the
Tates use in their kitchen--I’ve been careful to go out and help Allen
cut and saw, etc. And made it a point to mention--that while I couldn’t
constantly keep after him with questions as to when he wanted to saw
and when he didn’t--if he’d let me know about such occasions I’d be glad
to join him whenever possible.
It’s all simply disgusting. I don’t know how much money they owe me
exactly--but I have told them that I was always glad to advance them
funds whenever needed, and while they haven’t been extravagant--they
have nevertheless been momentarily relieved from sudden circumstances by
frequent access to my funds. On top of all this I have practically given
Allen the fare for two trips to New York (on one occasion I was so
anxious for him to have the chance to hear a certain opera that I gave
him ten dollars to get a good seat), I’ve had them in to dinner with
Mrs. Turner and myself frequently, I gave Carolyn my old typewriter to
work on her novel -- -- -- --. She didn’t have one herself and would
otherwise have had to depend on such moments as her husband wasn’t using
his to write at all, while I on the other hand, should certainly have
been able to make a good discount on my new machine by turning in the
old had I not purposely wished to be amiable about the matter. There
have been lots of other amenities which I enjoyed extending. And you
know me not to obviously hold such things over people’s heads. _Doesn’t_
it all look as though, _as Mr. Tate says_, I valued their friendship
only for the purpose of exploiting their services to me.
Mrs. Turner has cried for two days and nights about the matter--she
hates to have me leave so. She says there is another room in the
upstairs which I can use and not be obliged to have anything to do with
the Tates’ part of the house, their rent or their arrangements. I must
say I’m stumped. How can I, on one hand, persist in staying here after
such an insulting statement from the Tates to the effect that I was
originally their guest and that I was invited on the grounds of charity
rather from any other motives? This is one of the hardest matters I have
ever had to decide. For I feel that I owe some sense of economy to Mr.
Kahn, who didn’t give me money to keep moving about -- -- -- --. My money
is very low now. The first thousand is gone--it cost me more than I ever
would have guessed to have just got settled here with all my books and
materials at hand as they are. I wrote Kahn recently that I needed more
money, and he very speedily and kindly replied with a check for five
hundred. At the same time the Rychtariks wrote from Cleveland that they
needed the money they had loaned me for my land--that they required it
for the summer trip to Europe, etc. And so two hundred will have to be
taken out of the Kahn money at once.
It really is tragic. The whole fruit of the first opportunity of my
life to write an extended poem is apparently about to be blighted
-- -- -- --. As I say I don’t at this moment know which way to turn. If I
remain here (spring is just coming on--and the best time for work, so
long waited for, has come!) if I remain here under such unpleasant
relations it is very doubtful whether or not I can overcome the hypnosis
of evil and jealousy in the air enough to get back into my poem, really
just started. But if I move away it means that so much of my slight
funds will be wasted in just the cost of travel, etc., that in less than
a month I’ll be back looking for a job again--and in the middle of the
summer, the most devilish and exhausting time to work in the city. I
don’t feel that I ought to let my indignation and pride affect me so far
as the hasty and ill-founded remarks of the Tates are concerned. I would
sacrifice all that to my work and remain here if I felt enough assurance
of being _able_ to work under such circumstances.
If you feel at all sympathetic to this situation of mine I wish you
_this time_ be generous enough to let me go to the Island and finish my
poem there. At least I should not have to fear being put off the little
land that is still ours in the world. I have ample money to get there
and to live economically for some time. It may reasonably be expected
that Mr. Kahn will come forward with the other five hundred which he
promised within a certain time, meanwhile I can’t ask him for more
before six months without risking the charge of extravagance. I think
that I can re-sell the land I bought to Miss Flynn from whom I purchased
it. Summer in the tropics isn’t of course the paradise of the winter
months, but it is a thousand times better than a hall bedroom in New
York without light or air, to say nothing of the fact that it might cost
me a hundred or so of what I have left just spent in _looking_ for work.
You know how long it is sometimes.
If I can’t somehow succeed in taking advantage of this one opportunity
given me by Mr. Kahn, I don’t know how I’ll feel about life or any
future efforts to live--and if you can’t see how it is reasonable for me
to request under the circumstances some privileges from my family I
shall be amazed. You’ve already said that you didn’t think I’d like Mrs.
Simpson, etc. Well, do you think _that_ is half so important to me or to
anyone else after all. I’m not able to reason why this issue should hang
on the whimsical temper of an old woman. If I went to the island I
should do my best to preserve the most pleasant relations with Mrs.
Simpson, and I haven’t much doubt but what I should succeed. I ought to
be able to live a few months in the house my grandfather built without
being put off by a hired keeper of the place--especially when I am much
better fitted naturally, by simply being a male, for keeping up the
place than she is.
I’m asking you for this refuge. I’ve always been refused before. If you
deny it now I’m not sure how much farther away I’ll go to accomplish my
purposes. Perhaps to the orient, even if I have just enough to get there
and no more.
I shall go into New York early in the week, perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps
several days later. I’ll let you know where I settle and what plans are
finally adopted. Meanwhile please write me here, as before; Mrs. Turner
will be sure to send my mail to whatever address I have at the time.
I’m sorry to have such melancholy news, especially after such lovely
letters as recently came from you and Grandma, but it can’t be helped.
It all may be very much for the best in the end. I do hope you’ll be
generous enough to give me your sanction on the Island matter--that’s
all I’m requesting. I can always get money enough to get back (from at
least 5 people) and go into an office again. But that isn’t the issue
now. I’m writing a poem that is bound to be a magnificent thing _if_ I
can escape the -- -- -- -- long enough to build it. Won’t you help?
241: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
_Patterson, New York_ _April 25th, 1926_
Dear Charlotte and Richard: I hope you won’t think me insincere anywhere
in this letter. A complete picture of my feelings and present
circumstances would be hard to give, simply impossible. I’m relying on
you for more than friendship in asking such considerations. I’m asking
your love. And, of course I realize that I’m in immediate danger of
losing both. But the story has got to be sold somehow for you to
understand why I’m asking what I do. The thing is--in my state of mind
(and after three weeks of such torments) it is hard to know where to
begin. But let me say that the picture is somewhat different than it was
when I was so happy with you in Cleveland. And I must ask you to let me
off for the time being on paying you the full sum I borrowed. I can only
send you a hundred dollars now. I can send the rest within seven months.
Or at least I don’t think you would want me to give up the entire
_Bridge_ and go into an office at once. You see, I’m assuming a great
deal of interest on your part which may not be there. I wanted to state
this request first, before telling you why and wherefore. Otherwise my
story would seem featured too theatrically. --/--/
Well, I got so morbid about the matter that I finally decided to go into
New York for a few days and think as clearly as possible. What to do! I
have finally decided to go to my grandmother’s place on the Isle of
Pines in the West Indies. Getting there will be almost as cheap as
moving my things anywhere else--and living will be very cheap for [me]
there. I must tell you that Mr. Kahn sent me only $500 instead of the
entire second $1,000. It is to be presumed that I’ll get the other half
later on. But I can’t ask for more at present, and you can see that
there is just about enough to keep me there (my transportation also has
to come out of this) until more comes. Out of this I can send you the
hundred I mentioned. Won’t it be just as easy for you to wait just a
little longer for the rest? I never hated to ask a question so much in
my life--but I am simply crushed if I can’t go on a little longer with
my effort on _The Bridge_.
It’s the one opportunity I may ever have, and I feel I owe something to
the faith that Mr. Kahn has put in me. I am not seeking any thrills or
pleasure by going to the West Indies in the middle of the summer--I’m
sure you can understand how it would be much _pleasanter_ for me to go
to the seashore. But _that_ would eat up my little remaining money in
two or three months. I need longer to work on _The Bridge_, and I’m
willing to go into a furnace for awhile if I can only feel sure about
the ground under my feet. On my parents’ property I won’t need to feel
that I’ll be insulted again, or forced away. I can _at least_ be sure of
that. And that means a lot when you are trying to keep your imagination
free and creative. Also, I can live very cheaply there. I may not have
enough money to get back when I want to, but I’m not worrying about
that--or other hardships.
My mother has made a terrible fuss against my going, but is finally
reconciled. I realize it’s hard for her to think of me as so far
away--but I’ll be still farther away, I think, if my _Bridge_ breaks
down entirely. I can’t allow it all to be the victim of malice, envy,
jealousy and petty-mindedness.
I won’t indulge in any more raving and fury now. But I do hope that you
believe me sincere. You very possibly have a right to be angry with me
(certainly I have never done anything half so kind to you) but I’ll
prove to you in the end that I am sincere in my regard for you. I don’t
think I’m a dishonest person.
I am sailing for Havana next Saturday. When I get back to New York on
Wednesday I’ll send you the hundred dollars. Will you write me a word or
so before I go? Send it care of Gorham Munson -- -- -- --.
242: TO ---- AND ----
_Isle of Pines_ [_Cuba_] _May 7_
Dear ---- and ----: It is still one day less than a week since we
sailed, our second on the Island. Frank got Ward Line accommodations,
which cut a day off the sea; and we were rather sorry. Still, passing
Pam Bitch, My ammy and other Coney islands at midnight wasn’t especially
thrilling: that part of the trip was too close shore. But Havana was
more and better than I had imagined. Architecture rather like
Chirico--some Spanish plateresque and physically metaphysically
suggestive. But mostly on the surface, there isn’t other evidence.
F.’s Spanish brought us off all beaten paths. We didn’t visit an
American haunt except the steamship office. The rest was mostly bars,
cafes and theatres--filled with blacks, reds, browns, greys and every
permutation and combinations of southern bloods that you can imagine.
Coronas-Coronas, of course, for 15¢, marvelous sherry, cognac, vermouth
and “Tropical” (the beer that I was talking about). Am. boats seem to be
easy, by the way: we had St. Julian and Sauterne all the way down at
table. Then we went to the Alhambra, a kind of Cuban National Winter
Garden Burlesque. Latin “broadness” was somewhat veiled from me as far
as the dialogue went, but actions went farther than apparently even the
East Side can stand.
Gratings and balconies and narrow streets with plenty of whores nodding.
The day of our departure a great fleet of American destroyers landed.
Streets immediately became torrents of uniforms--one sailor had exactly
the Chinese mustache effect that I aspire to. But no J---- F----: his
boat must have passed to Brooklyn--passed in the night. Taxis anywhere
in town for only 20¢, but that’s about the only cheap feature. Great
black-bushed buxom Jamaican senoritas roared laughter at us, old women
hobbled up offering lottery tickets (I finally got one on a hunch). The
whole town is hypersensual and mad--i.e. has no apparent direction,
destiny, or purpose: Cummings’ paradise. I shall have to go up for a
real spree sometime when cash is plentiful, meanwhile this isle is
enough Eden.
Poor Mrs. Simpson hadn’t expected us for at least three days more--and
F. of course, the extra party, almost bowled her over at first sight.
She had a violent coughing fit, at which I thought the fragile frame of
her would break and during which a parrot screamed from a corner
somewhere, “Damned poor dinner!” She has recovered, and is really
lovable and quite the contrary of all I had expected. I’ve had one
pleasant shock after another. The house is much more spacious than I had
remembered, the island much more beautiful.... The approach from the sea
is like the Azores, F. says. To me, the mountains, strange greens,
native thatched huts, perfume, etc. brought me straight to Melville. The
heat _is_ different from northern summer heat and the parroty phrase
does hold--“it’s always cool in the shade.” It was cool enough for F. to
put a coat on at sundown today, “breezes prevail.” Oleanders and mimosas
in full bloom now make the air almost too heavy with perfume, it’s
another world--and a little like Rimbaud. I’m surprised that I didn’t
carry away more definite impressions from my first visit 11 years ago.
We discovered a beach yesterday, very near our house. We bathed late in
the day and the water was almost too warm. The rest of the time we’ve
wandered over the grove, bought fish, played with a baby owl that
suddenly appeared, drunk punch, picked coconuts (which are a meal by
themselves). You ought to see that owlet (Pythagoras) make away with a
chameleon! No bigger than a fat sparrow, it blinked and swallowed a
lizard whole. I’ve nearly died laughing at the creature. We brought it
to table and it turded in F.’s salad, it sits on your finger and squeaks
like P---- does when she gets tipsy. I’ll probably be taking it to bed
with me, like B----, when I first get tipsy (No I haven’t been tipsy
since I left NY).
I spose Bina [Flynn] has already told you the details of the parental
wedding in NY. Those last three days in town were mad ones for me.
-- -- -- -- sister, gnawed at my hand for quite a while at the dinner with
the Cowleys. I don’t remember what it was all about, but I think we fell
in love with each other. I finally brought the bridal pair [Crane’s
mother & her husband] to lunch with Lachaise and Mme. A good time was
had by all. I insisted on my bringing the famous bird with me. All my
fears about the trunks were wrong, they brought everything in fine
shape, even china unbroken.
I feel like a gastric museum at present, a cross cut of Tahitian stomach
coast--but not in especial distress--at least so far. Uric acid won’t
have a whispering chance in a few days what with all the strange fruits
and vegetables I’m trying. Casavas, guavas, bread fruit, limes,
cumquats, kashew apples, coconuts, wild oranges, bananas, God I can’t
remember any more of the damned names. O yes, mulberries and avacadas
and papayas! And mangos! Maybe I don’t get enough of it yet! Tamarinds
... pomegranates ... grabanas ... O sacre Nom de.... --/--/
243: TO HIS MOTHER
[_Isle of Pines_] _May 14th_
Dear Grace and Grandma: We haven’t had altogether more than 3 hours of
rainfall since arriving. Rather less than usual, Mrs. Simpson says, for
the rainy season. Today the sky is overcast, making it much cooler than
usual, and the rain of last night promises repetition at any moment.
When there is a good wind, like today’s, it sweeps the bugs away
somewhat--but otherwise they are terrific,--especially around Casas
Villa [the Crane house], which so far as I have been able to judge by
contrast with other places is become the buggiest place on the island.
This is mostly due to the thick growth of trees and shrubbery
surrounding the house--which hardly lets a zephyr through and which
harbor and incubate millions of insects. It is, of course, a great
mistake to have planted so many fruit trees so close to the house. They
give practically no shade--and simply stifle every breeze that
approaches.
Yesterday we rented a car from Herrin and I drove Mrs. S. and Waldo over
to the Jones’s Jungle. Mrs. S. had prepared a wonderful picnic lunch
which we finally shared with the Jones’s in their bungalow. Both Waldo
and myself went quite wild about the beauties of the place, the
marvelous work they have accomplished there is equalled, I’m sure, by
nothing else in the West Indies or N. America. Waldo says he remembers
visiting a place in the Azores, owned by a wealthy Portuguese prince,
which was something like it, but I have never seen anything so amazing
before.
The Jones’s are by far the pleasantest and most cultured people I have
met on the island. The tragedy of their life here is pitiable to the
point of tears. After twenty-three years of unremitting toil on their
place, to have it all brought to naught--as it is now, since the treaty
matter, makes them the saddest kind of jests of fate. Jones says that
the Cuban bureaucrats may seize his place at any moment without offering
more than five dollars an acre, and he can have no recourse whatever.
Furthermore, they are both quite penniless, and live entirely on what he
can gather as a taxi-driver and the little fee they charge for visiting
the jungle. But Jones is no worse off than others--in many ways. He is
only too old to ever hope to take hold anywhere else again. --/--/
244: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Isle of Pines_] _May 22nd_
Camerado: In the middle of the terrible little performance we left you
to attend and below the crash of floods on the roof--I was astonished to
hear the whistle of your boat, whooping, I hope, a really final salute:
I had supposed the Cristobal Colon long since departed. After so long a
wait I hope you at least had a private and quiet rest in your stateroom,
or rather, cabin.
Today frequent downpours and your card from Havana. Also a letter from
O’Neill--more mysterious than ever. I’ll quote exactly and all the words
pertaining to the Liveright matter:
“There seems to be a misunderstanding about this Liveright matter
somewhere. He isn’t waiting for any foreword from me _yet_--at least not
according to what he said when I saw him last before I wrote you the
last time. He was waiting for more stuff from you apparently. And he
spoke of having talked about you with Otto Kahn and so forth.
“However, I expect to be back in New York within a month and I will see
him then and get this matter straightened out.”
You will remember my descriptions of the situation up to this point with
sufficient accuracy without further repetitions; I can only say with
regard to it all that Gene has either misinformed me in his previous
letters or else is suffering from a lapse of memory. At any event, I
hope that the conversation with Kahn alluded to, hasn’t twitched
Liveright into the decision to hold up my book until _The Bridge_ shall
be completed. If he doesn’t really want the book of course nobody can
force him to take it,--in which case I hope it won’t be too much trouble
for you to return the mss. to the Boni Bros. There seem no end to the
complications with L. The mysterious “yet” in Gene’s statement (my
underlining) is simply inexplicable.
Mrs. Simpson is having some duplicates made for you of the beach
pictures and wishes to be remembered to you. Attaboy frequently calls
out “Waldo!” Mrs. Durham (whose name I remember always just in time by
thinking of the Bull) has come to stay at least for the week-end. And I
have just written a little unconscious calligramme on the mango tree
which I enclose.[47] --/--/
245: TO ----
[_Isle of Pines_] _May 22nd_
Dear ----: The post-Crane period in Patterson seems to have been full of
excitements. Your letter, with its news about the incomparable J---- was
corroborated in the same mail by no less than a letter from the noble
tar himself. Poor J---- spent no little time and trouble, coming clear
up from Norfolk. Mrs. Turner had been forwarding warnings of the
impending disaster, first a letter from Norfolk on the date of landing,
then a letter on the Potomac boat bound for Washington; I began to feel
as though the wireless would be necessary to save my honor. His people
live at P---- and it was there, after his excursion north, that he
finally got a card I had mailed from Havana explaining things. He’s back
on the job now, but quits June 6th. I commend your control under the
penetrating gazes of Mrs. T. J----’s letter contained a closing greeting
from “me, J----’s sister, M----” written in a very elegant hand, so I
guess I’m well introduced when I come to P----. Anyway, he made good
company and I’m awfully sorry to have missed him.
Yesterday I got tight for the first time, on Bacardi. Cuban Independence
day. Falling in with a flock of goats on my way home (I was trembling at
what Mme. Sampsohn would say) I stubbed my toes and skinned my knee.
Arrived home in a somewhat obvious condition, there was nothing to be
done but have it out with Mme.... Waldo having left Tuesday night, we
had it fair and square. It is now established that I can drink as much
as I damned please. A couple of murdering desperadoes got loose from the
penitentiary here recently--and I think she’s glad to have my company.
But she’s been so damned pleasant and considerate that I haven’t any
reason to think she doesn’t like me on less fearful grounds. I’m rather
jealous of Mrs. T’s old love, the weather, however.
Yes, Marianne [Moore] took the little specialty I wrote for her, and
even proof has been corrected and sent back. This time she didn’t even
suggest running the last line backward. “Again” is in the May issue; I
spose you’ve seen the happy mixture. I enclose an accidental calligramme
committed this morning accidentally on my way to _The Bridge_. I’m
convinced that the Mango tree was the original Eden apple tree, being
the first fruit tree mentioned in history with any accuracy of
denomination. I’ve been having a great time reading _Atlantis in
America_, the last book out on the subject, and full of exciting
suggestions. Putting it back for 40 or 50 thousand years, it’s easy to
believe that a continent existed in mid-Atlantic waters and that the
Antilles and West Indies are but salient peaks of its surface.
Impossible forever to prove, however.
I’m glad that Malcolm [Cowley] has had such luck. It’s likely he’s made
for life--once he enters the Lorimer field; and the articles ought to be
interesting, certainly the material is. Because Poole’s book, _The
Harbour_, was said to have been written while looking from the windows
of 110 Col. Hts., I had the idea that it might contain something--and
have just finished reading it, a thin-chested little affair if there
ever was one! I wonder if McFee’s books are quite so ordinary. -- -- -- --
246: TO HIS MOTHER
[_Isle of Pines_] _June 1, 1926_
Dear Grace: --/--/ Mine own true self has been chewing its cud, mostly,
i.e., trying to imagine itself on the waters with Cristobal Colon and
trying to mend the sails so beautifully slit by the Patterson typhoon.
The Island grows more attractive to me as I get more acclimated and we
have had constant breezes and cool weather ever since Waldo left, just
two weeks ago today. There are many things that need to be done about
the place, but I am attacking them with some deliberation--one has to
respect the ferocity of the sun and the insects not a little. I have
succeeded in eradicating the carcasses of several dead and dying orange
trees in the front yard, putting young royal palms in their places. How
I wish you had thought of planting some of these perfect delights when
the place was being built; they are the one perfect sort of tree to have
round a house, their ornamentation, stateliness and open-airiness can’t
be surpassed.
Mrs. Simpson is going to help me put up some new gate posts of rocks and
cement. The entire fencing directly in front of the house is ready to
collapse and there are so many breaches in the line down by the grove
which we need repair at once (pigs can’t be kept out, but some of the
cattle can be) that something should be done about it as soon as
possible. Of course I’m constantly at a loss to know what attitude to
take about these and other highly necessary repairs,--not knowing what
you really intend doing about the place. Most important of all, of
course, is an entirely new roof for the house. I don’t think you’ll ever
get pin money for the sale of the place until this, at least, is done,
for it’s the first and outstanding fault to be noticed even from the
road.
Moreover, the inside of the house--its whole structure, in fact--will
soon begin to deteriorate so rapidly for the want of dry sheltering that
whatever value the place has now will be sacrificed. If I were you, and
relished the tropics during the winter as much as you do, I’d economize
in some way or other so as to afford a new roof as soon as possible. The
house is really so comfortable and so very well built that it’s a shame
to let it run down. A few shingles and patches here and there won’t meet
the situation at all. The whole roof is rotted, loosely assembled and
full of perforations. And, as I said, it looks it. Patches would only
make it look a little worse.
Mrs. S. and I think that tile roofing, while costing a little more than
the cheap shingles that we put on first, is the proper thing for the
climate, exigencies of grass fires, etc. Asbestos shingling would be
good, but not so permanent--and although I don’t know for certain as
yet, I think it would be about as expensive as tile. Tile would also
look better. Now we are going to ask Mr. Jones, whose honesty and
disinterestedness is unquestionable, to make an estimate on what tile
roofing would cost, also what he would charge for his services in
undertaking the job. As soon as possible I’ll write you about the
figures, or Mrs. S. will. It can do no harm to go this far, anyway. And
as the Island is so infinitely superior to Florida, California or any
other place you might go for the winters--_and so much cheaper a place
to live when you get here_--I think you will agree with me that
investments in repairs on the place here are ultimately cheaper than
hotel rooms at ten to fifteen dollars a day with nothing to keep when
you leave. A new roof, some new screening and a fresh coat of paint are
all this house needs for years to come if someone like Mrs. Simpson or
myself stays here. I don’t forget the water tank, but that isn’t so
crucial; water can, after all, be pumped by hand. Let me know a little
more of your present attitude about the property here, then I can better
judge whether or not you want my reports, advice, etc.
Thursday (June 3rd) I’m sailing on the schooner for Grand Cayman. There
are two days on the water each way, and I may spend a week on the island
if the boat stays that long. I’m looking forward with great glee to my
first real sail--and they tell me that Cayman is lovelier than anything
around. Bread, cheese and cookies are to be packed by Mrs. Simpson and
I’m hoping not to feed the fishes. If I do,--well then I’ll have at
least found out that I’m a good-for-nothing landlubber. The trip will be
worth while from any standpoint.
247: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Isle of Pines_] _June 19th ’26_
Dear Waldo: Late amends for your last three letters, the first of which
I got just as I was taking the schooner for Cayman! the last two
yesterday when I returned. The trip was strenuous, four days instead of
the expected two--each way, on account of head winds and calms. And let
me tell you that to be “as idle as a painted,” etc., under this tropical
sun with thirty-five cackling, puking, farting Negroes (women and
children first) for a whole day or so (the water like a blinding glassy
gridiron) is a novel experience. The first moral of the sea with the
white man is clean decks; it’s the last considered with the Indian
black. Vile water to drink, etc., etc., there’s no use recommending the
facts further. And the much bruited Grand Cayman was some torment, I can
survive to tell you. Flat and steaming under black clouds of mosquitoes,
and not a square inch of screening on the island. I had to keep smudge
fires burning incessantly in my room while I lunged back and forth,
smiting myself all over like one in rigor mortis and smoke gouging salt
penance from my eyes. The insects were enormous; Isle of Pines species
can’t compare in size or number. After nine days and nights of that I
staggered onto the schooner--and here I am--with a sunburn positively
Ethiopian.
I have pleasantly proved to myself, however, that under more sociably
agreeable circumstances there is nothing to compare with a sail boat.
The motion made me anything but sea-sick, with a good wind the rhythm is
incomparable. More gorgeous skies than even you saw, acres of man-sized
leaping porpoises (the “Huzza Porpoises” so aptly named in _Moby Dick_)
that greet you in tandems (much like M. & Mme. Lachaise if you have ever
seen them out walking together) and truly “arch and bend the horizons.”
One enormous shark, a White Fin, lounged alongside for awhile. Had there
been a place to sit or stand a few moments in the shade and fewer basins
and chamber pots under the nose the trips would have been far from
onerous.
In spite of all, I find myself rather toughened and well. The
exasperations and torments of such a siege make one grateful for modest
amenities. Mrs. Simpson yesterday for the first time appeared to me as
the Goddess of Liberty.
I am not writing to O’Neill about _White Buildings_--and do not expect
to write him until I hear directly from him. He is supposed to be back
in NY by this time, and in his last letter he said that he expected to
see Liveright on his return and talk things over. He knows that I have
prepared in mss. all the poems which are to be included in the book and
that all that can now hold it back is the lack of his foreword. It was
hard for me to ask him to write such a thing for my book, and it has
been harder and more embarrassing still for me to have kept trailing him
with letters of urgence.... It’s impossible for me [to] address him
again on the subject. I’m sorry that what-ever-it-was made him feel
constrained to promise the favor initially. It will be just as well for
me to forget publishers for awhile, I think, though I can’t forget how
steadfastly you have persevered in helping me--whatever the results have
amounted to. And don’t think too much about me; my judgments are too
unsettled these days to make me feel that I deserve much attention, much
less the faith that you assure me of. The situation is really unique
with me; it is absurd to say that one is battling indifference; but
neither does one build out of an emptied vision. Mere word-painting and
juggling, however fastidious,--a prospect of this doesn’t excite one
very much. At times it seems demonstrable that Spengler is quite right.
At present--I’m writing nothing--would that I were an efficient factory
of some kind! It was unfortunate in a way to have been helped by our
friend, the banker,--with my nose to the grindstone of the office I
could still fancy that freedom would yield me a more sustained vision;
now I know that much has been lacking all along. This is less personal
than it sounds. I think that the artist more and more licks his own
vomit, mistaking it for the common diet. He amuses himself that way in a
culture without faith and convictions--but he might as well be in elfin
land with a hop pipe in his mouth.... No, _The Bridge_ isn’t very
flamboyant these days.
I’m glad that the Mango poem meant something to you. I’m cooking up a
couple of other short poems to go with it (“Kidd’s Cove,” & “The Tampa
Schooner”) under the common title of “Grand Cayman.” Maybe I can sell
them to Marianne M[oore]. Word was just forwarded from Patterson that
Edgell Rickword, who edits _The Calendar_ (London), has taken three
poems I sent him about eight weeks ago, “At Melville’s Tomb,” “Passage”
and “Praise for an Urn.” _The Calendar_ is a very decent quarterly, and
I’m glad to get the “Melville” in print--not one magazine in America
would take it. You ought to send them something of yours--(1
Featherstone Buildings, London, W.C.1.)
So far no zonite, but gratitude none the less. The only people who can
get records to me securely are the Victor headquarters, I’ll order
direct from them. There’s a duty of about 90% on all records! But I do
wish you would have _The New Republic_ send me the Gide article.... As
much of your work as is printed there and elsewhere. I read _Moby Dick_
between gasps down in Cayman--my third time--and found it more superb
than ever. How much that man makes you love him! --/--/
248: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Isle of Pines_] _June 20th_
Dear Waldo: Recollection of certain statements made in yesterday’s
letter to you prompt me to a little better account of myself--not that I
committed any insincerities (though the letter might seem to solicit
sympathy or encouragement) but that I feel guilty of an injustice to you
in some sort of way. You certainly do not deserve to have such fare set
before you....
So I apologize for my crudity, with the foreknowledge of your
understanding that there are times when it is a torture to write anyone
sincerely--as I must always write to you. My statements may appear in a
less insane light after you have read what has principally spurred
them--the Spengler thesis. This man is certainly fallible in plenty of
ways but much of his evidence is convincing--and is there any good
evidence forthcoming from the world in general that the artist isn’t
completely out of a job? Well, I may not care about such considerations
2 hours from now, but at present and for the last two months I have been
confronted with a ghostliness that is new.
The validity of a work of art is situated in contemporary reality to the
extent that the artist must honestly anticipate the realization of his
vision in “action” (as an actively operating principle of communal works
and faith), and I don’t mean by this that his procedure requires any
bona fide evidences directly and personally signalled, nor even any
physical signs or portents. The darkness is part of his business. It has
always been taken for granted, however, that his intuitions were
salutary and that his vision either sowed or epitomized “experience” (in
the Blakeian sense). Even the rapturous and explosive destructivism of
Rimbaud presupposes this, even his lonely hauteur demands it for any
estimation or appreciation. (The romantic attitude must at least have
the background of an age of faith, whether approved or disproved no
matter).
All this is inconsecutive and indeterminate because I am trying to write
shorthand about an endless subject--and moreover am unresolved as to any
ultimate conviction. I am not fancying I am “enlightening” you about
anything,--nor, if I thought I were merely exposing personal sores,
would I continue to be so monotonous. Emotionally I should like to write
_The Bridge_; intellectually judged the whole theme and project seems
more and more absurd. A fear of personal impotence in this matter
wouldn’t affect me half so much as the convictions that arise from other
sources.... I had what I thought were authentic materials that would
have been a pleasurable-agony of wrestling, eventuating or not in
perfection--at least being worthy of the most supreme efforts I could
muster.
These “materials” were valid to me to the extent that I presumed them to
be (articulate or not) at least organic and active factors in the
experience and perceptions of our common race, time and belief. The very
idea of a bridge, of course, is a form peculiarly dependent on such
spiritual convictions. It is an act of faith besides being a
communication. The symbols of reality necessary to articulate the
span--may not exist where you expected them, however. By which I mean
that however great their subjective significance to me is
concerned--these forms, materials, dynamics are simply non-existent in
the world. I may amuse and delight and flatter myself as much as I
please--but I am only evading a recognition and playing Don Quixote in
an immorally conscious way.
The form of my poem rises out of a past that so overwhelms the present
with its worth and vision that I’m at a loss to explain my delusion that
there exist any real links between that past and a future destiny worthy
of it. The “destiny” is long since completed, perhaps the little last
section of my poem is a hangover echo of it--but it hangs suspended
somewhere in ether like an Absalom by his hair. The bridge as a symbol
today has no significance beyond an economical approach to shorter
hours, quicker lunches, behaviorism and toothpicks. And inasmuch as the
bridge is a symbol of all such poetry as I am interested in writing it
is my present fancy that a year from now I’ll be more contented working
in an office than before. Rimbaud was the last great poet that our
civilization will see--he let off all the great cannon crackers in
Valhalla’s parapets, the sun has set theatrically several times since
while Laforgue, Eliot and others of that kidney have whimpered
fastidiously. _Everybody_ writes poetry now--and “poets” for the first
time are about to receive official social and economic recognition in
America. It’s really all the fashion, but a dead bore to anticipate. If
only America were half as worthy today to be spoken of as Whitman spoke
of it fifty years ago there might be something for me to say--not that
Whitman received or required any tangible proof of his intimations, but
that time has shown how increasingly lonely and ineffectual his
confidence stands.
There always remains the cult of “words,” elegancies, elaborations, to
exhibit with a certain amount of pride to an “inner circle” of literary
initiates. But this is, to me, rivalled by numerous other forms of
social accomplishment which might, if attained, provide as mild and
seductive recognitions. You probably think me completely insane, talking
as obvious hysterics as [a] drunken chorus-girl. Well, perhaps I need a
little more skepticism to put me right on _The Bridge_ again.... I am
certainly in a totally undignified mind and undress--and I hope to
appear more solidly determined soon.
Please don’t think that the O’Neill foreword has precipitated anything,
nor that I [am] burning manuscripts or plotting oriental travels....
Desolately I confess that I _may_ be writing stanzas again tomorrow.
That’s the worst of it. Mrs. S asks to be remembered to you.
--All this does not mean that I have resigned myself to inactivity.... A
bridge will be written in some kind of style and form, at worst it will
be something as good as advertising copy. After which I will have at
least done my best to discharge my debt to Kahn’s kindness.
249: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Isle of Pines_] _July 3rd, ’26_
Dear Waldo: I must thank you immediately for your wireless. The news is
most welcome--and your affectionate haste in notifying me is not without
results in piercing the miasmas of these tropics.
Also comes a letter from Sue [Jenkins]. It seems the news has reached
Patterson via Jimmy Light. I copy Sue’s account of the circumstances
given her by Jimmy, as having been so active an agent in the matter you
probably will be interested. “The way it came about is not without
interest. About a month ago Liveright, Jimmy and others were at Otto
Kahn’s for a week-end. L. had the mss. with him at that time and on the
boat coming back he said he had decided not to publish it--that he
didn’t care for the poems and so far as he could see, nobody understood
them. Then, a little over a week ago, Jimmy and O’Neill were in L.’s
office on business and your mss. was on the table. Jimmy asked him if he
had stuck to his decision and he said ‘Yes.’ Then Jimmy and Gene both
told him they thought he would eventually be ‘proud’ of having published
your first volume, so that even if he himself did not care for the
poems, as a publisher he was failing to take advantage of an
opportunity. So finally L. came around to his old position of saying
that he would publish them if Gene would write a preface. (Previously L.
had said that he did not want to publish the poems at all--preface or no
preface.) Gene protested some, saying that while he liked the poems he
wasn’t at all sure he could tell why he liked them, that he was by no
means a critic of poetry, and that L. was preparing a fine opportunity
for him (O’Neill) to make a fool of himself. But finally it was decided
that the preface would be written, L. phoned immediately to the printer
and dictated the announcement. And I understand that the preface is
already written and in L.’s hands.”
Probably I’ll hear something direct from Liveright within the next week;
nothing so far has reached me. If the book is really scheduled for fall
it will relieve me of numerous embarrassments, especially with the
family, who, I think have already ceased to believe any statements from
me about my work, publications, etc.
Last Sunday I was obliged to go to Havana to consult with a doctor. For
the last two weeks I have been suffering intensely from two abscesses,
one in each ear, added to which apparently alarming symptoms of fever,
and lung trouble had seemed to develop. Of these latter the doctor says
there is no need to worry, but the abscesses have not healed yet, and
are distracting to say the least. I shall be glad sometime to get a good
night’s sleep. Doctor says they were caused by sun-exposure on my boat
trip.
I have been reading _Quixote_ and _Swann’s Way_. My money is practically
exhausted, but I think I can get a hundred by writing to Patterson and
having my property there sold. The final 500 from Kahn can’t be
solicited until August or later--if at all, for I shan’t ask for it
unless I am writing again by that time. Mrs. Simpson has been so kind
and altogether gracious that I couldn’t ask for better care.
When I’m feeling better I hope to write you a decent letter--the last
two have been so haphazard, violent and vulgar. I hope these days of sea
and sunshine and breezes are resting you and improving Tom.[48]
In Havana I bought a _New Yorker_ and read your van Loon
snapshot--marvelling again at your flexibility and dash. Otherwise I was
sipping the glorious limonades most of the time! couldn’t get my mouth
open wide enough to receive much other nourishment! Took long walks
around the harbour and along the Malacon. A lovely city, albeit insipid;
full of white and gold and azure buildings. Even plaster has something
to say.
250: TO ----
_Isle of Pines, Cuba_ [_July?_]
Dear ----: --/--/ I have not been able to write one line since I came
here--the mind is completely befogged by the heat and besides there is a
strange challenge and combat in the air--offered by “Nature” so
monstrously alive in the tropics which drains the psychic energies.--And
my poem was progressing so beautifully until -- -- -- -- took it into her
head to be so destructive! How silly all this sounds! Howsoever--it’s a
cruel jest of Fate--and I doubt if I shall continue to write for another
year. For I’ve lost all faith in my material--“human nature” or what you
will--and any true expression must rest on some faith in something.
It has been so disgusting to note the sudden turns and antics of my
“friends” since I had the one little bit help I ever had toward my work
in the money from Kahn. Everytime I came into N.Y. from the country I’d
hear new monstrosities of fables going about town as to how I was
squandering money on pate de foi gras, etc. And worse whisperings. It’s
all been very tiresome--and I’d rather lose such elite for the old
society of vagabonds and sailors--who don’t enjoy chit-chat.
Two of the latter, by the way, are keeping up a regular flow of letters
and cards to me here. One, F----, came clear up to Patterson to see me
during May--but found me gone, of course.
I was very touched to hear that he had journeyed all the way from
Norfolk--in memory of two evenings in Brooklyn last January. Immortally
choice and funny and pathetic are some of my recollections in such
connection. I treasure them--I always can--against many disillusionments
made bitter by the fact that faith was given and expected--whereas, with
the sailor no faith or such is properly _expected_ and how jolly and
cordial and warm the tonsiling _is_ sometimes, after all. Let my lusts
be my ruin, then, since all else is a fake and mockery. --/--/
251: TO HIS MOTHER
[_Isle of Pines_] _July 8th, 1926_
Dear Grace: Well,--after two months of absolute silence I’m glad to hear
from you--and sorry to know that you are so disturbed and worried as you
are, and sick in bed. --/--/
The trip to Cayman I’m still trying to get over. Everyone (I don’t know
why native Americans here should tell such stories) had been telling me
how charming the little island was. More than that, the sea-sailing to
and fro had interested me. Being in a very dull mood (the intense and
sudden heat here had made me torpid and inactive) I thought the trip
would spur me, stimulate me a little toward continuing my writing on the
_Bridge_ poem, not a line of which I had been able to add since I came
down here.
Instead of a two days trip over, it took four. Headwinds all the way. It
was not until the island was cleared that I realized how many were on
that sixty-foot schooner. Thirty-five! and all of them niggers who
proved to have no idea of ordinary decent cleanliness, and the crowd
made it almost impossible to find a place to stand, lie or sit for ten
minutes at a time--not to mention the fact that there was no shade from
the intense blaze of the sun unless one could brave the stinks and fumes
of a dozen odd sick and wailing nigger females below decks. Most of
these never emerged from their hole there during the entire voyage, but
pots, bowls, basins, fruit peelings and a thousand shrieks and wails
were raised up every hour of the day and night to be emptied on the
deck, my nose and ears being kept busy, I can tell you!
When we at last were in sight of the island we were greeted (even three
miles out) with such droves of savage mosquitoes as I had never imagined
outside of Bon Echo, Canada. And when I was landed I found them to be
far, far worse. There was only one place on the island (no hotel) where
I could be accommodated. A sort of boarding house kept by a woman who
used to cook over at Santa Fe. Whether they were hers or not, I don’t
know, but the house was packed with infants and children who kept up a
constant racket and screaming. All the Negroes on the island were very
pious, and about the time the children would quiet down a whole band of
them in the house next door would raise their voices to God in hymns
that would scrape the varnish off the woodwork. Worst of all, there was
not an inch of screening on the house. I spent literally dollars buying
insect powders and keeping a constant smudge going in my room so that my
eyes were in a constant stream of tears from the smoke and my lungs
nearly burst with suffocation.
Even then, one side of my face and neck were so badly poisoned from the
constant bites that they were quite swollen. The beautiful beaches that
I had heard about on the island I never saw. To walk more than half a
mile from your doorstep was almost to court madness, St. Vitus dance, or
death. The very arm with which you were attempting to beat off the
regiments of insects would become so covered with them (even while in
violent action) that you gave up any hope of relieving yourself of their
company.
You can picture me, then, pacing back and forth in my room, very much in
the mood of old Mrs. Johnson, in our kitchen at 1709 [Cleveland home of
Crane family]--with a hand pressed on the top of my head, whispering to
myself that I would soon be quite insane and relieved of my torments.
Someday I’ll tell you more about this famous “vacation” and “holiday” in
the picturesque West Indies. I had _ten_ days and long nights of it
before the boat captain finally pulled anchor and started back to Gerona
again. The load this time was as heavy as before and equally dirty. The
trip was equally long. We lay for two whole days in midocean and a dead
calm, the water so still that you could see yourself in it like a
mirror. The sun was terrific and the decks scorched your feet. Not a bit
of shade, and I couldn’t go below decks without nausea. Our island
seemed like Paradise and Mrs. Simpson like the goddess of Liberty when I
finally got home. Two days later I was taken with abscesses in both
ears, and I am still suffering night and day, though they seem to be on
the mend.
Added to this, during the first week home, I had such difficulty in
breathing, especially at night--with pains in the chest and terrific
sweats--that I became seriously alarmed. Mrs. S. and I both agreed that
I had better go at once to Havana and consult with an able physician.
Which I finally did. Doctor A. Agramonte, Velado--a grad. of Columbia
University, etc.
He pronounced me alright except [for] a slight infection of the throat,
which may have been contracted from the common water supply on the boat,
so musty and contaminated that at the time I almost parched my system by
attempting to avoid all drinking. The ear trouble he said was probably
due to sun exposure. I was given some prescriptions and returned on the
next boat. Mrs. Simpson has been goodness itself in douching my ears and
in giving me whatever other attentions I have needed. The last three
days it has almost disappeared and then come again, by turns. I am
hoping that nothing chronic ensues. The pain has been nerve wracking and
my whole system is at present functioning “below par”.... So much for
the Cayman trip. --/--/
252: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT
_Isle of Pines_ _July 16, 1926_
Dear Bill: --/--/ I liked the poem from _The Bookman_--even, if as you
say, you don’t attempt more than a play of words. Convictions of any
sort are hard to maintain these days--and maybe Spengler is right. Have
you read his _Untergang des Abendlandes_--now translated (Knopf)? I envy
people like Wheeler Lovell--who have intensive work to do without having
to wrestle with either angels or devils to continue with it. I get
awfully exhausted sometimes, trying to achieve some kind of consistent
vision of things. But I don’t seem to be able to relax--and knowing
quite well all the time that most of my energy is wasted in a kind of
inward combustion that is sheer nonsense. All else seems boresome,
however,--so I must continue to kill myself in my own way. --/--/
253: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Isle of Pines_] _July 24, 1926_
Hail Brother! I feel an absolute music in the air again, and some
tremendous rondure floating somewhere--perhaps my little dedication [“To
Brooklyn Bridge”] is going to swing me back to San Cristobal again....
That little prelude, by the way, I think to be almost the best thing
I’ve ever written, something steady and uncompromising about it. Do you
notice how its construction parallels the peculiar technique of _space
and detail division_ used by El Greco in several canvasses--notably the
_Christus am Olberg_? I’ve just been struck by that while casually
returning to my little monograph as I often do.
And obscure as that heaven of the Jews
Thy guerdon ... Accolade thou dost bestow
Of anonymity time cannot raise;
Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.
Read the above between the 6th & 7th stanzas of the last I sent--and you
have the poem complete. It’s done, and I won’t bother you with any more
scraps....
The news of Allen Tate’s generosity refreshed me a great deal; truly
beautiful of him. You must know by now, how little I credited the Light
gossip; I simply thought you’d be interested in hearing the sort of
thing that goes around. I don’t mean to say I sensed the ultimate facts
as your enclosure establish them--but I have always known that your
efforts were the _sine qua non_ in this situation ... your devotion and
courage the sustaining factor.
I shall not write Kahn for awhile, or if I do it will be in a different
mood than you need to fear of. I sent Spengler to you registered, two
weeks ago. Don’t know any exact date for the appearance of _White B’s_,
the contract specifies only in “the fall of 1926”; November, perhaps.
--/--/
254: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Isle of Pines_] _July 26th, ’26_
Dear Waldo: Dear repository of my faith, will you also serve as sanctum
of some [of] my “works”? By which I mean that, though I shouldn’t bother
you now while you are busy with inner work of your own, I still must ask
you to keep the enclosed somewhere.[49] One never knows what may happen,
fires burn the house here, etc., and mss. be burnt or otherwise
lost--and in the case of this _Bridge_ I feel enough honor-bound to
desire preserved whatever evidence of my industry and effort is
forthcoming.
I don’t presume to ask you for comments. Read it if you like and fold it
away somewhere. You have the last section (“Atlantis,” as I have decided
to call it) haven’t you? I have discovered that it IS the real Atlantis,
even of geology!
My plans are soaring again, the conception swells. Furthermore, this
Columbus is REAL. In case you read it--(I _can’t_ be serious)--observe
the water-swell rhythm that persists until the Palos reference. Then the
more absolute and marked intimation of the great _Te Deum_ of the court,
later held,--here in the terms of C.’s own cosmography.
Mrs. S. is the god’s own gift. This were a perfect place for work but
for the prostrating heat. I think of next winter! Last night a wonderful
breeze came up--and you can walk singing through the grove with a great
moon simply bending down.
255: TO MALCOLM COWLEY AND PEGGY BAIRD
_Isle of Pines, Cuba_ _July 29th_
Dear Malcolm and Peggy: I’ve been wanting to tell you how glad I’ve been
to know about your good luck with the _Post_ business, etc.--but you
probably know by this time what I’ve been going through with.... There’s
really no news except that I’m better and have begun to write--for a
period until prostrated by the heat--like mad. Columbus has been cleared
up--and a lot of other things started within ten days.
In the middle of _The Bridge_ the old man of the sea (page Herr Freud)
suddenly comes up. I enclose this section,[50] hoping you’ll like it.
Please mention or display it to no one but Allen and les Browns for the
time: it makes me nervous to have parts of an unfinished drama going
about much before the curtain goes up.
It happens that all the clippers mentioned were real beings, had
extensive histories in the Tea trade--and the last two mentioned were
life-long rivals. Rather touching....
256: TO HIS MOTHER
[_Isle of Pines_] _July 30th_
Dearest Grace: --/--/ Everything new sent down here now incurs terrific
customs duty, so don’t send me any luxuries--or necessities either until
I ask for them. Waldo sent me some ointment for bug bites after he went
north--and the duty came to over the original price in NY; I was so
angry I threw it back into the post office and refused to have anything
more to do with it (by which please understand I _didn’t_ pay the duty).
You already have most of the news from Grandma’s letter, and Mrs.
Simpson’s letter also must have arrived explaining the cable matter. I
wasn’t worried about it because I was certain that you had received my
letter almost immediately afterward--couldn’t have _before_ or else how
could my _whereabouts_ have been questioned in the cable. I’m feeling
quite well now--all but sleep, and whether that’s due to the heat,
chronic insomnia or my present ferment of creative work, I don’t quite
know. Certainly the hayhennies and crowing roosters (at all times of
nights) and the breathlessness of the “air” don’t encourage one to
slumbers. In a number of ways, however, I’m better acclimated, and I
don’t need to memorize your advice to know enough to keep out of the sun
and physical work! My spasm of hay fever seems to have gone--at about
the same time it leaves in the north, that is, the spring session.
In all other ways this is the most ideal place and “situation” I’ve ever
had for work. Mrs. S---- lets me completely alone when I’m busy; let’s
me drum on the piano interminably if I want to--says she likes it--and
has assumed a tremendous interest in my poem.... She reads and sews a
great deal and just talks enough to keep on splendid and equable terms
with me. She’s a perfect peach, in other words. The result is--that now
that my health’s better I’m simply immersed in work to my neck, eating,
“sleeping,” and breathing it. In the last ten days I’ve written over ten
pages of _The Bridge_--highly concentrated stuff, as you know it is with
me--and more than I ever crammed into that period of time before. I can
foresee that everything will be brightly finished by next May when I
come north, and I can make a magnificent bow to that magnificent
structure, The Brooklyn Bridge, when I steam (almost under it) into
dock! For the poem will be magnificent.
Meanwhile my other book, _White Buildings_, will have been published. It
comes out sometime this fall. I have my contract and the $100. advance
royalties mentioned in Grandma’s letter. O’Neill finally backed out on
the foreword, as I thought he would. He’s enthusiastic about my work,
I’ve never doubted that, but he didn’t have the necessary nerve to write
what his honesty demanded--a thorough and accurate appraisal of my work.
He can’t write criticism, never has tried even, and I foresaw the panic
that this proposal on the part of our mutual publisher would precipitate
in his bosom.... None other than Allen Tate!, it seems, is to write the
foreword. I was informed by my publisher of all this--along with the
acceptance. Has written it, in fact.... And (mum’s the word on this!) I
was very much touched to hear from Waldo, who knows all the inner
workings on this, that Allen offered his foreword under O’Neill’s
signature when he heard that O’Neill had backed out. Of course I
wouldn’t think of anything like that--so the foreword goes back to its
own name. I’m very glad things have turned out this way. My umbrage
toward Allen is erased by the fidelity of his action, and I’m glad to
have so discriminating an estimate as he will write of me. --/--/
257: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Isle of Pines_] _Aug 3_
Dear Waldo: Enclosed is “Atlantis”;[51] there have been variances since
your copy whether you have it now or not.--So will you kindly humor my
present little neurosis, and take care of this. I feel as though I were
dancing on dynamite these days--so absolute and elaborated has become
the conception. All sections moving forward now at once! I didn’t
realize that a bridge is begun from the two ends at once.... Don’t
bother to read what I send you; ye Gods I hope to preserve at least the
credit of not presuming on you to the point of total vulgarity. It’s all
right to be elegant--if you are rebellious like Rimbaud; however, I have
to admit grosser preoccupations; so I’m sloppy.
Gorham sent me Allen’s Preface, which I also enclose (you’re quite sure
to want to read this, if you haven’t already). I think it clever,
valiant, concise and beautiful. I’m more fortunate than I might have
been had things gone as they were supposed to have gone. Gorham said
he’d been up to see you. I’m trying to let down completely for awhile
and “recuperate.” “Powhatan’s Daughter” must be that basic center and
antecedent of all motion--“power in repose.”
Mrs. S-- has been following me in some of my recent reading, with the
result that she has named one of her roosters “Ferdinand, Count Fathom”!
It’s a good thing you aren’t near to hear our piano going it these days!
I’ve just sent Kahn the Dedication and “Ave Maria.” Please return me
A.’s preface. Don’t know whether I’ll use the enclosed “Notes” or not. A
reaction to Eliot’s _Waste Land_ notes put them in my head. However, the
angle chart from _The Scientific Am[erican]_ embodies a complete
symbolism of both Bridge and Star, even including the motif of the “holy
tooth.” And I should like to use it on the cover. If the notes amuse you
at the moment--as I wrote them--
Have you read how handy our _Orizaba_ recently proved in the cyclone off
Florida--when Cutty Sark was bobbing up?
258: TO ISABEL AND GASTON LACHAISE
(Postcard)
[_Isle of Pines_] [_ca. August_]
This quarry is in the mountains, near our place. There’s plenty to work
on anytime you come! Your bird (the gull) is divine, produces sea music,
even winks at times!
259: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Isle of Pines_] _August 12th_
Dear Waldo: Your _Menorah_ [_Journal_] scolding is good and proper....
When all America, not only the Jew, takes that to heart it will be well
for all of us. I know a number of prosperous Jew families in Cleveland,
among my best friends there, but they’re mostly alike, sadly similar to
your categorical disposals.... And, has the Gide essay appeared yet?
Remember your promise.
I want to meet Ornstein someday. But I never seem to hear or read of any
of these concert tours he is supposed to have to make for bread, etc.
Mrs. Simpson was enormously pleased at your postcard; and I with your
praise of the Dedication. You generally do pick the weakest link; that
verse has bothered me, and will undoubtedly be somewhat amended before
the book. I’ve sent it to _The Dial_ and _The Criterion_ (London); the
little money may help, IF they take it. Probably won’t let anything else
out of the bag on this side of the water, though, for sometime yet. It
keeps too many question marks in my head, albeit a little change in the
purse. I play the lottery, though, and like it. I’m going to win a
thousand before spring; you see. “_I knew I’d see a WHALE!_”
I’m reading [Sandburg’s] _The Prairie Years_ now. More of “Powhatan’s
Daughter” later. It ends up with the prodigal son from the ‘49. There’s
to be a grand Indian pow-wow before that. Two of three songs have just
popped out (enclosed) which come after “Cutty Sark” and before “The
Mango Tree.” The last, “Virginia” (virgin in process of “being built”)
may come along any time. I skip from one section to another now like a
sky-gack or girder-jack. Even the subway and “Calgary Express” are
largely finished. Though novel experiments in form and metre here will
demand much ardor later on.
I’m happy, quite well, and living as never before. The accumulation of
impressions and concepts gathered the last several years and constantly
repressed by immediate circumstances are having a chance to function, I
believe. And nothing but this large form would hold them without the
violences that mar so much of my previous, more casual work. _The
Bridge_ is already longer than _The Wasteland_,--and it’s only about
half done.
But enough of this shop talk. I’ll exhaust your patience with it
someday. You know I don’t expect comments of any sort, except when
they’re easy and spontaneous. --/--/
260: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Isle of Pines_] _August 19th ’26_
Dear Waldo: Here, too, is that bird with a note that Rimbaud speaks of
as “making you blush.” We are in the midst of the equatorial storm
season; everyday, often at night, torrents engulf us, and the thunder
rods jab and prospect in the caverns deep below that chain of mountains
across. You can hear the very snakes rejoice,--the long, shaken-out
convulsions of rock and roots.
It is very pleasant to lie awake--just half awake--and listen. I have
the most speechless and glorious dreams meanwhile. Sometimes words come
and go, presented like a rose that yields only its light, never its
composite form. Then the cocks begin to crow. I hear Mrs. S-- begin to
stir. She is the very elf of music, little wrinkled burnous wisp that
can do anything and remembers so much! She reads Dante and falls to
sleep, her cough has become so admirably imitated by the parrot that I
often think her [in] two places at once.
I have made up a kind of friendship with that idiot boy, who is always
on the road when I come into town for mail. He has gone so far as to
answer my salutations. I was unexpected witness one day of the most
astonishing spectacle; not that I was surprised.--A group of screaming
children were shrieking about in a circle. I looked toward the house and
saw the boy standing mostly hid behind the wooden shutters behind the
grating; his huge limp phallus waved out at them from some opening; the
only other part visible was his head, in a most gleeful grin, swaying
above the lower division of the blinds.
When I saw him next he was talking to a blue little kite high in the
afternoon. He is rendingly beautiful at times: I have encountered him in
the road, talking again tout seul and examining pebbles and cinders and
marble chips through the telescope of a twice-opened tomato can. He is
very shy, hilarious,--and undoubtedly idiot. I have been surprised to
notice how much the other children like him. --/--/
I’m glad to know that _The Bridge_ is fulfilling your utmost intuitions;
for an intuition it undoubtedly was. You didn’t need to tell me that
[you] had “seen” something that memorable evening, although I was never
so sure just what it was you saw, until now. But I have always carried
that peculiar look that was in your eyes for a moment there in your
room, it has often recurred in my thoughts. What I should have done
without your love and most distinguished understanding is hard to say,
but there is no earthly benefit for which I would exchange it. It is a
harmony always with the absolute direction [I] always seek, often miss,
but sometimes gain.
Your answer to G[orham Munson] on his essay was much more adept than any
of my critical armament. It was complete. My greatest complaint against
G-- is (apparently) an incorrigible streak of vulgarity, arising no
doubt from some distrust in experience. Sometimes it makes him
personally dangerous when he doesn’t intend such. Not especially par
example, BUT: when I last dined with G-- much happened to be said about
my “extravagances”--how I spent K[ahn]’s money, etc. Snowshoes, African
sculpture, etc. I happened to mention how useful the snowshoes had been
during the storms at Patterson, etc. G-- recently visited the Tates and
went up to my room, accompanied by Mrs. Turner, who writes me, most
unwittingly of the circumstances, that the main thing G-- quizzed her
about was whether I used my snow shoes or not! Really, it [is] all so
ridiculously small. You may think I’m wasting paper on such a silly
story. But in any kind of friendship I like to have my honesty sometimes
granted on my oath of it, and this is only one of many such little
evidences of a real lack of perspective and innate taste on G.’s part.
It does leak into his work, the vision of his world. He’d better
memorize the last stanza of Baudelaire’s famous Epilogue to the _Petits
Poèmes en Prose_; as, indeed, I may sometimes tell him to do. His
definition of “knowledge” in that essay incorporates the savour of just
such a mind as is preoccupied with such details as I’ve mentioned.
Yes, I read the whole of Spengler’s book. It is stupendous,--and it was
perhaps a very good experience for ripening some of _The Bridge_, after
all. I can laugh now; but you know, alas, how little I could at the
time. That book seems to have been just one more of many “things” and
circumstances that seem to have uniformly conspired in a strangely
symbolical way toward the present speed of my work. Isn’t it
true--hasn’t it been true in your experience, that beyond the acceptance
of fate as a tragic action--immediately every circumstance and incident
in one’s life flocks toward a positive center of action, control and
beauty? I need not ask this, since there is the metaphor of the “rotted
seed of personal will,” or some such phrase, in your _Spain_.
I have never been able to live _completely_ in my work before. Now it is
to learn a great deal. To handle the beautiful skeins of this myth of
America--to realize suddenly, as I seem to, how much of the past is
living under only slightly altered forms, even in machinery and
such-like, is extremely exciting. So I’m having the time of my life,
just now, anyway.
261: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Isle of Pines_] _Aug. 23_
Dear Waldo: I feel rather apologetic about sending you so many
photographs--but the last seemed to be more what I wanted you to think
of me--than any others heretofore.
Work continues. “The Tunnel” now. I shall have it done very shortly.
It’s rather ghastly, almost surgery--and, oddly almost all from the
notes and stitches I have written while swinging on the strap at late
midnights going home.
Are you noticing how throughout the poem motives and situations
recur--under modifications of environment, etc? The organic substances
of the poem are holding a great many surprises for me.... Greatest joys
of creation.
Forgive me for telling that anecdote about G--. I don’t want to seem
stubborn or prejudiced, but you, on the other hand, are one who ought to
know more or less _why_ it is hard for me to maintain a steady sort of
whole-hearted confidence and enthusiasm with such constantly recurring
“obscurations,” if you will. I’m not saying that these ultimately or
“aesthetically” matter, but they enter the moral picture of the
personality.
Did I tell you that M. Moore has taken the Dedication?--needless to say,
without alterations.
262: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Havana, Cuba_] _Sept. 3 ’26_
Dear Waldo: I’m having my last bottle of “Diamante” before leaving for
la Isla tonight. A pestulant[52] Abbe is gulping olives at the next
table, and my waiter is all out of patience with him. But I cannot
conceal my mirth--cheeks bulge and eyes strain at suppressions. “F----
la Cubana!” says the waiter who is Spanish. Well I never had such a
fiesta of perfect food and nectar in my life. Furthermore, if you were
St. Valentine--well, maybe you are! So here goes--even if you call my
little story stale.
Perhaps you have also experienced the singular charm of long
conversations with senoritas with only about 12 words in common
understanding between you. I allude to A----, a young Cuban sailor (most
of them are terrible but A---- is Spanish parentage, and maybe that
explains it) whom I met one evening after the Alhambra in Park Central.
Immaculate, ardent and delicately restrained--I have learned much about
love which I did not think existed. What delicate revelations may bloom
from the humble--it is hard to exaggerate.
So there have been three long and devoted evenings--long walks, drives
on the Malacon, dos copas mas--and a change from my original American
hotel to La Isle de Cuba, sine commotion, however.
I’m going back much relaxed. I got on a terrible tension--not a tennis
court on the island! Just day after day in the heat and the house. Now I
shall get a fresh view of what I have written and have still to
write--and with an internal glow which is hard to describe. Silly of me
to say so--but life can be gorgeously kindly at times. -- -- -- --
263: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Isle of Pines_] _Sept. 5th_
Caro Hermano: Estoy en casa ayer de madrugada. No dormaba la noche a
bordo mar. Mucha calor, y pensaba en el carinoso A---- y los calles
blancas Habaneros, de consigniente dulces con Mi Bien. Encontreremos de
nuevo en Deciembre.... Busco en diccionario y gramatica, sudo, raspo
pelo de suerte que el tierno Cubano-Canario (Parentela los Canarios) mi
carta apprendera.
Tell me if any of it is sensible. I am now, more than ever anxious to
learn the most beautiful language in the world. And I suddenly conceive
it as a necessary preparation for my next piece of work just apprehended
in the form of a blank verse tragedy of Aztec mythology--for which I
shall have to study the obscure calendars of dead kings. If I have the
leisure for this study I shall certainly go to Spain sometime in the
next five years.... In fact I must manage this anyhow.
Your letter, awaiting my return, conveyed much goodness, the sense of
“wholiness”--of a complete return to yourself, from which I hope much;
in fact, I’m _sure_ of much therefrom. I am so glad that my progress has
meant so much to you. --/--/
264: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK
_New York_ _Nov. 1_
Dear Charlotte: --/--/ I have no idea of just what the situation is at
present with my mother, but I have been terribly worried about it for
many, many weeks. The result has been that there was only about four
weeks on the Isle of Pines that I managed to accomplish any work at all;
my mother’s unrestrained letters, the terrific heat and bugs, etc.,
nearly killed me.
But I’ve managed to come through, at least with my skin. What has been
done of _The Bridge_ is superb, according to what those few who have
seen it say. The rest I hope to finish up here or in the country. I
haven’t decided exactly where I am going to stay as yet.
I don’t want to do anything to hurt _anyone’s_ feelings, but I think
that unless I isolate myself somewhat (and pretty soon) from the
avalanche of bitterness and wailing that has flooded me ever since I was
seven years old, there won’t be enough left of me to even breathe, not
to mention writing. If I could really do anything to help the situation
it would be different. But it’s a personal problem, after all. I’m doing
my best--and I’m grateful to you for appreciating it. I’ll write you
more later.
I’ve wondered why I didn’t hear from you, but I discover that I’ve only
got about half my letters in Cuba; the Havana post office is in the
dirty habit of opening American mail to extract money, when it thinks
there is any currency inside. Maybe you didn’t get what I sent you.
_White Buildings_ will be out in Dec. I’m having Laukhuff send you a
copy.
265: TO WALDO FRANK
_Patterson_ _Nov. 21st_
Caro hermano: I am hoping that your country retreat is as pleasant to
you as mine is to me.... It seems marvelous to sleep again, buried under
the sound of an autumn wind--and to wake with the sense of the faculties
being on the mend. Now I can look back and enjoy “every moment” of the
summer Carib days,--so gracious is the memory in preserving most
carefully the record of our pleasures, _their_ real savor, _only_.
When are you coming back to town? Will you for a moment consider coming
out here for a week-end (or longer) sometime before you leave for
Europe? It would be pleasant and quiet, and the country is still
interesting if one doesn’t demand too much tropical splendor. We could
have the good deliberate talk that we couldn’t get in NY, of course.
Haven’t got my book yet, but expect it next week. Nor am I at work yet
on _The Bridge_ again.... But I’m not worried. I know too well what I
want to do now, even if it doesn’t spill over for months and months. It
must “spill,” you know. The little thing above I did yesterday.[53]
Write me when you have time. Aunt Sally sends you her best (sometimes
“love”!) in her every letter.
Williams’ _American Grain_ is an achievement that I’d be proud of. A
most important and _sincere_ book. I’m very enthusiastic--I put off
reading it, you know, until I felt my own way cleared beyond chance of
confusions incident to reading a book so intimate to my theme. I was so
interested to note that he puts Poe and his “character” in the same
position as I had _symbolized_ for him in “The Tunnel” section.
266: TO MRS. T. W. SIMPSON
_Patterson, N.Y._ _December 5th, 1926_
Dear Aunt Sally: From hurricane to Blizzards--all in six weeks! The
fates sure do give me immoderate changes. It’s “two below naught”
outside, as they say in Hicksville; snowdrifts on the hills and windows,
and my room isn’t so warm but what tickling the typewriter keys is a
stiff proposition. My nose got so cold last night it kept me awake,
besides I could hear the congealing water click into ice in the pitcher
on the washstand, ticking, ticking--every few moments. But my kerosene
stoves are doing better than last winter--better oil, and I think with
considerable economy I’ll be able to finish the winter here, if I’m not
called back to Cleveland.
Utter silence, by the way, from that quarter. It will make it a month
since I heard from mother, who evidently is displeased. It certainly is
too bad that she doesn’t write you; I guess she is in a pretty
disorganized state of mind.
I should have known when they said that my book would be out “in two
weeks” that it meant a month; but it’s promised for certain late this
week. I’ll be glad when it’s over--for though it, or rather the prospect
of its appearance doesn’t give me such a thrill after all, yet it does
keep me a little distracted. I’m sure I shall be better able to work on
the new stuff once this first book is really launched and off my mind.
Work is going very slowly on _The Bridge_, but I’m not worried.
Eventually it’s going to be done, and in the style that my conception of
it demands. Winters continues to write me most stimulating criticism;
his wide scholarship not only in English literature but in Latin, Greek,
French and Spanish and Portugese--gives his statements a gratifying
weight. I have heard nothing whatever from Waldo since I reached
Patterson (a month now), but he was going away to some country retreat
himself for awhile. Is very busy writing a play of some kind.
Got a letter from A---- (you remember the Havanese sailor?) yesterday.
The second since I got back. I have a great time translating his
Spanish--without a dictionary of any size. Once he got his niece to
write me a letter in (broken) English. One of the statements ran,
“Maximo Gomez, my ship--him sink in ciclon. All my clothes drowned.”
When I was going through Havana I asked another “Gomez” mariner if he
knew anything about the fate of A---- in the storm. I gathered from his
signs and contortions that A---- was badly laid up with a broken arm and
a smashed shoulder. But later learn that he escaped at least as whole as
the Adonis Crane referred to in your last letter. I’m still bent on
learning Spanish as soon as my fortune or inheritance permits. With
enough Spanish and enough reputation as a poet,--someday I might be
appointed to sell tires or toothpaste in Rio de Janeiro!
I was amused to hear about the drunken outbreak of the very red,
butter-faced hurricane friend of “ours”--who was looking for an Isle of
Pines retreat for his mother--among the ruins. Certain of the actors in
the melodramatic episode of wind, rain, lightnin’, plaster, shingles,
curses, desperation and sailors--never will leave my mind. Especially
our little one-step together the morning after, to the tune of
“Valencia”! And pillows wobbling on our heads!
I’m glad you have got under a good roof again. You’re such a good brick,
you ought to get dried before some of the rest. I hope you got my
letters, especially the one _containing_ the check. The other was
self-explanatory, of course, in case anything circumvented the
registered letter. I mailed it a day later on purpose. One has to be sly
with the Havana post office.
I’m eating like a horse, losing my becoming tan, and getting fat, I
fear. How I would like--at the present moment--to step into a grove of
royal palms, doff these woolens--and have a good glass of Cerveza with
you! The storm is increasing, howling loudly. It looks as though we were
to be snowed in for the rest of the winter. Really!--And I may be a good
time getting this letter to the PO if mail delivery is delayed, as usual
under such circumstances. Don’t work too hard! --/--/
267: TO ----
_Patterson, N.Y._ _Dec. 16 [1926]_
Dear ----: I’m laid up with tonsilitis--but must somehow thank you for
your pleasant N.Y. letter and wish you as amusing a New Year as
possible. As for myself--I don’t expect much.
Nothing but illness and mental disorder in my family--and I am expected
by all the middle-class ethics and dogmas to rush myself to Cleveland
and devote myself interminably to nursing, sympathizing with woes which
I have no sympathy for because they are all unnecessary, and bolstering
up the faith in others toward concepts which I long ago discarded as
crass and cheap.
Whether I can do it or not is the question. It means tortures and
immolations which are hard to conceive, impossible to describe. There
seems to be no place left in the world for love or the innocence of a
single spontaneous act. Write me here.
P.S.--have you read Norman Douglas’ _South Wind_? It almost makes one
jolly--
268: TO HIS MOTHER
_Patterson, N.Y._ _Dec. 22 ’26_
Dear Grace: -- -- -- -- Yes--it is a very melancholy Christmas for all of
us.... I am certainly anything but joyful.
Insomnia seems now to have settled on me permanently--and when I do
“sleep” my mind is plagued by an endless reel of pictures, startling and
unhappy--like some endless cinematograph.
Am making as much effort as possible to free my imagination and work the
little time that is now left me on my _Bridge_ poem. So much is expected
of me via that poem--that if I fail on it I shall become a laughing
stock and my career closed.
I take it that you would not wish this to happen. Yet it may be too
late, already, for me to complete the conception. My mind is about as
clear as dirty dishwater--and such a state of things is scarcely
conducive to successful creative endeavor. If it were like adding up
columns of figures--or more usual labors--it would be different....
Well, I’m trying my best--both to feel the proper sentiments to your
situation and keep on with my task. _The Bridge_ is an important
task--and nobody else can ever do it.
My _White Buildings_ is out. A beautiful book. Laukhuff has been
instructed to send you out a copy as soon as he receives his order.
--/--/
I’m glad you have taken up C[hristian] S[cience] again. You never should
have dropped it. But it seems to me you will have to make a real effort
this time--with no half-way measures. It isn’t anything you can play
with. It’s either true--or totally false. And for heaven’s sake--don’t
go to it merely as a _cure_. If it isn’t a complete philosophy of life
for you it isn’t anything at all. It is sheer hypocrisy to take it up
when you get scared and then forsake it as soon as you feel angry about
something. Anger is a costly luxury to you--and resentment and constant
self-pity. I have to fight these demons myself. I know they are
demons--they never do me anything but harm. Why look at yourself as a
martyr all the time! It simply drives people away from you. The only
real martyrs the world ever worships are those devoted exclusively to
the worship of God, poverty and suffering--you have, as yet, never been
in exactly that position. Not that I want you to be a martyr. I see no
reason for it--and am out of sympathy with anyone who thinks he is--for
the _real_ ones don’t think about themselves that way--they are too
happy in their faith to ever want to be otherwise. --/--/
1927
269: TO ALLEN TATE
_Patterson_ _Friday [ca. January 7_]
Dear Allen: I’m tremendously obliged to you for all this British
business.... I really hope it will go through. I’ve written Rickword
today immediately on receipt of your letter. I also wrote Liveright
yesterday, where to write and who; he forgets things said in
conversations very quickly sometimes. Let me know the cost of the cable
and I’ll send you a check at once.
The company that R. is lined up with [is] called Wishart & Co., address
same as _Calendar_, which is continuing, by the way, as a quarterly. A
new publisher just starting business in the Spring. You ought to send
them something. Garman has gone to Russia for a period, but Wishart is
bringing out a book of his poems. As for the preface--your foreword is
entirely good enough both here _and_ there. Besides, it would destroy
all the economic advantage in buying sheets from L. if they had much
extra printing to add over there. I therefore made no mention of the
idea in my letter. Hope to God, though, that Schneider had sent the copy
of _W[hite] B[uildings]_ to them that I put on my review list. As I
understood from you all review copies were sent out some time ago. A
detention of the book much longer is going to ruin all chance of sales
from Waldo’s article. Lord! is there anything else that can happen to
that book! How long _will_ it take them to put in those new title pages,
I wonder. All of my friends have got tired of asking for the book in
Cleveland and I expect there will be a record of less than the famous
Stevens-35 to my credit.
Your comments on Gorham’s shrine and gland-totemism convince me that
Orage talked as vaguely and arbitrarily in your presence as he did in
mine on a similar occasion. Some great boob ought to be hired as a kind
of heckler and suddenly burst out in one of those meetings held each
year to attract converts,--“Come on now, do your stuff--there’s millions
waiting!” Or some such democratic phrase.
As I seem to be going through an extremely distrustful mood in regard to
most of my own work lately, perhaps some of my present temper may unduly
limit my perspective in regard to your _Ode_.[54] I have a kind of
perpetual dull cold in the head, however, which may better account for
my reaction. But if you can bear to listen awhile to Aunt Harriet then
here goes....
The obscurities bother me. Stanza I, OK; and I get along very well until
I come to “ambitious” Novembers in II. Why this special epithet--this
particular designation for the whole season in relation to the
headstones, in fact? As it is stressed so much one chafes against the
stubborn dullness that blocks one’s apprehension of your precise
intention. The last 6 lines are particularly fine and The _last_--!
There is no doubt that you make the theme of the poem a living
continuity with the exception of the several places where, I admit, I
find it difficult to follow you. The theme of chivalry--a tradition of
excess (not literally excess, rather, active faith) which cannot be
perpetuated in the fragmentary cosmos of today--“those desires which
_should_ be yours tomorrow” but which, you know, will not persist nor
find way into action.... Your statement of this is beautiful, and the
poem is a POEM with splendidly controlled rhythms and eloquence. But
when you come to such lines as “From the orient of the sublime
economy/Remember the setting sun” I suddenly feel the thread cut.
_Sublime economy_ misses its aim with me, I suddenly seem to see a
little of Laforgue’s mannerism too wittily on the scene. What _is_ meant
here?
I fancy that you could go much better directly from Bull Run to “You
hear the shout,” etc. The next verse is superb. The last 7 lines are the
climax of the poem. The intensity of this “meditation” gives the lie, of
course, to all previous factual statements regarding the impermanency of
your grief.... But you are, of course, speaking throughout less from a
personal angle than a social viewpoint. Or are you? Both, of course. It
was fatuous to have raised this point....
Then you go back to speculation in the next stanza. You go _too_ far in
the succeeding, I think. And it, again, is rather obscure--exactly what
you mean. The capitalization of sentiment, I take it. A good dig at
certain people, but I think the sarcasm is over-bitter, marring the
beauty of the poem as a whole. The fierce resignation at the last is
beautiful, that irony _will_ sell, if you get what I mean.
Carolyn [Gordon] said you sent it to _The Nation_. I hope they have
sense enough to reward you; on the other hand, though, how can they take
such a chance with their average reader? Hang crepe on your door and
wait.... The sonnet makes me merry, though it’s the lovely last four
lines that I like best. They’re almost too good for the rest. The rest
is too complicated. I’d chop it apart and put the lovely windows in
another room. --/--/
Further readings may reveal to me the folly of some of my objections....
Take issue with me meanwhile wherever you feel justified.
270: TO EDGELL RICKWORD
_Patterson, New York_ _January 7th, 1927_
Dear Mr. Rickword: --/--/ I enclose three poems: “O Carib Isle,” “Cutty
Sark” and “The Harbor Dawn.” There is a general emphasis on the _marine_
in all of them, and if you should care to use them all I suggest that
the sequence in which I have named them above would chart an interesting
curve of the underlying element. I must risk a presumption on your
interest in the poems in order to emphasize the necessity of printing
“Cutty Sark” as closely as possible to the form as typed herewith,
especially in regard to the third page, which is a “cartogram,” if one
may so designate a special use of the calligramme. The “ships” should
meet and pass in line and type--as well as in wind and memory, if you
get my rather unique formal intentions in this phantom regatta seen from
Brooklyn Bridge.
Probably no one should be “thanked” for taking an interest in poetry,
but your kindness and interest in what little I’ve so far accomplished
are much appreciated. It is re-assuring to me--especially from the fact
that a couple of years ago I found so much in your Rimbaud volume which
was sympathetic and critically stimulating. -- -- -- --
271: TO HIS MOTHER
_Patterson, NY_ _Jan. 23, ’27_
Dear Grace: --/--/ I had heard nothing about the death of Frances
[Crane] until Grandmother’s letter reached me, last Friday, I think. CA
[Crane] did not trouble to answer the letter I wrote him in November,
and though I shall probably not hear from him, even now, until God knows
when--I wrote him a short note of condolence as soon as I heard.
I liked the pictures, especially the one with the hat, and the frame is
beautiful. I shall take them with me into NY when I get the job
(whatever it shall turn out to be) that I’m at present fishing for. I am
trying to get a line on something before going in, as I have scarcely
any money left, and I would like to avoid any charities from my friends
on this occasion if possible.
Meanwhile I am doing what writing I can, and studying Spanish.
I’m very much amused at what you say about the interest in my book among
relatives and friends out there in Cleveland. Wait until they see it,
and try to read it! I may be wrong, but I think they will eventually
express considerable consternation; for the poetry I write, as you have
noticed already, is farther from their grasp than the farthest planets.
But I don’t care how mad they get--_after_ they have bought the book!
--/--/
Yvor Winters, who is a professor of French and Spanish at the Moscow
University, Idaho, writes me the following: “Your book arrived this
evening, and I have read it through a couple of times. It will need many
more readings, but so far I am simply dumbfounded. Most of it is new to
me, and what I had seen is clarified by its setting. I withdraw all
minor objections I have ever made to your work--I have never read
anything greater and have read very little as great.” Etc. So you see
what kind of a review he is apt to write.
Waldo Frank ends his article in _The New Republic_ by saying: “At
present Hart Crane is engaged in a long poem that provides him with a
subject adequate for his method: the subject indeed which Mr. Tate
prophesies in his introduction. Yet already _White Buildings_ gives us
enough to justify the assertion, that not since Whitman has so original,
so profound and--above all, so important a poetic promise come to the
American scene.”
In a way it’s a pity that none of the Crane family are readers of
anything more important than such magazines as _The Saturday Evening
Post_ and _Success_. --/--/
The delay in the divorce proceedings may mean that Charles [Curtis] is
reconsidering--and it might be just as well all around if he did. I have
the idea that you both care for each other more than you thought you
did. Such thoughts are neither here nor there, however, and I’m in no
position to form judgments or advise. I’ve never been able to figure out
what the quarrel was “all about”--i.e., the issue involved. I think you
had probably better keep your mind off the subject as much as possible,
assuming the issue as closed. But you must get something to do as soon
as you are physically able.... I mean--that without some kind of
activity you’ll remain in a morbid condition--and your viewpoint will
become more warped all the time. People just have to have some kind of
activity to remain healthy-minded.
But you seem to [be] already much better; and I’m enormously glad. Don’t
think I don’t care for you,--I can’t help it, no matter how I feel about
some things. --/--/
272: TO WALDO FRANK
_Patterson, NY_ _January 28th_
Querido hermano Waldo: Just a little note to say hello. It’s sixteen
below and the sun brightly shining. I’m living in practically one
room--the kitchen--with the old lady these days--to keep warm. Writing a
little again on _The Bridge_ and studying Spanish.
Thank you so much for having _The Menorah_ [_Journal_] people send me
out your review of Spengler. It’s a magnificent rebuttal of the man’s
psychology. I don’t need to know your philosophical references well
enough to check up on them to feel that. I’ve sent the paper on to Tate
who was somewhat bowled over by Spengler--as wasn’t I?--thinking it will
prick him a bit.
_WB’s_ is getting--or is going to get--wonderful reviews. Not to mention
yours, there’s a great explosion coming from Yvor Winters in _The Dial_;
another from Mark Van Doren (of all the unexpected!) in _The Nation_
this week. Seligmann has written a sincere and just estimate in the
_Sun_; Josephson in the _Herald-Tribune_; MacLeish in _Poetry_; etc. I
don’t know any further, but there may be other surprises. I certainly
feel myself very fortunate, considering the type of stuff in _WB_.
--/--/ But I’ll be glad when all reviews and arrangements are over--so I
can put the book definitely behind me. Present preoccupations tend to
“exteriorize” one entirely too much. Winters has a lovely book of poems
coming out this spring, by the way,--and Ford Madox Ford has recommended
Allen’s poems highly to Duckworth, his London publishers. I hope they
take it; Allen needs some encouragement very much.
Remember me in your mugs--though I guess you never get in far enough to
become as sentimental as I do. Mrs. Simpson isn’t very well, has
overworked since the hurricane. Will you drop her a postcard from some
hofbrau? It would tickle her to death. I’ve an amusing story to tell you
sometime about one instance of the “mysticism of money”--it refers to
Kahn and the “gift.” It seems I have to pay $60 odd the rest of my
mortal term on life insurance to the Kahn estate, which, of course I was
dumb bell enough not to understand when he proposed it. Not that I
especially mind nor that I’m at all embittered, but I think I have
discovered a new way to avoid income taxes and become heroic--both at
once, if you get what I mean. -- -- -- --
273: TO ---- AND ----
_Patterson,_ _Feb. 16th_
Dear ---- and ----: I left town last Sunday--so there was no time to see
you again--and (already) scarce enough cash left to tip the conductor.
The last two nights in town were mainly spent on the Hoboken waterfront,
where you want to go (though it’s for men only) if you want the good old
beer, the old free-lunch counter and everything thrown in--for 15¢ a
glass. Whiskey and gin are also much superior to the other side of the
River and cheaper. Take the Christopher St. ferry. Walk up _past_ Front
St. There are three in a row. Begin with McKelly’s--or some such name.
The last night went flying back to Brooklyn with a wild Irish red-headed
sailor of the Coast Guard, who introduced me to a lot of coffee dens and
cousys on Sand Street, and then took me to some kind of opium den way
off, God knows where. Whereat I got angry and left him, or rather Mike
Drayton did. Returning here to the home roost I found six cards from
J---- the Incomparable with much more than the usual brief greetings, so
Caramba!
Mrs. Turner was laid up all day Monday from an excess of oatmeal eaten
at breakfast in celebration of my return. Went up to Tory Hill yesterday
and found everything just as I left it. Encountered Mrs. Powitzki at the
Jennings and think she is marvelous. Did you ever talk to her? I never
heard such locutions. I should love to tickle her. Since which I’ve been
reading the Cock also Rises (sent me by a Cleveland friend) and have
developed a perfect case of acidosis. No wonder the book sold; there
isn’t a sentence without a highball or a martini in it to satisfy all
the suppressed desires of the public. It’s a brilliant and a terrible
book. The fiesta and bullfight best. No warmth, no charm in it whatever,
but of course Hemingway doesn’t want such.
274: TO ISIDOR SCHNEIDER
_Patterson, NY_ _Feb 19th, ’27_
Dear Isidor: I like your _Anthony_ very much. The theme is as basic as
the best of Anderson, by which I don’t mean that it’s derivative in any
sense whatever,--only that Anderson has thrusts toward a similar hygiene
of the local soul, though never with such control and comprehensiveness.
Forgive me too, for bringing in Jeffers, whom it seems to me you’ve got
beat on a number of counts. He has poignance, but little of the
sustained intensity and still less of the metrical ingenuity that I
marvel at--the way you interweave action and emotion with precepts and
generalities, and manage to make what is, after all, a simple plot,--a
glowing canvas alive with irony and illumination.
The rugged-smooth drive of your lines is quite novel. I venture to say
that your previous struggles with prose in _Dr. Transit_ have helped you
here, for many of the best passages have all the weight and definition
of fine prose with the additional sharp, leaping movement of the
liveliest hexameters in Chapman’s _Homer_.
Here and there I think you are too didactic. Your “saint” is sometimes a
little _too_ consistent--though this latter reaction is so personal
merely to me, probably, that it’s valueless as comment. The beautifully
measured opening lines create a fine abstraction of time and space: out
of the clouds the sudden and dramatic introduction of the theme, the
earthly conflict. Will you forgive me for echoing something you recently
wrote me? I think this beats any and all of what previous verse of yours
I’ve seen. I suppose that it’s a case--with all of us--of having to find
the right theme. Much of your earlier poetry (and please don’t
unconsciously include _Doc Transit_ here) seemed diffuse to me, and
sometimes obscure. This long poem has the amplitude and self-contained
movement that I can’t seem to find in any recent narrative poetry. I
wish I had the facility for mingling fact and inference so neatly--into
so organic a rhythm. I’m so hugged and restricted by a single-track,
iambic metronometer these days!
Somebody sent me Hemingway’s _Sun Also Rises_ to read. It certainly does
what he evidently intends it doing--I’ve had a case of acidosis just
reading the list of drinks that clutter every page. He certainly knows
what dry-throated Americans want; no wonder the book sells. To me it
seems brilliant enough (the fiesta and the bullfight are splendid) but
horribly cold. A novel to read if you want a slant at one aspect of the
age, but without any of the engraciating qualities that makes _Ulysses_,
even that bitter book, a thing to keep and enjoy many times.
I’m still on the watch for a job, so let me know if you hear of
anything. -- -- -- --
275: TO ALLEN TATE
_Patterson_ _Thursday Feb 24_
Dear Allen: I wish I could keep up with Winters. I already owe him
several letters, besides comment on the ms. of his “Fire Sequence,”
which awaited me when I returned from town. All his work is so genuine
that it takes close attention, meditation and blood and bone to
answer.... At present it’s too much for me, so I’ve sent the manifesto
on with a brief note to the effect that I agree with most of your
marginalia, i.e., where I differ with him. Though I go further than you
do in qualification of the Loeb-physics-etc. recipe.... Pure hocus-pocus
for the poet. Just one out [of] a five-thousand other scientific
similes, equally good to go by (regardless of their veracity)--and I
venture to say that Winters’ work suffers already from such arbitrary
torturings--all for the sake of a neat little point of reference. What
good will it do him to go on repeating in the background of every poem,
that “life is some slight disturbance of the balance,” etc., etc?! But
we all must have some kind of incantation, I suppose. Though I’d rather
adopt some of Blake’s aphorisms. They’re abstract enough. And a lot
truer than the latest combination of scientific terms.
Glad you liked the Joyce lyrics. I make the following choice from my own
work. If they seem to fit your requirements let me know, and I’ll send
you copies:
“Passage”
“The Springs of Guilty Song” (F & H, II)
“Voyages (V)”
“Powhatan’s Daughter: The Dance”
“To Emily Dickinson”
“Repose of Rivers”
“The Dance” has been expanded to 104 lines, and is now the best thing
I’ve done. I shall send it soon to you--regardless of the Anthology, as
I want you to see and adjudge it. I’ve had to submit it to Marianne
Moore recently, as my only present hope of a little cash. But she
probably will object to the word “breasts,” or some other such detail.
It’s really ghastly. I wonder how much longer our market will be in the
grip of two such hysterical virgins as _The Dial_ and _Poetry_!
We have been without mail service all week. They may get the roads
cleared out before Easter, I don’t know. To have the sun again and a
little warmth again! My present quandaries, that extend to every detail
of my life, personal and artistic, have brought me near lunacy. I
couldn’t go on much longer on such a strain as the last year. Can you
send me a few stamps? About a dozen--to last until Andy [the mail
carrier] gets back on the road.
276: TO ALLEN TATE
_Patterson_ _March 10th_
Dear Allen: I abducted a copy of your _Sewanee Review_ essay from the
envelope before sending it on; I hope you don’t mind. As you had already
promised me one I thought it would save you the trouble of mailing it
back. Winters is sure to be interested, and I’m glad you’re sending him
one.
I’m too addled these days to have any ideas. And I may have a better
perspective later--on Ransom. Just now, though, he doesn’t impress me
very much, at least this last book. But I haven’t read nearly so much of
him as you have. He, oddly, partakes somewhat of both Hardy and Wallace
Stevens. Not that he imitates ... but that in my “reading” he seems to
share certain aspects of both. And though I grant him a distinct
personality I can’t feel that either his technique or his attitude come
half way up to the importance of either of them. He exploits his
“manners” a great deal. But his viewpoints don’t seem to me very
profound, nor does he possess any overwhelming graces. He never has
succeeded--and probably never will--in writing anything that compares
with your “Idiot” in respect to these qualities. He can satirize well at
times, very well.
Hardy is a marvel in skill. If it weren’t for my indifference to his
never-absent “message” I think I’d regard him as next to Shakespeare in
sheer dexterity. I’ve been reading him rather thoroughly lately,
instigated by Winters’ frequent mention of him, I suppose.
Hope Torrence treats us well.... I haven’t heard anything yet. Nor from
Marianne. What strange people these -- -- -- --- are. Always in a flutter
for fear bowels will be mentioned, forever carrying on a tradition that
both Poe and Whitman spent half their lives railing against--and calling
themselves “liberals.” --/--/
277: TO ALLEN TATE
_Patterson_ _14th March ’27_
Dear Allen: Miss -- -- -- -- won’t even take tea, you know, because she
finds it too “stimulating.” I’ve been to her house, so I know. AND so,
what can we expect! I got my verses [“Van Winkle” and “The Harbor Dawn”]
back also. They seemed to be too spacious for _The New Republic_....
Your letter was of course a piece of folly, but justified. It won’t do
Miss T. any good, but it’s an admirable relief to me, and probably to
you. I envy buckandwing dancers and the Al Jolsons of the world
sometimes. They don’t have to encounter all these milksops ... and they
do _please_. They’re able to do some “good” to somebody and when they
laugh people don’t think they are crying. Out here one reads the
paper--one sees evidence mounting all the time--that there is no place
left for _our_ kinds of minds or emotions. Unless we can pursue our
futilities with some sort of constant pleasure there is little use in
going on--and we must apprehend some element of truth in our mock
ceremonies or even our follies aren’t amusing. I’m looking around for
some new sort of “avocation,” but having gone half-blind with
conjunctivitis (better known as “pink-eye”) I [am] waiting for the
cornea to clear before taking any leap.
Phallus-es have been known to slyly leap out of some of Mr. Gilmore’s
poems published in _The Little Review_, so -- -- -- -- had better watch
out. But she probably doesn’t know one when she does encounter it! His
poems, about as long as a cicada’s whir, might make an amusing booklet.
His plays are even briefer, I’m told.
Thanks for the _NR_ copies. Miss T. had informed me of the matter,
saying “you must look out for it” (sic), so that I felt I might be
standing in the middle of Seventh Avenue with a huge truck bearing down
suddenly. Having bothered you so much lately I tho[ugh]t I’d worry Bill
[Brown] for awhile, so I asked him to send me copies. I’ll certainly
have plentEE now! I note that the one quotable paragraph (from the
publisher’s standpoint) has been lopped off: the last, with the allusion
to Whitman. The rest will be a sufficient warning to most readers not to
read the book, for it’s one long dissertation on the subject of
OBSCURITY.
The genial tactics of the editorial proofreader have even helped Frank
on a little by falsifying his ms.--at least the copy I hold. For
instance, “the obscure poet he is likely _for long_ to remain” has been
changed to read “_ever_ to remain.” This not only alters the time-limit
before my possible admission to the panting bosom of the generous
reader, but changes the emphasis of the context in such a way that the
reader infers the reviewer’s prophecy to be that I shall probably
_never_ write anything that is comprehensible! With the world all flying
into trillions of tabloids I probably shall not!
Your review of Laura [Riding] was just according to my estimates. If I’m
as obscure to others as she is to me--then I won’t even rail any more at
Miss T----.
GOLDEN TEXT:
Wondrous the gods, more wondrous are the men,
More wondrous, wondrous still, the cock and hen!--BLAKE
278: TO HIS MOTHER
_Patterson, NY_ _19th March 1927_
Dear Grace: My eyes are so much better today that I’m able to type a
little without straining. I had to order a pair of glasses--and that
seems to have done more good than medicine. I lost my old pair down on
the Island, but really have not worn them for more than a few days at a
time for years. Nervous crises always affect my eyes, however, and it
may be that this present case of conjunctivitis was caused as much by
that as by wind and sunglare on snow. At any rate there’s no snow left
around here now, and the air is as balmy as you could wish. I do hope
that the season has definitely arrived--and no more snow! My spirits
react entirely too much to the endless gloomy days we’ve had for so
long.
--/--/ I am so glad that you enjoyed the Columbus part. It is coming out
next September in _The American Caravan_, a yearbook of American
letters, just started by Paul Rosenfeld, Alfred Kreymborg and Van Wyck
Brooks, and published by the Macauley Co. When I was last in NY the
owners of the Macauley Co. gave a large party to all the contributors up
in a huge but unbelievably vulgarly furnished and expensive apartment on
West End Avenue. There seemed to be everybody there I’d ever heard of.
Enormous quantities of wine, cocktails and highballs were served. I had
just landed in town after three months with the bossy cows--and I had my
share. It would take me ages to tell all the amusing things that happen
at such parties. But to come back to the poem: Rosenfeld was so excited
about it that he called me up long distance and urged me to let them
have it. I had thought to have to deny it to them on account of some
complications on the copyright, conflicting possibly with my terms with
Liveright (he has first option on my next two books), but after some
concessions were made I was glad to have them take it.
_The Dial_ has just informed me today that they have taken the main
section of Part II, “Powhatan’s Daughter.” This is an Indian
“Dance”--and will run about 4 _Dial_ pages. I’ll be glad to have the
cash to pay my arrears with Mrs. Turner and the doctor.... I have for
some strange reason, heard nothing yet from London regarding the
projected British edition of _White Buildings_. What you say about the
reactions to it on Cornell Road are both amusing and touching. And when
I read about Mrs. Jackson taking a copy to read to the Garrettsville
Federated Women’s Clubs I rocked with laughter! The poor dears will
never, NEVER know what in hell to make of it all! --/--/
I took enough veronal powders on the Island during those mad last days
to convince me that there’s nothing worse. And they didn’t even give me
sound sleep! The feelings next day were weird in the extreme. I hope
that CA won’t keep them up very long. His attitude and emotions toward
life would probably make one gasp if one could get a cross section of
them. For a long time he has seemed to me as thorough a specimen of
abnormality as I have ever heard of. I’ve given up even trying to
imagine how he sees or thinks. I probably shall continue to not write
him until he answers some of my former letters--or gives me some sign
that he wants to hear from me. I sent him a copy of the recent _New
Republic_, but without any note or comment. He probably likes to build
up the picture that he’s creeping around in utter disgrace on account of
the public “disgrace” his son has made of himself. Well, the thirty
thousand people that read _The New Republic_ probably wouldn’t give him
much sympathy--regardless of their estimate of my particular value.
That was a happy thought--sending me the picture of the Kinsman house.
It is particularly beautiful. -- -- -- -- Every once in awhile I have a
dream with Warren scenes in it. Hall Kirkham, Donald Clarke, Katherine
Miller, Leonard Bullus, Mrs. P---- with her great heart-shaped
bosom--and Mrs. G---- gasping with her goitre--what has become of them
all? I wonder. I once wrote a poem with Mrs. P---- as the subject--but
it didn’t turn out to be much of anything but a sentimentality, and I
guess I threw it away. You are right; I should write some prose. But to
date I’ve never been able to think of things with plots to them. Somehow
just can’t. When I do, there won’t be any particular difficulty in
expressing myself. We’ll see what happens when I get through with this
long _Bridge_ poem. Right now I’m too occupied with _it_ to think of
other themes. --/--/
The enclosed letter may interest you. I am also enclosing the poem
referred to--“O Carib Isle!”--which is one of three of mine which Jolas
has translated into French to appear in a French anthology of American
poems coming out this Fall. “O Carib Isle!” was written one hellish hot
day on the Island--but the _scene_ of the poem and its inspiration was
_Cayman_! It is coming out soon in _Poetry_ in this country. It’s not a
bad poem. I’m crazy about those Caribbean waters and skies--even if they
_are_ hot! There’s a lot of the feeling they give you in the Columbus
poem--don’t you think? _Please return the letter._
279: TO ALLEN TATE
_Patterson_ _March 21, 1927_
Dear Allen: --/--/ The B---- casques are 150 gallons full of successful
and highly combustible nectar.--I celebrated to the full--returning to
my boudoir late Saturday night--and knocking Senora Turner down besides
hurling my Corona from the window in a high dudgeon because it wouldn’t
write to President Calles automatically in Spanish and express my
“untold” admiration for his platform. Bill has taken it to the hospital
for long and I fear expensive treatment. --/--/
280: TO ALLEN TATE
_Patterson_ _March 26_
Dear Allen: I hope my letter of yesterday hasn’t involved you in any
great efforts so far! Written (and suddenly conceived) in the mood of
waiting for the post--it reflected a too sudden flare of enthusiasm.
There probably is no chance left to write Roebling’s life--but I would
like the initials of the _right_ Furman to address at Macauley’s--and
sometime when you are up at the Library you might look in the file index
and see if any life of Roebling has yet been written. The man was a
genius--and his accomplishment stupendous at “that time.” There might be
only slight public interest in his work. Nevertheless, he was a true
Spenglerian hero--and his efforts brought tremendous wealth to his
family. _They_ might be interested--anyway tho they’d probably want some
engineer friend of the family to do it. My “ideas” always have some
unlikely catch to them! --/--/
281: TO ALLEN TATE
[_Patterson_] _Sunday, March 27_
Dear Allen: --/--/ As to the _briefer_,[55] I think that you give good
reasons for assuming that Aiken wrote it. It might be more satisfying to
ascertain this more definitely--but I do not feel that beyond that there
is any particular justification for attacking him. He has a perfect
right to claim that many of the poems are specious, and call them
intellectual fakes, etc. He may quite well believe that he is right on
the score. For years, remember, perfectly honest people have seen
nothing but insanity in such things as [Blake’s] “The Tiger”--The only
pity is what can be done about it. You have Aiken’s sentimentality
beautifully defined. Personally the man is rather likeable, but I think
he is full of poison. Let people like Hemingway have every convert they
want. When he writes something vulnerable and signs it--we can
backfire--and publicly--and that’s the only worthwhile way to spend--“we
have so little breath to lose.” Thanks for the Davidson review. I
certainly appreciate its tone of honesty and sincerity. A copy of
_transition_ #1 has reached me--and I’m enthusiastic about it. By all
means send Jolas some poems--and why not your article on Marianne Moore?
It doesn’t spoil re-sale of ms. over here, you know. _transition_ has
some weak contribs, of course, but the majority is respectable. Joyce,
Gertrude Stein, Williams, Winters, Laura [Riding], Larbaud, Gide,
MacLeish, Soupault, etc. It’s a wedge that ought to be used. Malcolm
[Cowley] also ought to send things--and it seems to have a proof-reader!
Aunt Harriet [Monroe] has taken “Cutty Sark”--of all things--and I feel
more cheerful. Have you sent her anything recently? Now seems to be the
time. --/--/
282: TO ALLEN TATE
_Patterson_ _March 30_,
Dear Allen: Thanks for the _Times_ review. I am looking for _Poetry_
review today--and by the way, Carolyn [Gordon] forgot to enclose the
Fletcher letter to _The New Rep._ I’m anxious to know what it was about.
It’s damned interesting to notice how evident it is that your Foreword
set the key--at least to a large extent--for most of Gorman’s comments
on all six poets reviewed. I consider his comments on _W.B._ quite
unexpectedly favorable. What they would have been without your preface
is hard to imagine.... I see we have come to the same conclusions about
the Aiken debate--and shall leave him in his achin’ void! I enclose a
remarkable little surprise from the _London Times_ [Feb. 24, 1927].
Altogether it’s the most satisfying newspaper mention we have had. One
wonders who wrote the notice. As for space--they seldom give more to
foreign _editions_. Please don’t lose this, as I may want it for
quotations--Liveright, I mean.
Altogether, I think this is the last time in our lives to be badly
discouraged. The ice is breaking--for both of us, as near as I can
see--in several different quarters--and I’m beginning to detect many
salutary signals. Apparently our ideas and idiom evokes some
response--however slow. And what we do win in the way of intellectual
territory is _solid_--it can’t be knocked over by every wave that comes
along--as could Masters, Bodenheim, Lindsay, etc. We wouldn’t believe
the developments of the next five years if they could be detailed now!
I’m _so_ unhappy without a machine [typewriter]. Hope I get my new one
soon. Let us know as much beforehand as possible if (and when) you
intend coming. We’re down to the last crust in the pantry--and no
conveyance in sight to get any marketing done. --/--/
283: TO HIS FATHER
_Patterson, NY_ _May 7th, 1927_
Dear Father: Your good letter of the third came yesterday, and I have
been thinking over your kindness in offering me so pleasant a domicile
in the Ohio hills as the tavern plan would seem to present. There is one
big bugbear, in my case a permanent one, which you probably didn’t think
of; and this in addition to a rather temporary but nevertheless
important consideration makes me feel that it would be inadvisable to
adopt the role of Ohio innkeeper, especially now.
I am referring to such divers matters as hay fever and “bridges.” I’m
sure I’ve mentioned more than once that this particular valley out
here--for God knows what reason--does, however, as a proven fact
furnish me almost complete immunity from that nightmare affliction. It
has so happened that for a number of years you haven’t seen me under the
benign influence of Ohioan pollens during the months of June, July,
Sept. & October,--so you probably don’t so sharply recollect what a
miserable looking critter I become during those twelve or so weeks every
year. Cleveland is severe enough, but what those months would mean out
in the hayfields--I dread to contemplate. And, wouldn’t those be the
most active months of all the year for a hostelry? I’m sure you will see
my point and realize as well that I wouldn’t be much good to you,
either, at such periods. I used to be asked to remain away from the
office--often for several days--during my hayfever period with Corday &
Gross. The fact is that I’m unusually susceptible. The altitude and
extreme woodedness of these parts are probably what make the difference
here.
The other drawback is the urgency of getting my _Bridge_ poem completed
by next fall. It will take all the concentration I can give it to
accomplish this. And if I came out behind-hand on it I would disappoint
Boni & Liveright, my publisher, very much: he wants it to appear by next
spring. So you see how things stand.... It would be folly for me to add
complications, however fine it would be to live in such a lovely place
as you describe and be with you. Get the farm though, I think it’s a
fine idea, and you will get a great deal of pleasure and relaxation out
of it. One doesn’t lose money often on that kind of real estate, and as
for someone good to run it--the range of your acquaintance will probably
suggest a number of capable people. --/--/
--/--/ I looked for the May check in today’s letter. Hope you won’t
forget it before plunging into the Canadian wilds as I have obligated
myself somewhat for oil and other supplies on the pleasant prospect of
being solvent. The Tates are definitely decided against coming out here
this summer, so that makes it possible for you to comfortably visit me
here whenever you feel like it. I wish you would consider it and come!
284: TO HIS MOTHER
_Patterson_ _May 27th, 1927_
Dear Grace: We’ve had four days of continued downpour with such
disastrous effects on my garden, newly planted, that I guess I’ll have
to put new seeds in. There are several brooks and lakes floating around
over the bean and corn rows, and I can almost swear there’s a geyser or
so! --/--/
I’m in a considerable stew about money myself. CA’s fine promises have
already shown their vacancy. The worst was--that on the strength of his
word (I certainly thought he wouldn’t fail the very first month!) I went
ahead and put in a wholesale supply of a number of commodities necessary
here, and have been worrying ever since how I was going to pay for them.
Meanwhile he has kept me so busy writing him successive excuses first
for not going with him here, or managing some new tavern of his there,
or what-not--ever since, that I’ve had no time to settle down to work or
anything! DAMN it all!
This next month _must_ see something accomplished on _The Bridge_ or I
shall be completely discouraged. I have done nothing but insignificant
parts since last July, no _major_ work has been done since then. And I
must have it ready to hand over to my publisher this fall. I’ve got to
clear my head of a lot of things, pleasant and unpleasant, and dig.
I don’t know what to tell you about your leg or work or anything. For so
much depends on your alimony. If there were something you could work at
for awhile, like library work, where you would not have to remain
standing for long I should recommend it. But you said you didn’t care
for that. I want you to come here and visit me later on in the summer
when it gets hot and when there are some nice green things to be had
from the garden. Meanwhile, can’t you make ends meet? While you are here
your expenses won’t amount to more than ten dollars a week. Please
understand me right; you are certainly welcome here at any time. I have
the whole house to myself and shall continue to have it--there is a
bedroom for you, etc. And the country around here is simply gorgeous. I
never saw such profusion of wildflowers. And it is cool here at night
throughout the whole year. The best thing in the world for you would be
to spend long days of comparative solitude here--away from all the
hubbub of life in the city, and in a totally new environment. I think
that your nervous feelings are mainly responsible for your swelled
leg--disordered nerves generate all kinds of poisons--and you must plan
to come here awhile at least some time during the summer. --/--/
If this letter sounds kinda crabby please don’t mind. I’m feeling in
fine shape--all too well--but you can’t blame me for having a conscience
and getting a little upset at times at the slow progress my work seems
to be making! And if I don’t always answer as promptly as you like,
you’ll realize, I know, that a letter generally means losing a whole
day’s work--I don’t care how slight it is, or to whom, it demands a
completely different adjustment and takes one completely out of one’s
creative subject matter. --/--/
285: TO YVOR WINTERS
_Patterson, New York_ _May 29th, 1927_
Dear Winters: You need a good drubbing for all your recent easy talk
about “the complete man,” the poet and his ethical place in society,
etc. I’m afraid I lack the time right now to attempt what I might call a
relatively complete excuse for committing myself to the above
sentiments--and I am also encumbered by a good deal of sympathy with
your viewpoint in general. Wilson’s article was just half-baked enough
to make one warm around the collar. It is so damned easy for such as he,
born into easy means, graduated from a fashionable university into a
critical chair overlooking Washington Square, etc., to sit tight and
hatch little squibs of advice to poets not to be so “professional” as he
claims they are, as though all the names he has just mentioned had been
as suavely nourished as he--as though 4 out of 5 of them hadn’t been
damned well forced the major part of their lives to grub at _any_ kind
of work they could manage by hook or crook and the fear of hell to
secure! Yes, why not step into the State Dept. and join the diplomatic
corps for a change! indeed, or some other courtly occupation which would
bring you into wide and active contact with world affairs! As a matter
of fact I’m all too ready to concede that there are several other
careers more engaging to follow than that of poetry. But the
circumstances of one’s birth, the conduct of one’s parents, the current
economic structure of society and a thousand other local factors have as
much or more to say about successions to such occupations, the naive
volitions of the poet to the contrary. I agree with you, of course, that
the poet should in as large a measure as possible adjust himself to
society. But the question always will remain as to how far the
conscience is justified in compromising with the age’s demands.
The image of “the complete man” is a good idealistic antidote for the
hysteria for specialization that inhabits the modern world. And I
strongly second your wish for some definite ethical order. Munson,
however, and a number of my other friends, not so long ago, being
stricken with the same urge, and feeling that something must be done
about it--rushed into the portals of the famous Gurdjieff Institute and
have since put themselves through all sorts of Hindu antics, songs,
dances, incantations, psychic sessions, etc., so that now, presumably
the left lobes of their brains and their right lobes respectively
function (M’s favorite word) in perfect unison. I spent hours at the
typewriter trying to explain to certain of these urgent people why I
could not enthuse about their methods; it was all to no avail, as I was
told that the “complete man” had a different logic than mine, and
further that there was no way of gaining or understanding this logic
without first submitting yourself to the necessary training. I was
finally left to roll in the gutter of my ancient predispositions, and
suffered to receive a good deal of unnecessary pity for my obstinacy.
Some of them, having found a good substitute for their former interest
in writing by means of more complete formulas of expression have ceased
writing altogether, which is probably just as well. At any rate they
have become hermetically sealed souls to my eyesight, and I am really
not able to offer judgment.
I am not identifying your advice in any particular way with theirs, for
you are certainly logical, so much so that I am inclined to doubt the
success of your program even with yourself. Neither do you propose such
paradoxical inducements as tea-dansants on Mt. Everest! I am only
begging the question, after all, and asking you not to judge me too
summarily by the shorthand statements that one has to use as the
makeshift for the necessary chapters required for more explicit and
final explanations. I am suspect, I fear, for equivocating. But I cannot
flatter myself into quite as definite recipes for efficiency as you seem
to, one reason being, I suppose, that I’m not so ardent an aspirant
toward the rather classical characteristics that you cite as desirable.
This is not to say that I don’t “envy” the man who attains them, but
rather that I have long since abandoned _that_ field--and I doubt if I
was born to achieve (with the particular vision) those richer syntheses
of consciousness which we both agree in classing as supreme, at least
the attitude of a Shakespeare or a Chaucer is not mine by organic
rights, and why try to fool myself that I possess that type of vision
when I obviously do not!
I have a certain code of ethics. I have not as yet attempted to reduce
it to any exact formula, and if I did I should probably embark on an
endless tome with monthly additions and digressions every year. It seems
obvious that a certain decent carriage and action is a paramount
requirement in any poet, deacon or carpenter. And though I reserve
myself the pleasant right to define these standards in a somewhat
individual way, and to shout and complain when circumstances against me
seem to warrant it, on the other hand I believe myself to be speaking
honestly when I say that I have never been able to regret--for
long--whatever has happened to me, more especially those decisions which
at times have been permitted a free will. (Don’t blame me entirely for
bringing down all this simplicity on your head--your letter almost
solicits it!) And I am as completely out of sympathy with the familiar
whimpering caricature of the artist and his “divine rights” as you seem
to be. I am not a Stoic, though I think I could lean more in that
direction if I came to (as I may sometime) appreciate more highly the
imaginative profits of such a course.
You put me in altogether too good company, you compliment me much too
highly for me to offer the least resistance to your judgments on the
structure of my work. I think I am quite unworthy of such associates as
Marlowe or Valéry--except in some degree, perhaps, “by kind.” If I can
avoid the pearly gates long enough I may do better. Your fumigation of
the Leonardo legend is a healthy enough reaction, but I don’t think your
reasons for doubting his intelligence and scope very potent. I’ve never
closely studied the man’s attainments or biography, but your argument is
certainly weakly enough sustained on the sole prop of his sex--or lack
of such. One doesn’t have to turn to homosexuals to find instances of
missing sensibilities. Of course I’m sick of all this talk about b--s
and c--s in criticism. It’s obvious that b--s are needed, and that
Leonardo had ‘em--at least the records of the Florentine prisons, I’m
told, say so. You don’t seem to realize that the whole topic is
something of a myth anyway, and is consequently modified in the
characteristics of the image by each age in each civilization. Tom
Jones, a character for whom I have the utmost affection, represented the
model in 18th Century England, at least so far as the stated
requirements in your letter would suggest, and for an Anglo-Saxon model
he is still pretty good aside from calculus, the Darwinian theory, and a
few other mental additions. Incidentally I think Tom Jones (Fielding
himself, of course) represents a much more “balanced” attitude toward
society and life in general than our friend, Thomas Hardy. Hardy’s
profundity is real, but it is voiced in pretty much one monotonous key.
I think him perhaps the greatest technician in English verse since
Shakespeare. He’s a great poet and a mighty man. But you must be fanatic
to feel that he fulfills the necessary “balanced ration” for modern
consumption. Not one of his characters is for one moment allowed to
express a single joyous passion without a forenote of Hardian doom
entering the immediate description. Could Hardy create anything like
Falstaff? I think that Yeats would be just as likely--more so.
That’s what I’m getting at.... I don’t care to be credited with too
wholesale ambitions, for as I said, I realize my limitations, and have
already partially furled my flag. The structural weaknesses which you
find in my work are probably quite real, for I could not ask for a more
meticulous and sensitive reader. It is my hope, of course, not only to
improve my statement but to extend scope and viewpoint as much as
possible. But I cannot trust to so methodical and predetermined a method
of development, not by any means, as you recommend. Nor can I willingly
permit you to preserve the assumption that I am seeking any “shortcuts
across the circle,” nor wilfully excluding any experience that seems to
me significant. You seem to think that experience is some
commodity--that can be sought! One can respond only to certain
circumstances; just what the barriers are, and where the boundaries
cross can never be completely known. And the surest way to frustrate the
possibility of any free realization is, it seems to me, to wilfully
direct it. I can’t help it if you think me aimless and irresponsible.
But try and see if you get such logical answers always from Nature as
you seem to think you will! My “alert blindness” was a stupid ambiguity
to use in any definition--but it seems to me you go in for just about as
much “blind alertness” with some of your expectations.
If you knew how little of a metaphysician I am in the scholastic sense
of the term, you would scarcely attribute such a conscious method to my
poems (with regard to that element) as you do. I am an utter ignoramus
in that whole subject, have never read Kant, Descartes or other doctors.
It’s all an accident so far as my style goes. It happens that the first
poem I ever wrote was too dense to be understood, and I now find that I
can trust most critics to tell me that all my subsequent efforts have
been equally futile. Having heard that one writes in a metaphysical vein
the usual critic will immediately close his eyes or stare with utter
complacency at the page--assuming that black is black no more and that
the poet means anything but what he says. It’s as plain as day that I’m
talking about war and aeroplanes in the passage from “F & H”
(“corymbulous formations of mechanics,” etc.) quoted by Wilson in _The
New Republic_, yet by isolating these lines from the context and
combining them suddenly with lines from a totally different poem he has
the chance (and uses it) to make me sound like a perfect ninny. If I’d
said that they were Fokker planes then maybe the critic would have had
to notice the vitality of the metaphor and its pertinence. All this
ranting seems somehow necessary.... If I am metaphysical I’m content to
continue so. Since I have been “located” in this category by a number of
people, I may as well go on alluding to certain (what are also called)
metaphysical passages in Donne, Blake, Vaughan, etc., as being of
particular appeal to me on a basis of common characteristics with what I
like to do in my own poems, however little scientific knowledge of the
subject I may have.
I write damned little because I am interested in recording certain
sensations, very rigidly chosen, with an eye for what according to my
taste and sum of prejudices seems suitable to--or intense enough--for
verse. If I were writing in prose, as I sometime shall probably do, I
should probably include a much thicker slice of myself--and though it is
the height of conceit for me to suggest it, I venture to say that you
may have received a somewhat limited idea of my interests and responses
by judging me from my poems alone. I suppose that in regard to this
limitation of poetic focus one should consult the current position of
poetry in relation to other intellectual and political characteristics
of the time, including a host of psychological factors which may or may
not promote the fullest flowering of a particular medium such as verse.
I am not apologizing. Nor am I trying to penetrate beyond a certain
point into such labyrinths of conjecture and analysis. It seems
unprofitable. One should be somewhat satisfied if one’s work comes to
approximate a true record of such moments of “illumination” as are
occasionally possible. A sharpening of reality accessible to the poet,
to no such degree possible through other mediums. That is one reason
above all others--why I shall never expect (or indeed desire) _complete_
sympathy from any writer of such originality as yourself. I may have
neglected to say that I admire your general attitude, including your
distrust of metaphysical or other patent methods. Watch out, though,
that you don’t strangulate yourself with some countermethod of your own!
286: TO HIS FATHER
_Patterson, New York_ _June 9th, 1927_
Dear Father: Your good letter with check came yesterday. I’m certainly
relieved to know that I can now meet my obligations and continue _The
Bridge_ with a free mind and imagination. You certainly have my
enthusiastic gratitude for your loyalty and the general attitude you
have toward my work. I venture to predict that you will not be
disappointed in the final results. --/--/
287: TO MRS. T. W. SIMPSON
_Patterson, N.Y._ _July 4th, 1927_
Dear Aunt Sally: Sunshine and a certain amount of heat seem to stimulate
me to writing, that is, judging by the intensive work I did on the
Island with you last summer, and by the returned activity I’ve been
having lately. We haven’t had any particularly hot weather, but it’s
been warm enough to sweat a little, and that seems to be good for me. As
a little evidence of my activities I’m enclosing a new section of _The
Bridge_ called “The River.” It comes between “Van Winkle” which I sent
you in the last letter and the Indian “Dance” which you are familiar
with.
I’m trying in this part of the poem to chart the pioneer experience of
our forefathers--and to tell the story backwards, as it were, on the
“backs” of hobos. These hobos are simply “psychological ponies” to carry
the reader across the country and back to the Mississippi, which you
will notice is described as a great River of Time. I also unlatch the
door to the pure Indian world which opens out in “The Dance” section, so
the reader is gradually led back in time to the pure savage world, while
existing at the same time in the present. It has been a very complicated
thing to do, and I think I have worked harder and longer on this section
of _The Bridge_ than any other.
You’ll find your name in it. I kind of wanted you in this section of the
book, and if you don’t have any objections, you’ll stay in the book. For
you are my idea of the salt of all pioneers, and our little talks about
New Orleans, etc., led me to think of you with the smile of Louisiana. I
continue in a kind of “heat”--and I may have another section or so
finished up before August. I sure want to get it _all_ done by December.
Well, here it is the Fourth again. I keep thinking of last year at this
time. I guess my ears were about healed by that time, but I was still in
a blue funk, and I remember how I went to town and after four or five
Tropicals came home again and read. We aren’t having much of any
celebration up here this year. The Browns are rather broke, and so am
I--neither of us able to indulge in either firecrackers or firewater to
any extent. Eleanor Fitzgerald is going to give a little levee down at
her place, however, and maybe there will be some cider.
I got a card from NY the other day saying that my old jack tar friend,
J---- F----, was back from his long trip in European waters, so I just
piked in and saw him! He was standing up on the forward deck when I saw
him from the pier head, and after taking me all over the ship (a
destroyer) we had a very pleasant evening, taking in a movie on hunting
in a jungle, full of marvelous tiger close-ups and elephant stampedes.
--/--/
I get very little news from Cleveland. But from all I have heard mother
and grandma are both fairly well. They have moved into a new apartment,
but I guess I mentioned that change as well as the address in my last. I
have stopped writing anything whatever to mother about the Island and
the Island property, because I don’t get any more return comment from
her on that subject than you seem to get. She doesn’t seem to be able to
get her mind settled on any matters relating to that problem. I don’t
understand why, but I’m sure of this, and I hope you will believe
me--she hasn’t anything but gratitude to you for all you have done, and
certainly entertains the most friendly sort of sentiments toward you
constantly. --/--/
I can’t get over thinking how sweet it was of you to sell the four
copies of _White Bldgs_. Did they arrive alright from the publisher? If
they didn’t I will see to it that they do. I somehow think of you as
being out on the Golfo de Batabano today in a sailboat. Am I right? How
I should like to be on the water! The sea’s the only place for me, with
my _nose_. I’m just getting a little over my spring attack of hayfever
now. And the next session begins before September. --/--/
Wish I could read “The River” out loud to you as I used to do last
summer! Too damned bad the hurricane came--I liked my little study room
there so much, with the mango tree to look at through the back
window.... I achieved some triumphs in that little room.
288: TO HIS FATHER
_Patterson, N.Y._ _August 12th, 1927_
Dear Father: --/--/ Life goes on here pretty evenly and monotonously. I
have managed to do a good deal of writing, but not as much of it is on
_The Bridge_ as I would have liked to have finished by this time.
Difficult is no word to describe the sort of things I’m trying to “put
across” in that poem, and I’ve been rather too much on a tension of
worry lately about a number of things to give it the requisite
concentration. Grace and her present pathetic circumstances is one cause
and my own arrangements for the coming fall and winter is another. It’s
obvious that I must get a job in town, and I’m casting out lines now
even--for it generally takes ages to get anything definite worked up.
I’m not asking for reassurances, but I do hope that I can count on your
assistance to the extent of the monthly amount until I can get something
on my hook--for otherwise I may not have the necessary carfare to ride
in when the time comes for the preliminary interview! --/--/
289: TO OTTO H. KAHN
_Patterson, New York_ _September 12th, 1927_
Dear Mr. Kahn: I am taking for granted your continued interest in the
progress of _The Bridge_, in which I am still absorbed, and which has
reached a stage where its general outline is clearly evident. The
Dedication (recently published in _The Dial_) and Part I (now in _The
American Caravan_) you have already seen, but as you may not have them
presently at hand I am including them in a ms. of the whole, to date,
which I am sending you under separate cover.
At the risk of complicating your appreciation of Part II (“Powhatan’s
Daughter”), I nevertheless feel impelled to mention a few of my
deliberate intentions in this part of the poem, and to give some
description of my general method of construction. Powhatan’s daughter,
or Pocahontas, is the mythological nature-symbol chosen to represent the
physical body of the continent, or the soil. She here takes on much the
same role as the traditional Hertha of ancient Teutonic mythology. The
five sub-sections of Part II are mainly concerned with a gradual
exploration of this “body” whose first possessor was the Indian. It
seemed altogether ineffective from the poetic standpoint to approach
this material from the purely chronological angle--beginning with, say,
the landing of “The Mayflower,” continuing with a résumé of the
Revolution through the conquest of the West, etc. One can get that
viewpoint in any history primer. What I am after is an assimilation of
this experience, a more organic panorama, showing the continuous and
living evidence of the past in the inmost vital substance of the
present.
Consequently I jump from the monologue of Columbus in “Ave Maria”--right
across the four intervening centuries--into the harbor of 20th-century
Manhattan. And from that point in time and place I begin to work
backward through the pioneer period, always in terms of the
present--finally to the very core of the nature-world of the Indian.
What I am really handling, you see, is the Myth of America. Thousands of
strands have had to be searched for, sorted and interwoven. In a sense I
have had to do a great deal of pioneering myself. It has taken a great
deal of energy--which has not been so difficult to summon as the
necessary patience to wait, simply wait much of the time--until my
instincts assured me that I had assembled my materials in proper order
for a final welding into their natural form. For each section of the
entire poem has presented its own unique problem of form, not alone in
relation to the materials embodied within its separate confines, but
also in relation to the other parts, _in series_, of the major design of
the entire poem. Each is a separate canvas, as it were, yet none yields
its entire significance when seen apart from the others. One might take
the Sistine Chapel as an analogy. It might be better to read the
following notes _after_ rather than _before_ your reading of the ms.
They are not necessary for an understanding of the poem, but I think
they may prove interesting to you as a commentary on my architectural
method.
1. “The Harbor Dawn”:
Here the movement of the verse is in considerable contrast to that of
the “Ave Maria,” with its sea-swell crescendo and the climacteric vision
of Columbus. This legato, in which images blur as objects only half
apprehended on the border of sleep and consciousness, makes an admirable
transition between the intervening centuries.
The love-motif (in italics) carries along a symbolism of the life and
ages of man (here the sowing of the seed) which is further developed in
each of the subsequent sections of “Powhatan’s Daughter,” though it is
never particularly stressed. In 2 (“Van Winkle”) it is Childhood; in 3
it is Youth; in 4, Manhood; in 5 it is Age. This motif is interwoven and
tends to be implicit in the imagery rather than anywhere stressed.
2. “Van Winkle”:
The protagonist has left the room with its harbor sounds, and is walking
to the subway. The rhythm is quickened; it is a transition between sleep
and the immanent tasks of the day. Space is filled with the music of a
hand organ and fresh sunlight, and one has the impression of the whole
continent--from Atlantic to Pacific--freshly arisen and moving. The walk
to the subway arouses reminiscences of childhood, also the “childhood”
of the continental conquest, viz., the conquistadores, Priscilla, Capt.
John Smith, etc. These parallelisms unite in the figure of Rip Van
Winkle who finally becomes identified with the protagonist, as you will
notice, and who really boards the subway with the reader. He becomes the
“guardian angel” of the journey into the past.
3. “The River”:
The subway is simply a figurative, psychological “vehicle” for
transporting the reader to the Middle West. He lands on the railroad
tracks in the company of several tramps in the twilight. The
extravagance of the first twenty-three lines of this section is an
intentional burlesque on the cultural confusion of the present--a great
conglomeration of noises analogous to the strident impression of a fast
express rushing by. The rhythm is jazz.
Thenceforward the rhythm settles down to a steady pedestrian gait, like
that of wanderers plodding along. My tramps are psychological vehicles,
also. Their wanderings as you will notice, carry the reader into
interior after interior, finally to the great River. They are the
left-overs of the pioneers in at least this respect--that their
wanderings carry the reader through an experience parallel to that of
Boone and others. I think [I] have caught some of the essential spirit
of the Great Valley here, and in the process have approached the primal
world of the Indian, which emerges with a full orchestra in the
succeeding dance.
5.[4] “The Dance”:
Here one is on the pure mythical and smoky soil at last! Not only do I
describe the conflict between the two races in this dance--I also become
identified with the Indian and his world before it is over, which is the
only method possible of every really possessing the Indian and his world
as a cultural factor. I think I really succeed in getting under the skin
of this glorious and dying animal, in terms of expression, in symbols,
which he himself would comprehend. Pocahontas (the continent) is the
common basis of our meeting, she survives the extinction of the Indian,
who finally, after being assumed into the elements of nature (as he
understood them), persists only as a kind of “eye” in the sky, or as a
star that hangs between day and night--“the twilight’s dim perpetual
throne.”
6.[5] “Indiana”:
I regret that this section is not completed as yet. It will be the
monologue of an Indiana farmer; time, about 1860. He has failed in the
gold-rush and is returned to till the soil. His monologue is a farewell
to his son, who is leaving for a life on the sea. It is a lyrical
summary of the period of conquest, and his wife, the mother who died on
the way back from the gold-rush, is alluded to in a way which implies
her succession to the nature-symbolism of Pocahontas. I have this
section well-nigh done, but there is no use including [it] in the
present ms. without the final words.
The next section, “Cutty Sark,” is a phantasy on the period of the
whalers and clipper ships. It also starts in the present and “progresses
backwards.” The form of the poem may seem erratic, but it is meant to
present the hallucinations incident to rum-drinking in a South Street
dive, as well as the lurch of a boat in heavy seas, etc. So I allow
myself something of the same freedom which E. E. Cummings often uses.
“Cutty Sark” is built on the plan of a _fugue_. Two “voices”--that of
the world of Time, and that of the world of Eternity--are interwoven in
the action. The Atlantis theme (that of Eternity) is the transmuted
voice of the nickel-slot pianola, and this voice alternates with that of
the derelict sailor and the description of the action. The airy regatta
of phantom clipper ships seen from Brooklyn Bridge on the way home is
quite effective, I think. It was a pleasure to use historical names for
these lovely ghosts. Music still haunts their names long after the wind
has left their sails.
“Cape Hatteras,” which follows, is unfinished. It will be a kind of ode
to Whitman. I am working as much as possible on it now. It presents very
formidable problems, as, indeed, all the sections have. I am really
writing an epic of the modern consciousness, and indescribably
complicated factors have to be resolved and blended.... I don’t wish to
tire you [with] too extended an analysis of my work, and so shall leave
the other completed sections to explain themselves. In the ms., where
the remaining incompleted sections occur, I am including a rough
synopsis of their respective themes, however.
The range of _The Bridge_ has been called colossal by more than one
critic who has seen the ms. And though I have found the subject to be
vaster than I had at first realized, I am still highly confident of its
final articulation into a continuous and eloquent span. Already there
are evident signs of recognition: the following magazines have taken
various sections:
“Dedication: To Brooklyn Bridge” _The Dial_
“Ave Maria” _The American Caravan_
“The Harbor Dawn” _transition_ (Paris)
“Van Winkle” “
“The River” _The Virginia Quarterly_
“The Dance” _The Dial_
“Cutty Sark” _Poetry_ (Chicago)
“Three Songs” _The Calendar_ (London)
“The Tunnel” _The Criterion_ (London)
(I have been especially gratified by the reception accorded me by _The
Criterion_, whose director, Mr. T. S. Eliot, is representative of the
most exacting literary standards of our times.)
For some time past I have been seeking employment in New York, but
without success so far. It’s the usual problem of mechanical prejudices
that I’ve already grown grey in trying to deal with. But all the more
difficult now, since the only references I can give for the last two
years are my own typewriter and a collection of poems. I am, as you will
probably recall, at least avowedly--a perfectly good advertising writer.
I am wondering if you would possibly give me some recommendation to the
publicity department of The Metropolitan Opera Company, where I am
certain of making myself useful. I was in New York two days last week,
trying to secure employment as a waiter on one of the American lines. I
found that I needed something like a diploma from Annapolis before
hoping for an interview. A few years ago I registered with the Munson
Line with reference to my qualifications for a particular position which
every ship includes--that of “ship’s writer,” or “deck yeoman”; but I
always found that such jobs were dispensed to acquaintances of the
captain or to office workers, and that my references were never taken
from the file. I am not particular what I do, however, so long as there
is reasonable chance of my doing it well, and any recommendation you
might care to offer in any practical direction whatever will be most
welcome. My present worried state of mind practically forbids any
progress on _The Bridge_, the chances for which are considerably better
under even greatly limited time conditions.
I am still assured of a definite inheritance, previously mentioned in my
first letter to you; and if you care to consider advancing me, say 800
or 1,000 dollars, on the same basis of insurance security as your
previous assistance I should be glad to come into New York and talk it
over. There is no monetary standard of evaluation for works of art, I
know, but I cannot help feeling that a great poem may well be worth at
least the expenditure necessary for merely the scenery and costumes of
many a flashy and ephemeral play, or for a motor car. _The Aeneid_ was
not written in two years--nor in four, and in more than one sense I feel
justified in comparing the historic and cultural scope of _The Bridge_
to this great work. It is at least a symphony with an epic theme, and a
work of considerable profundity and inspiration. Even with the torturing
heat of my sojourn in Cuba I was able to work faster than before or
since then, in America. The “foreign-ness” of my surroundings stimulated
me to the realization of natively American materials and viewpoints in
myself not hitherto suspected, and in one month I was able to do more
work than I had done in the three previous years. If I could work in
Mexico or Mallorca this winter I could have _The Bridge_ finished by
next spring. But that is a speculation which depends entirely on your
interest.
Please pardon the inordinate length of this letter. I shall, of course,
hope to hear from you regarding your impressions of the poem as it now
stands. Along with the ms., I am enclosing three critical articles which
may interest you somewhat.
290: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN
_Patterson, N.Y._ _Sept. 18th, ’27_
Dear Sam: I was glad to hear from you. I had been totally at a loss to
explain the basis of your resentment, and still am not quite clear on
the subject--but as you say that it is now removed perhaps nothing is
gained by probing old wounds and asking you what exactly it was all
about. Certainly, if I borrowed some money from you and have forgotten
to return it I shall have deserved the full measure of disapproval.
Memory plays tricks with all of us at times, and mine is no more
faithful to me than it ought to be. --/--/
291: TO HIS FATHER
_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _October 11th, 1927_
Dear Father: I have just had an interview with Otto Kahn, following his
reading of the manuscript of _The Bridge_. Kahn is very enthusiastic
about what I have accomplished and is most anxious that I keep on with
the composition without interruption until it is finished. I told him
about your willingness to extend me the assistance of the monthly
allowance of $50 and he has come forward with an additional $300 which
will provide me with necessary boat fare to Martinique for the winter.
That is a much pleasanter island than the Isle of Pines and I will also
be able to learn French and Spanish there, which will make it possible
for me to earn my living up here later by translation work.
I know enough about Martinique from people who have recently been there
to be sure that the allowance you have been giving me will cover my
living costs there. The winter season will insure me against any of the
excessive heat that I experienced on the Isle of Pines and I shall be
able to get much more accomplished.
I shall probably sail on the 20th (Furness-Bermuda Line) and arrive
about 8 days later. Am busy now seeing about my passport. Please let me
hear from you soon.
292: TO ---- AND ----
[_Brooklyn_] _Nov. 16, 27_
Dear ---- and ----: Traintime approaches, but I hope life does not
continue to grow accordingly more hectic, as has been the rule so far!
Several times I have all but lost my ticket, presented several days ago.
Notably Tues. night in jail....
After a riotous competition with Cummings and Anne [Cummings] in which
(I don’t _know_ but I’m sure) I won the cocktail contest I found myself
in the Clark St. station along about 3 o’clock playing with somebody’s
lost airedale. The cop who rushed at me, asking me what I was doing is
reported to have been answered by “why the hell do you want to know?!!!”
in a loud tone of voice, whereat I was yanked into a taxi and was sped
to the station (slyly and en route tossing all evidence such as billets
doux, dangerous addresses, etc., out the window) and the next I knew the
door crashed shut and I found myself behind the bars. I imitated
Chaliapin fairly well until dawn leaked in, or rather such limited
evidences of same as six o’clock whistles and the postulated press of
dirty feet to early coffee stands.
I was good and mad. Made an impassioned speech to a crowded court room,
and was released at 10 o’clock without even a fine. Beer with Cummings
in the afternoon which was almost better than evening before, as C’s
hyperbole is even more amusing than one’s conduct, especially when he
undertakes a description of what you don’t remember. Anyhow, I never had
so much fun jounced into 24 hours before, and if I had my way would take
both C’gs and Anne along with me to heaven when I go. --/--/
293: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
_Altadena, Cal[ifornia]_ _Nov. 29th, ’27_
Dear Charlotte & Ricardo: --/--/ I have just been here a week and a day,
having left NY on the 17th in company with my new “boss,” his valet,
chauffeur and 3 dogs. I am more-or-less his secretary and companion, but
I’m treated more as a guest and have practically all of my time to
myself. Boss is a semi-invalid, a wealthy Wall Street broker who travels
most of the time, and who has been sent out here for six months rest by
his doctors. Lord! I never lived in _this_ style before! It’s almost
oppressive! But maybe I’ll get used to it in time....
As I said, about all I have to do is to be agreeable, talk about
Aristotle, Einstein, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, etc., etc., (in other
words, my boss is really a very cultured man and didn’t want to take too
much of a chance on running into a vacuum as regards companionship out
here). He is also interested in my writing, and it is with some regard
to helping me with my work that he has taken me out here. We’re living
in an amazing house, rented for the season from the president of the
American Express Company. It is all bath rooms and bad furniture--but
such bath rooms! And there is a huge patio in the center, on which all
the rooms open--very much the Spanish style of course.
It all came about as a sudden surprise to me. I was in Patterson only
about two weeks after I left Cleveland. Came into New York and found a
job in a little book shop almost immediately. I thought I was lucky
until the bad lighting of the store (it was a black little hole!) got to
working on my eyes. But I’d been there less than two weeks when Miss
Fitzgerald of the Provincetown Theatre told me about this opportunity.
As she is a very good friend of my boss her recommendation was seriously
considered, and after a few preliminary “try-outs” dining, riding in the
park, etc., I was formally invited. So here I am! --/--/
My boss has a curiosity about meeting some of the movie people--and
later on, when he gets to feeling better, expects to do some
entertaining. I’m hoping that Charlie Chaplin will remember my evening
with him and Frank in NY and possibly be friendly. Then there’s an old
“flame” of mine from Cleveland, Alice Calhoun, who has since become a
movie queen who lives out here. My boss is only 34, a bachelor, and has
a furious love of excitement, so there may be some amusing developments.
But at present, it’s part of my “task” to keep him quiet on a
more-or-less intellectual and sedentary diet. Well, well--not at all!
Where will I be next? Tahiti? It’s not so far from here! -- -- -- --
294: TO SLATER BROWN
_Santa Monica, California_ _Monday--Dec. 19_
Dear Bill: Yes, one can hear the sea seven flights below--and I’ve been
walking on the beach most of the day. The boss, finding that I didn’t
get along too well with some of his Hollywood week-end guests, advised
my taking a vacation, and with means happily provided here I am until
tomorrow night. Wall Street seems to carry a slight oppression and
madness with it wherever it “extends.” It has been good to come over
here where places are rather deserted of crowds and hear the gulls cry
overhead and watch the solemn pelicans eye you awhile--and then haul up
their legs and sprawl into the air.
Viennese cooking with caviar and port every night for dinner is playing
hell with my waistline--and I sleep as never before, excepting the
cradle. One can’t seem to wake up out here without the spur of scotch or
gin. There has been plenty of that--in fact last Saturday night I danced
the “Gotzottski” right on Main St. Los Angeles, while -- -- -- --, an
aviator from Riverside and a Kentuckian--danced the Highland Fling--or
as good an imitation of it as he could manage. This after having invaded
the Biltmore ballroom and dancing with fair ladies of the haute
mondaine. Albeit--and having got our waiter drunk and having left in
high dudgeon--I don’t think I’ll dare attend that[?] supper club again.
After a good deal of fair “sailing” since arriving here--I am now
convinced that “flying” is even better. Right now however--and until
next weekend--I am “all fives” on the ground and life can run as high as
it wants to over in our villa without my batting an eye. -/-/
God! you never know who you’re meeting out here.... First there was a
snappy collegiate hanging around the studios, who turned out to know
Allen [Tate]--and then today on the beach a mile below here, at Venice,
I found myself talking literature, Spengler, Kant, Descartes and
Aquinas--to say nothing of Charles Maurras and Henri Massis--to a
Bostonian of French descent who knows Stewart Mitchell, and especially
his Aunt, very well! He turned out to be one of the best scholars I’ve
ever met--a great reactionary toward the same kind classicism that Eliot
and Lewis are fostering in England. I had him spotted as a Romanist in
less than five minutes--but he wouldn’t admit until we parted. The
dialectic we had was more rousing than the aforesaid tonic combustions
of alcohol, I admit....
Winters and wife will be here visiting relatives during Christmas
week--and I look forward to that as a real event. Really, it’s terribly
dulling having so many servants around, so much food, so much tiptoeing,
and ceremony. --/--/ The present “star” was once “Ariel” in _The
Tempest_--and though she still makes the welkin ring I fear her voice
will never do it again. She has adopted the pronoun “we” to signalize
her slightest thought, whim or act--and her conceit was so wounded on
spying my “Chaplinesque” during the course of her drunken and
exclamatory rampage through _Edificios Blancos_--that she nearly passed
out--and insisted on the spot that I make instant amends by composing a
sonnet to her superb P.A. (Hollywood shorthand for physical attraction)
as displayed in her erstwhile success in _Peter Pan_. Hence here I am by
the sea--and mightily pleased--until the storm subsides....
My Spanish quotation from Slater Brown reminds me that I now have
Joyce’s _Arista Adoloscente_--a translation sent me by Marichalar who
wrote a very interesting introduction.[56] He was greatly interested in
_The [American] Caravan_ and is going to review it in the _Revista de
Occidente_. I must get started at my Spanish again. Richards’
_Principles of Literary Criticism_ is a _great_ book. One of the
few--perhaps the only one in English excepting stray remarks by
Coleridge--that get to bed rock. Weston’s book, _From Ritual to
Romance_, was quite fascinating--but Winters claims that scholars regard
half her data and deductions as imaginative bunk. Did I rave[?] to you
about Elizabeth Madox Roberts’ new book--_My Heart and Flesh_--before!
Anyway, I hope you’ll read it. I think it a great performance. --/--/
I’m glad you liked the Breughel book. Its humor really belonged to you,
if you get what I mean, and you therefore were more capable of “owning”
it than anyone I ever knew. If you were dead and gone I think it would
have been a better commemoration than flowers--so take good care of
it--and hand it on to your grandchildren--for you never can tell--you
may have them, you know!
1928
295: TO PEGGY BAIRD AND MALCOLM COWLEY
[_California_] _Jan. 31, ’28_
Dear Peggy & Mal: Writing is next to impossible--what with the purling
of fountains, the drawling of mockingbirds, the roaring of surf, the
blazing of movie stars, the barking of dogs, the midnight shakings of
geraniums, the cruising of warships, etc., etc., not to mention the
dictates of the Censor, whose absence will be welcome sometime, I hope,
when we get together again at the Dutchman’s or some rehabilitated Punch
Palace where I’ll at least be able to offer some new words to the
(albeit) ancient tunes! My philosophic moments are few, but when they do
occur it is almost always possible to turn on the radio and immediately
expose my soul to the rasping persuasions of Aimee McPherson, eternally
ranting and evangelizing to packed houses at the great palm-flanked
arena of Angelus Temple. She broadcasts the news that people are
frequently carried out in pieces, arms broken, heads smashed in the
stampede for salvation which she almost nightly stages, thereby
emphasizing the need of arriving early (so as to save one’s body as
well) and thereupon lifts her voice into a perfectly convulsing chant,
coaxing and cuddlingly coy about “Come, all ye--” (You can catch her in
it on the Victor) the chorus of which would make a deacon’s bishopric
leap crimson and triumphant from the grave.... I haven’t seen her, but
they say she has beautiful long, red, wavy tresses....
The peculiar mixtures of piety and utter abandon in this welter of
cults, ages, occupations, etc., out here make it a good deal like
Bedlam. Retired schoolmarms from Iowa, Kansas and all the corn-and-wheat
belt along with millions of hobbling Methuselahs, alfalfa-fringed and
querulous, side by side with crowds of ambitious but none-too-successful
strumpets of moviedom, quite good to look at, and then hordes of rather
nondescript people who seem just bound from nowhere into nothing--one
can’t explain either the motives nor means of their existence. One can
generally “place” people to some extent; but out here it’s mostly nix.
One begins to feel a little unreal as a consequence of this--and so much
more, like the perfect labyrinth of “villas”--some pseudo-Spanish, some
a la Maya (the colour of stale mayonnaise), others Egyptian with a
simply irresistible amphora perched on the terrace, and some vaguely
Chink. Our house, a large _U_ with patio and fountain, rambles all over
the place, and is almost vertical to the observatory on Mt. Wilson.
Plenty of roses, camellias, oleanders, acacias, etc., as well as a good
wine-cellar. I’ve just been interrupted by the butler bringing in a
makeshift for champagne, composed of cardbonated apple-juice with a
sling of gin; so all attempts at epistolary consecutivety are hereby and
henceforth abandoned! No, I’d better give up--I was just about to say
something about the pool rooms down at San Pedro where the battle fleet
rides close at anchor. Gradually I’m becoming acquainted with all the
brands of bootleg that the Westcoast offers. I haven’t been blinded by
anything yet but beauty and sunshine, however; but I did have to get
glasses to shield me from the violet rays, which are terribly strong out
here. I’d better stop, I guess.
296: TO WALDO FRANK
_Altadena, Cal._ _February 1, 1928_
Dear Waldo: I thought the enclosed poems might interest you as souvenirs
of our tropical sojourn together. The quarry and the road leading to it,
the idiot boy, etc., and the “Overheard”[57] which mocks the manner of
the typical American settler’s comments on the natives.... There is
another poem, “The Air Plant,” properly belonging to this series, which
ought to be out soon in _The Dial_. And there was another,“O Carib
Isle!,” published earlier in _transition_, which also belongs. In “The
Hour”[58] I attempted to secure the ground-rhythm of the hurricane.
You have been silent for so long that I cannot but doubt your interest
in hearing from me. Yet I so often think of you that I have risked an
intrusion regardless. --/--/
297: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN
_Altadena, Cal._ _5th Feb., 28_
Dear Sam: --/--/ First of all: my “boss” has never once failed to play
the admirable host, and what is more, I continue to find him at all
times most agreeable and entertaining. --/--/
I see my mother on the average of twice a week. She is located so far
away that it takes a good two hours to reach her, so it nearly always
means devoting practically a whole day to the occasion. My grandmother
is better off than at any time for the last three years--the climate has
done wonders. They have a small cottage and would be quite comfortable
were they more satisfied with the general temper of the woman they
brought out here to live with them. I’m not capable of judging the
situation very accurately, but there’s been a good deal of fretting and
umbrage, very discouraging indeed to me at times. Wise has practically
asked me to accompany him to Europe in the Spring, but their situation
may deny me that opportunity. Mother asked immediately about you. She
would rejoice at any word from you whatever.
We have met some movie actors, attended some studio screenings, etc. And
I have had a fair amount of swimming and tennis. (The beaches--Long
Beach, Venice, Santa Monica--are really a delight, and I have spent
whole days watching the gulls, sandpipers, pelicans in their
manoeuvres). But I am especially enjoying the wealth of reading and
music around the house. Wise is buying all the albums of symphonies,
quintettes, concertos and what-not on the Victor list. So I’m living on
intimate terms for the first time with Brahms and Beethoven--the two
most exciting of all to me.
_The Grandmothers_, I agree with you, is damned fine, although I think
it weakens towards the last; Wescott seems to lose his grip. Then I’ve
immensely enjoyed the trans. of Proust’s _Sodome et Gomorrhe_, as well
as Gide’s _The Counterfeiters_. I also am now introduced to Heathcliff
(whom I have put beside Ahab) thanks to your mention of _Wuthering
Hts_. And by the way, I’m terribly excited about the poems of Gerard
Manley Hopkins. Winters loaned me his copy recently (I had never read
any of Hopkins before) and I have discovered that I am not as original
in some of my stylisms as I had thought I was. Winters tells me that the
book (Oxford edition, edited by Robert Bridges) is now out of print. I’m
simply wild to secure a copy--and am wondering if you could locate me
anything around New York. I’m willing to pay anything up to $10.00.
Failing this, I think I shall go to work and type out the whole volume,
for I’ve never been quite so enthusiastic about any modern before.
--/--/
298: TO SLATER BROWN
[_California_] _2/22/28_
Dear Bill: --/--/ A paean from Venusberg! Oy-oy-oy! I have just had my
ninth snifter of Scotch. O shades of Bert Savoy! They say he had a glass
eye as the result of some midnight with a mariner. But I have had no
such dire results as yet. Oh BOY! Try to imagine the streets constantly
as they were during that famous aggregation last May in Manhattan! And
more, for they are at home here, these western argosies, at roadstead
far and near--and such a throng of pulchritude and friendliness as would
make your “hair” stand on end. That’s been the way of all flesh with
me.... And wine and music and such nights--WHOOPS!!!!!!!
Besides which I have met the Circe of them all--a movie actor who has
them dancing naked, twenty at a time, around the banquet table. O André
Gide! no Paris ever yielded such as this--away with all your
counterfeiters! Just walk down Hollywood Boulevard some day--if you must
have something _out_ of uniform. Here are little fairies who can quote
Rimbaud before they are 18--and here are women who must have the tiniest
fay to tickle them the one and only way! You ought to see B---- C----
shake her tits--and cry _apples_ for a bite!
What can I write about? Yes, I am reading Wyndham Lewis’ _Time and
Western Man_, Fernandez’ insufferable _Messages_ and all the other
stuff. But I would rather do as I did yesterday--after a night of
wine--wake up at dawn and dip into _The Tempest_, that crown of all the
Western World. What have I to say after that event. I wonder.??? --/--/
[Act V, scene I, lines 64-68] Maybe with me someday, as good Prospero
says. Perhaps--as Ceres says in the same play----/--/ [Act IV, scene I,
lines 114-17] But you will tear this up--and keep me true, Bill. And if
I come back to you and to the dear hills of Connecticut again, as I hope
to, I shall have a cargo for your ears. --/--/
299: TO WALDO FRANK
_Hollywood, Calif._ _4th March 1928_
Dear Waldo: The date on your generous and welcome letter is an
accusation. It is true that I haven’t lacked time to answer it, long
since,--but the desire to give you something more than a muddled
confusion of cross purposes--and my confidence in your preference for
reason and order--have detained me, though I am still by no means
settled in my present environment nor do I seem any too happily
disposed. But at least I have decided on a few details, for better or
worse....
My association with Mr. Wise, who brought me out here as private
secretary, terminated about two weeks ago. Although it was
unsatisfactory (my duties were extremely vague and I was neither servant
nor guest) I might have stuck it out until May (when Wise returns to NY)
had I felt justified in leaving my mother and grandmother alone out here
in their present predicament. However, the experience of the last two
years has taught me the futility of any retreat from what I, after all,
must regard as my immediate responsibilities. The further I might go
from the actual “scene” of operations the more obsessed I tend to become
by the inert idea. So I am remaining here with the hope of securing some
“literary” connection with the movies which will net me enough to be of
some substantial help. When all this is over--someday--I may be able to
regain the indispensable detachment from immediate concerns that such a
work as my _Bridge_ demands. Needless to say, I find Hollywood far from
tempting in any way--but my people had moved here before I arrived, and
as my grandmother is unable to move more than a few steps from her bed
she is hardly in the tourist class.
Your letter was as usual--bracing! You probably don’t realize it, but it
had been a year since I had heard anything from you excepting a
postcard. I was beginning to fear that something spurious had been
repeated to you as an emanation of mine, for NY is so full of
fabrications of all kinds--so, to know better was a welcome relief,
also! I can well appreciate the many preoccupations which beset and
hindered you. The marvel to me is the glamor and precision of your new
work; I refer to the installments of it in _The N.R._ Some of my copies
were lost when I was moving--and my readings were frequently
interrupted and only partially realized--but the luminous impulse and
essential direction I think I have apprehended. It is something more
than mere analysis. Like most of your work it postulates a “Way.” I have
tried reading Fernandez’ _Messages_ and Lewis’ _Time and Western Man_
without being able to wholly approve a single page of either, though
Fernandez is more profound. But his style (or the translator’s) is
abominable as compared to L.’s direct though misdirected thrusts. But L.
just goes round in a desolate circle of elaborations--I can’t see
anything creative in his offering. Beginning with Spengler and Wells,
this age seems too typically encyclopaedic. This may assist the artist
in time--by erecting some kind of logos, or system of contact between
the insulated departments of highly specialized knowledge and enquiry
which characterize the times--God knows, some kind of substantial
synthesis of opinion is needed before I can feel confident in writing
about anything but my shoestrings.... These Godless days! I wonder if
you suffer as much as I do. At least you have the education and training
to hold the scalpel.
If I can’t send you a new poem of my own I can at least send you a
better new-old one [“Pied Beauty”] (for I don’t think you have yet read
him) by Gerard Manley Hopkins (Oxford) now out of print--a Victorian,
posthumously printed, whose work has been a revelation to me. --/--/
300: TO ---- AND ----
_Hollywood, Calif_ _March 27th ’28_
Dear ---- and ----: As I don’t seem to get anything more out of you by
means of postcards, telegrams, and such-like shorthand signals I guess
it’s up to me to get busy on the typewriter and pay you your due
torture--though I’ll try and not inflict such piercing shrieks on you
again, such as my last epistle! When I get to feeling like that again
I’ll begin on Pres. Calles first--and that will probably save you a good
deal of amazement and conjecture.
This time the news is more diverse.... Life is nothing if not exciting
wherever ---- happens to land, if only for a few hours. It took him (or
his presence) to arrange the most harrowing weekend yet, and I’m only
praying that he’s still alive, for when I left him in his berth in the
“glory-hole” of the “California” last Sat. night he looked as though he
were nearing the Pearly Gates. We were held up and beaten by a gang in
San Pedro.... The story is complicated and lengthy--and ---- will
probably give you the full version or as much as he can remember when he
sees you.
I left Wise’s ménage a week ago today. However, as ---- somehow failed
to get my ship letter announcing same and the hour at which I would meet
him--he flew right up to Altadena, leaving me to wait a _full 8 hours_
by the gangway before I saw my dear “Goldy-locks.” By that time I had
about finished a half pint of alcohol which I had brought for our mutual
edification, and he had completely emptied a quart of Bacardi, also
originally intended as a mutual benison.
_Scene Two._ Speakeasy joint with booths. Many bottles of dubious gin
and whiskey--with much “skoling”--and ---- flashing a fat pay roll--and
treating three or four still more dubious “merry andrews” who had
invited themselves to our noisy nook. It being midnight, all ordered
out.
_Scene Three._ A street, or rather, several streets. Our “guests” very
insistent on taking a hotel room in which to finish the fire water. ----
& I both reeling but refractory. I finally noticed ---- being spirited
away by three of them, while it was evident that I, who had been more
emphatic in my wishes, was being guarded by two others. I broke
away--and had just caught up to ---- who was being put around a dark
corner--when all five started slugging us. I put up quite a fight, but
neither of us were in much condition. They all beat it as a car turned
on a nearby corner. Both of us robbed of everything, and ----
practically unconscious. After reporting at police headquarters I don’t
know how I would have got ---- back to his ship without the help of a
sailor friend of mine whom I had run into earlier in the evening while
waiting for ----. We roused several of his shipmates--and I’m only
hoping that his bumps and bruises haven’t been any more fatal than mine.
I finally had to finish the night in a ward of the Salvation Army Hotel,
and it was five o’clock Sunday before I got enough money to get back to
Hollywood. On his way back from Frisco I’m hoping to see ---- again--but
not in Pedro! Probably nothing of this had better be mentioned to the
----’s.... I don’t mind my losses, but I feel terribly about ----’s
luck. He always seems to get the hardest end of things.
As you can see, we didn’t get much time for any gossip. But he did say
that you had the most beautiful baby in the world! Wish I could see him!
Besides which I get terribly homesick out here, but might as well not
indulge myself in that emotion. My resignation from the Wise entourage
was encouraged by a number of dissatisfactions, but as much as anything
by the recognition of the fact that I must settle here for a while at
least, and do whatever I can to help my mother during her attendance on
grandmother. The two of them being completely alone out here, and none
too well provided for, I couldn’t get a good night’s sleep in Conn. So I
might as well relinquish my own wishes for awhile and try and earn some
cash. Maybe scenario writing eventually. Meanwhile there are mechanical
jobs such as title-writing, gag-writing, “continuity” writing, etc. I
just had an interview with “Papa” Kahn this morning who is out here for
a couple of weeks. He promises to help me connect with Lasky, Paramount,
Wm. Fox, etc. At least I have “broken in” the movies in one way, for
Pathe Newsreel or some such torture swooped down on us while we were
talking in the patio of The Ambassador, and for all I know we may be
thrown upon the screen together all the way from Danbury to Hong-Kong
and Mozambique! I’m wearing hornrims now--so don’t be shocked.
As for my late employer--the situation became too strained to be
continued. --/--/ Such circumstances don’t promote a very lively
morale--and it’s probably better for me to lose a little of the
attendant avoirdupois in favor of a more exhilarating outlook. But we
are still friends so far as I know.
Every week I scour the pages of _The New Rep._, _Nation_, and
_Herald-Tribune_ for the names of our “rising generation.” Have seen
nothing by Malcolm for some time. Does this corroborate the news I got
from Mrs. T[urner] some weeks ago that Malcolm has been laid up? Much by
Robert Penn Warren, but little by his friend Tate, excepting a recent
review of Winters which I thought excellent. Slater Brown, I long since
neglected to mention, scored keenly in tussle with the milksop critic of
Estlin C’gs in the Canby Crap Can. “The point was well taken,” as my
grandmother would say. And how is C’gs? for I think you told me he was
pretty hard up. Mitchell seems to be bursting with new energy by the
evidence in recent numbers of _The Dial_. And last, but not least in
this litry column, how goes it with your translations--and how is ----?
No, you’re not the last, either! I must say that I haven’t yet been able
to decipher that defense of me by Laura [Riding], published in
_Transition_ along with Kay Boyle’s explosive boil. I wrote her
promptly, thanking her for her sentiments, but questioning her style.
Her latest book announced by Jonathan Cape, is _Anarchy Is Not
Enough_--and so she seems to be maintaining her consistency. Judging by
the time she has already taken before answering me, I judge that I’m off
her correspondence list. I shouldn’t have been so rude had I thought her
tender-hearted. But I can’t believe that anarchy is enough--or Gertrude
Stein, either. --/--/
301: TO ISIDOR SCHNEIDER
_Hollywood, Calif_ _March 28th, 1928_
Dear Isidor: --/--/ I often wish I had the scientific and metaphysical
training to appreciate and judge all these Whiteheads, Bradleys,
Fernandez, Wyndham Lewis-es, etc., who keep drumming up new
encyclopedias of the Future, Fate, etc. And now Waldo has written
another, especially devoted to America. I read them, puzzle and ponder
as best I’m able, but Spengler was about the only one who flattered my
capacities to the least extent. They are all so formidable, bristling
with allusions, statistics, threats and tremors, trumpets and outcries
on the least splitting of a hair which I can’t locate through the
labyrinth of abstractions. I’m afraid I’d better give up trying to make
any headway in their directions--or else relinquish all attempts to do
any writing myself. For about all they really net me is a constant
paralysis and distraction. I think that this unmitigated concern with
the Future is one of the most discouraging symptoms of the chaos of our
age, however worthy the ethical concerns may be. It seems as though the
imagination had ceased all attempts at any creative activity--and had
become simply a great bulging eye ogling the foetus of the next
century.... I find nothing in Blake that seems outdated, and for him the
present was always eternity. This is putting it crudely; but when I get
some of these points a little more definitely arranged then maybe I’ll
have more nerve to continue my efforts on _The Bridge_. The struggle on
paper is hard enough, but certain recent antecedent deliberations are
proving even more stubborn.
I enjoyed your historical notes and orientalia. You ought to hear Aimee
[McPherson] carry on over the radio to get the full blast of her
personality. D. Parker’s review of her autobiography (_N. Yorker_) was
amusing I thought. She’s a great pious Dame Quickly--and they almost
caught her with her shoes off in that “kidnapping” episode. Coming from
the ridiculous to the sublime--let me thank you for the Isadora! That
book has a certain dignity, despite many lapses, which I expected from
her; a very sad but beautiful book. Her career would be impossible now
since the War. Other reading has included the cold glitter of Gide’s
_Counterfeiters_ and the tremendous mosaic of Proust’s _Cities of the
Plain_. I never got one-third through all the books that Wise
continually ordered. But then, I’m always taking two steps backward to
Queen Bess’s alleys for every one step ahead. --/--/
302: TO GORHAM MUNSON
_Hollywood, Calif._ _April 17th ’28_
Dear Gorham: I certainly feel guilty--and the evidence of your
cordiality in sending me your _Destinations_ has not made me feel any
more exemplary--for not having written you before. However you are
exacting in the level of response which you expect from your friends,
and in as much as I have been involved in a general state of doldrums so
far as any creative progress has been concerned for well nigh every
moment since I left NY, I haven’t felt like burdening you with the mere
minutiae of personal trifles in lieu of more “decisive developments” if
I could help it. But here goes--anyway--if only to signal to you my
pleasure in receiving your opus and to assure you that at any rate my
affections are not defunct.
With the general exhortation of your book (as a whole) towards more
definite spiritual knowledge and direction I find myself in close
sympathy. The spiritual disintegration of our period becomes more
painful to me every day, so much so that I now find myself baulked by
doubt at the validity of practically every metaphor I coin. In every
quarter (Lewis, Eliot, Fernandez, etc.) a thousand issues are raised for
one that is settled and where this method is reversed--as with the
neo-Thomists--one has nothing as substitute but an arbitrary dogmatism
which seems to be too artificial [to] have any permanence or hold on the
future. This “future” is, of course, the name for the entire disease,
but I doubt if any remedy will be forthcoming from so nostalgic an
attitude as the Thomists betray, and moreover a strictly European system
of values, at that. Waldo’s acute analyses now running in _The NR_
strike me as wonderfully promising. He hasn’t come to the constructive
part of his program yet--but his ideas are promising; in a way they come
to closer grips with American bogeys and vampires than any European is
probably capable of seeing.
I think that _Destinations_ is a transitional book with you. It contains
a lot of splendid analysis, especially your discussions of technical
procedures and the historical positions and relationships of various
writers. Above and beyond (or enclosing) these considerations I think
your demand for more order, clearer direction, etc., well justified, but
on the other hand, too vaguely articulated to offer any definite system
in contrast to the distraction, indifference to major issues, mere
intuitiveness, etc., which you complain of in a number of writers whose
work you otherwise admire. This was almost inevitable, I am forced to
acknowledge, especially as I have already admitted my own quandaries in
the face of such problems--but the challenge still rings for all of us.
You have certainly done this much: if you have not definitely (or even
begun to) articulate the concrete values of the ideal _100_ per cent you
have at least done some wiping on the slate and postulated _000_, or the
position of the questionable ciphers. Skepticism may stop there and
still claim gratitude and respect, but I am not exactly satisfied by
that, and I doubt if you are. I still stake some claims on the
pertinence of the intuitions; indeed some of Blake’s poems and Emily
Dickinson’s seem more incontrovertible than ever since Relativity and a
host of other ideologies, since evolved, have come into recognition.
As close and accurate scrutinies I like the Moore and Williams studies
best. I don’t know Dreiser well enough to judge your opinions. As for
Hart Crane, I know him too well to disagree on as many points as I once
did, two years ago when I first read the essay. I am certainly grateful
for such expert attention, and especially on the technical side I think
you express my intentions with a very persuasive gusto that has recently
revived in me some conviction of “reality” here and there in my scrap
heap. --/--/
303: TO SLATER BROWN
[_California_] _April 27_
Dear Bill: Your salute to the comments of the ny critics cracks at _him_
displayed more life than I have seen around here since I arrived.
Although I am still holding my sides, I’m a little sad; for I would like
to have been there. Especially with Anne [Cummings] drinking gin and
---- sporting his shiners and shirt front and all the tumult and
guzzling there must have been afterward! As for the critics--C’gs can be
envied, in the same manner that even I can be envied, whereby I refer to
the “clever” handling I recently got from Benét in the Canby crap can.
At least we both have managed to evade the proverbial faint praise! Your
clipping was the only one I’ve seen excepting a letter from Dos [Passos]
in the last _Sunday Times_, and a laudatory review in the _Wall Street
Journal_ which Wise had noticed. I hope you and others will make as much
of a controversy about it as possible. That’s one thing good about
Frank--he never hesitates a moment and never tires.
Since the Fleet with its twenty-five thousand gobs has left for Hawaii I
have had a chance to face and recognize the full inconsequence of this
Pollyanna greasepaint pinkpoodle paradise with its everlasting
stereotyped sunlight and its millions of mechanical accessories and
sylphlike robots of the age of celluloid. Efforts for a foothold in this
sandstorm are still avid, but I have had little yet in encounter.
“Crashing the gate” is a familiar expression out here, and it seems to
be exclusively applied to the movie industry. To cap the climax I have
to endure my mother’s apparently quenchless desire that I become an
actor! But if I can hold on until the middle of May I’m due for an
interview with Jesse Lasky (HIMSELF) and maybe through that entree I can
creep into some modest dustpan in the reading dept. of Paramount. Your
friend Dietz, by the way, draws a cool $750.00 a week as their ad. mgr.
It’s good to think of you as back near Patterson. I had a good letter
from Malcolm. It all makes me homesick. Things like that croquet game in
the rain, the afternoon at the cider mill, the skeleton surry ride and
the tumble down the hill! I haven’t a thing to send for the _transition_
Am. issue. I can’t imagine ever having anything to say out here except
in vituperation of the scene itself. If I could “afford” to go to work
on some ranch it might be otherwise, but that, under present
circumstances, doesn’t seem advisable.
Have just discovered the presence here of Mrs. Alice Barney, the
world-famous grande dame and mother of Nathalie Clifford Barney of
Paris, friend of Valéry, translator, -- -- -- --. As she is a great friend
of Underwood of Washington I have been invited to her next weekly
“evening.” She ought to be a little different than the typical Hollywood
hostess--perhaps mildly Proustian. God knows I need some sort of
diversion besides bus rides and the rigor mortis of the local hooch.
-- -- -- --
304: TO WALDO FRANK
_Patterson,_ _June 12th ’28_
Dear goodhearted Brother: Your loan has been a godsend and I am only
afraid I have appeared insensitive in not writing my thanks before. But
you’ve been very busy getting settled, I know, and probably haven’t had
any such extra thoughts. It’s nice, damned fine, of you to ask me
up--maybe I’ll be able to make it along in August. But it’s a slim
chance. I want above all things to get _The Bridge_ completed this
summer, and aside from the necessity of taking any work which may come
along I’ll need to keep my head or rather my nose away from too tempting
horizons. But at least I _trust_ we’ll have a reunion and a long visit
in the Fall.
I meant long ago to tell you my rather disappointing experience with
Charlie.[59] During my first month on the Coast I happened to meet him
sitting in his favorite restaurant one evening. I had a friend with me
and he was also engaged, but I stopped for a moment in passing to say
hello--identifying myself with you (whose address he wanted
immediately). I later sent him an inscribed copy of _White Buildings_
along with a letter, but never got any response further than a formal
letter from his secretary acknowledging receipt of same, etc. As I had
already urged him to dine with me (my boss, Mr. Wise, was simply wild to
meet him and entertain him) I couldn’t press matters much further. He
was simply too busy otherwheres to be interested--that was obviously
it--and all the stars have built walls of mystery about themselves as
impregnable as Carcassonne! Just try to get them on the phone sometime!
But Charlie surely was never so radiant and handsome as when I saw
him.... Hair snow-white, which means almost as white as the smiling
flash of his teeth, and those same eyes of genius.
I’m hardly qualified to give you any fair report on my reactions to your
_NR_ series. I’ve missed several and those I did get a chance to read
(out west) were read under disturbing circumstances. I remember such
chapters as “Let’s be Comfortable,” “News as a Toy,” and the recent
chapter on “The Arts” as especially keen analysis. The first two or
three chapters seemed to hint at a little strain or rush; this more from
their almost painful condensation of material and opinion than from
other cause. But I ought to re-read them before barking. I can’t think
of any living American with greater integrity or courage, you prove it
on every page. The completed book will come out in the late fall, I take
it. -- -- -- --
305: TO ISIDOR & HELEN SCHNEIDER
_Patterson, N. Y._ _July 16th, 1928_
Dear Isidor & Helen: Your good Parisian letter reached me here on about
the third week after my return from the Coast. Leaving about the middle
of May, I took the southern route across Texas to New Orleans, then down
the Mississippi and up to NY by boat. The old French quarter of New
Orleans with its absinthe speakeasies and wonderful cooking seemed
unspeakably mellow and gracious after all the crass mechanical
perfection of Hollywood, and the six hours on the great delta were even
more symphonic than I had expected.
New York harbor looked both stridently busy and enormously friendly in
the early morning light. I was mightily glad to get back among friends;
I could find no work in California and excessively hysterical conditions
arose between me and my family there. Altogether it was intolerable. I
feel more like myself again, back in my familiar room at Mrs. Turner’s.
Besides, we have located a marvellous bootlegger on a neighboring hill,
who makes better beer than I’ve had north of Cuba! --/--/
306: TO HIS FATHER
_New York City_ _August 14th, 1928_
Dear Father: Your letter, forwarded from Patterson, reached me
yesterday, I have been offered the use of the flat of a friend of mine
[Cowley] who is spending the summer in the country, and I’m fortunate
enough to have it for several weeks. I’ve been cooking my own meals and
doing my best without the help of a flatiron to keep myself looking
spruce, but my shoes are giving out as well as the several small loans
that friends have given me--and so far I haven’t been able to make any
connection with ad. work. I guess I’ll have to give that up.
I agree with you completely in what you say about learning a trade; in
fact I have wanted to learn some regular trade like typesetting,
linotyping, etc., for a long time back. However, connections that pay
anything whatever while learning these trades are hard to find out
about. And, of course, I need something more than air to live on in the
meantime. I’m going to do my best during the next few days to find a job
as a plumber’s or mechanic’s helper. The work is physically heavier than
I have been used to for a long time, but I fancy I can make the
adjustment in due time. The way things are now I’ll consider myself
lucky to get anything. --/--/
307: TO HIS FATHER
_New York City_ _August 19, 1928_
Dear Father: I hope you won’t blame me for utilizing the check enclosed
in your letter for some immediate necessities, without which my first
pay day would seem even longer away! I can refund the money to you
later. Meanwhile it will seem good to have something definite to do--as
well as something definite to eat.
As I wired you, I start in tomorrow. The job isn’t much, but it can tide
me over to something better. A former Cleveland acquaintance of mine
has opened a book store here. He needs to be out a good deal collecting
stock, rare editions, etc., and I’m coming in as clerk, besides which I
shall have some work to do on his catalogues, make-up, etc. The offer
wasn’t made until last Friday, else I should have let you know sooner.
This may strike you as a rather poor alternative to your invitation to
return to Cleveland, but as there are two or three real possibilities
hanging fire here--and of considerable ultimate importance,--I feel that
I am justified in staying on the ground. One in particular, the
editorship of a magazine, I should hate to risk missing. Thank you a lot
though, Father, for your interest and help. --/--/
308: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
_Brooklyn, New York_ _Sept 16th, 1928_
Dear Charlotte and Richard: It has hurt me to think that you thought me
indifferent about returning the remainder of the money that you so
kindly loaned me. I confess my guilt: it _could_ have been done before.
But nevertheless at _no_ time since you wrote me asking for it. Owing to
the recent death of my Grandmother Hart (in Hollywood) I shall, however,
be able to discharge the obligation fairly soon, as I come into a slight
inheritance which will take care of several debts. I have been
struggling without any money for weeks, but have finally secured a
decent job with an advertising agency here.
This is perhaps a futile letter to write, since our friendship seems to
have been already sacrificed. But I owe it to myself perhaps as much as
to you to give you rightful evidence of my continued intention of honest
behavior, no matter what you may have thought of me. You don’t know how
often I have thought of you and regretted the circumstances of your
recent loss of interest in me. You don’t know the extent to which I feel
gratefully indebted to you both for many things outside the realm of
money or anything that money could ever buy. But there is no use in
trying to make apologies. As long as I believe in myself I shall insist
on my good intentions and with the ultimate faith of putting them into
practice. I can never, of course, ask others as much as that.
If you will be friendly enough to answer _this_ letter some time in the
next three months I shall be glad to know that at least I may be sure of
your present address. Otherwise, I’ll have to ask someone in Cleveland
to look you up in the directory or telephone book to ascertain your
present whereabouts at the time I’m able to write a check out.
309: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK
_Brooklyn, NY_ _Oct. 23rd, 1928_
Dear Charlotte: --/--/ Your letter made me feel a lot better. It lifted
a load from my spirit that I had felt for many months. I really need to
_see_ you, _talk_ with you to explain what a hell the last two years
have been. Perhaps you’d then see how it has been almost impossible for
me to write anyone. For who wants to hear nothing but troubles? I’ve
waited, putting off writing again and again, hoping to have something
interesting to offer--for that is what such as you and Richard deserve.
I can realize how deeply you have felt the loss of your mother. You seem
to have been having your share of tribulations.... O, I know.... How I
wish I could have seen you on your way through New York when you came
back from Europe! Now it may be some time before we get together again.
There is much to say, but little to tell--if you get what I mean. I
haven’t had a creative thought for so long that I feel quite lost and
_spurlos versenkt_. My present job lasts another week, and then I must
tramp around again to find another. Moving around, grabbing onto this
and that, stupid landladies--never enough sense of security to relax and
have a fresh thought--that’s about all the years bring besides new and
worse manifestations of family hysteria. It’s a great big bore! I feel
like saying what the Englishman did: “Too many buttons to button and
unbutton. I’m through!” -- -- -- --
310: TO MALCOLM COWLEY
[_Brooklyn_] _the 20th of the 28th at the A.M. 7-thirtieth_
Dear Malcolm: After the passionate pulchritude of the usual recent
maritime houreths--before embarking for the 20th story of the Henry L
Doherty Co’s 60 on Wall Street story--I salute your mss which arrived
yesterday morning--as well as the really cordial apologies accompanying
them for the really unhappy hours inaugurated last week by the hysteria
of S. God damn the female temperament! I’ve had thirty years of
it--lacking six months--and know something myself.
It’s me for the navy or Mallorca damned quick. Meanwhile sorting
securities of cancelled legions ten years back--for filing--pax
vobiscum--With Wall Street at 30 per--and chewing gum for lunch--
But here I am--full of Renault Wine Tonics--after an evening with the
Danish millionaire on Riverside--and better, thank God, a night with a
bluejacket from the Arkansas--raving like a ‘mad. And it’s time to go to
work. So long.... I’ll be careful with the mss.[60] And your book’ll be
out within 7 months.... About time! God bless you and give my love to
Peggy! And as W. J. Turner says: “O hear the swan song’s traffic’s cry!”
311: TO MALCOLM COWLEY
_Brooklyn, NY_ _Dec. 1, 1928_
Dear Malcolm: It has been a pleasure for me to spend part of the last
two days in typing the mss. of your book. Certainly I have been on more
intimate terms with the poems than ever, and my enthusiasm has been
heightened thereby rather than in any way diminished.
I now have two copies, one to turn over to the “secret” arbiter[61] here
and one to take with me to England. Whatever may or may not happen over
there I’ll at least be sure of having you along with me--which is much.
By the way, if the mss. is returned to you, refused, be sure to send it
at once to Coward-McCann, who, I understand, are calling for new poets
and planning some kind of series of them. Hanna [Josephson] spoke to me
about this yesterday.
Although I hope to get off next Saturday (probably on the _Tuscania_)
I’m not at all certain. The bank behaves too strangely--now ignores my
letters not to mention telegram. The meddlesome old nanny that is
handling the matter there will soon hear from me through a lawyer if
things don’t take a new turn by Monday. That’s the only way to handle
it, I guess. I’m to see Art Hays Monday and talk it over. At any rate, I
think it would be foolish to bring my troubles over to London with me
and have them poison my first impressions of the place.
To get back to the poems: I omitted practically nothing but the
Decorations. The arrangement you made is ideal. As to the places for the
following, I think you’ll agree that they are ideal:
“Tumbling Mustard” just before “Memphis Johnny”
“Still Life” just before “Seaport” (it doesn’t fit in the Grand Manner
section particularly)
“Two Winter Sonnets” just after “St. Bartholomew” (they come in
eloquently there)
Really the book as we now have it has astonishing structural sequence.
Most of the more doubtfully important poems come in the central section.
There is the fine indigenous soil sense to begin with in the Juniata,
and the eloquent and more abstract matter mounting to a kind of climax
toward the end. Hope you don’t mind my enthusiasm!
See _Show Boat_ when you come to town. Wise took me last night; the
beautiful new Ziegfield Theatre has them all beat--and the settings,
songs, costumes and glistening lithe girlies! Like greased
lightning--the suave mechanical perfection of the thing.
You may not hear from me again if I leave next Saturday, but Mrs. Turner
will be informed when I leave anyway. I’ll see that your mss. (the
original) is remailed to you registered, early next week. ----and I went
on the best bat ever last night--Sam’s [Loveman] old place--finally two
cops came in and joined the party at three o’clock--asked ---- to marry
me and live with me in Spain--but she’s got to wait for her divorce from
the Danish gaucho now on the pampas.
312: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN
[_R.M.S._] _Tuscania off Newfoundland_ _Dec. 9 ’28_
Ahoy Sam! The ship is rearing like a high-strung broncho--and I’m out
walking the quarter-deck much of the time--enjoying the rhythmical lift
and plunge of it. We’ve had high seas running and sleet and rain since
Sandy Hook but I’ve been down for every meal. O it’s great! The bad gin
pains are leaving my head and--taking only the bad memories with
them--_not_ the pleasant thoughts of you and Mony [Grunberg] and others.
This is a pleasant boat--not at all crowded--and such nice people.
English servants know how to be pleasant as well as efficient. And of
course I _would_ be given the one nearly handsome English waiter in the
salon! Rather tough food--but I’m getting used to it. The whiskey--which
is all I’ve tried thus far--is like balm of Gilead--or whatever Poe
said. A little goes a long ways--and really doesn’t sadden one.
P.S. Melville makes fine reading on this trip.
313: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN
(Postcard)
_Off Cornwall [England]_ [_December 13_]
Gorgeous weather all the way. Today is like the “Tristram” verse of
Swinburne. Millions of sea gulls following us and soaring overhead with
such a flood of golden light as seems tropical. The coast of Cornwall in
sight, and Plymouth by tea time.
314: TO CHARMION WIEGAND
_R.M.S. Rumrunia off the Coast of Ireland_ _near Christmas ’28_
Dear Charmion: My performance given at the Anderson party last summer
was but a slight forecast to the splendors of my behavior night before
last--when at a bal masque, dressed in a red coat of a sergeant-major,
sailor hat, shark swagger stick, etc.--I essayed a dervish whirl. But I
seem to have made no enemies and rum has become the favorite drink
throughout the cabin.
If anything, I’ve had almost too good a time! I have been the only
native American in the whole tourist cabin. The rest being Britishers,
Canadians, Australians visiting relatives abroad, etc.--and all of them
the pleasantest crowd I ever met. Think I’m going to like London
entirely too well for an early take-off to Spain. One old squire took me
for a Cambridge man--and I admit that after a day or two in conflab with
some of these natives one does tend to lose one’s “middle-western
accent.”
You must excuse my exuberance momentarily at least. I can’t stop being
tremendously pleased at the wonderful ale, the pleasant manners of
practically everybody (and one gets such graceful and attentive service
everywhere), the balmy spring air, and the prospect of meeting more of
such people soon on foreign shores. I feel really rested now, despite a
hectic round of pleasures.
It was so nice of you to come to the little beer party. When I think of
the mad rush of that last day I’m moved to wonder how I ever kept on my
feet. But I enjoyed the evening after all. Hope you met some people that
you liked. I’m always a little vain about my friends. --/--/
315: TO WALDO FRANK
[_London, England_] _December 28 ’28_
Dear Waldo: Landed here with incipient flu but have managed to stave it
off with good Jamaica rum and quinine. The city is soberly
impressive--full of courtesy and deep character. I feel now as though
I’d like to settle here--and even might--later on. But it’s too
expensive to linger long now--and I’m apt to be off to Paris next week.
Shall not stay there very long, either, as I want to get settled and at
work.
Am expecting to meet Edgell Rickword soon but not many others. Laura
Riding and Robert Graves (friend of Col. Lawrence and the one who
introduced Cummings here) have been delightfully hospitable. I had a
most luscious plum pudding with them Christmas -- -- -- -- on the Thames at
Hammersmith in front of Wm. Morris’ old headquarters.
No snow here at all--and the grass as green as summer in the parks. I’ve
already seen a great deal--tramping about by myself, drinking Australian
wine with old charwomen in Bedford Street--talking with ex-soldiers, and
then the National Gallery with the marvelous “Agony in the Garden” of El
Greco. The beautiful black and white streaked stone facades of the
buildings make me quite sentimental. London is negative (as Laura says)
but one gets a chance to breathe and deliberate. And there is something
genuine about nearly every Englishman one meets. I feel almost too much
at home.
Your pipe grows mellower every day. It’s a little like Paul Robeson’s
voice--and I’ve been enjoying him by the way. He and Essie have taken a
sumptuous home of an ex-ambassador to Turkey for the rest of his
engagement. But he’s anxious to get to Paris to earn some astonishing
laurels offered him there. --/--/
1929
316: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN
(Postcard)
[_Paris, France_] [_January 23, 1929_]
Dinners, soirées, poets, erratic millionaires, painters, translations,
lobsters, absinthe, music, promenades, oysters, sherry, aspirin,
pictures, Sapphic heiresses, editors, books, sailors. _And How!_
317: TO JOSEPH STELLA
_Paris_ _January 24th, 1929_
Dear Mr. Stella: Sometime before leaving America Charmion Habicht
[Wiegand] showed me a copy of your privately issued monograph called
“New York,” containing your essay on Brooklyn Bridge and the marvelous
paintings you made not only of the Bridge but other New York subjects.
This has been the admiration of everyone to whom I have shown it. And
now I am writing you to ask if you will give permission to an editor
friend of mine to reproduce the three pictures--“The Bridge,” “The
Port,” and the one called “The Skyscrapers.” He would also like to
reprint your essay.
I am referring to Mr. Eugene Jolas who is an editor of _transition_--a
magazine which you have probably heard of. He would like to use this
material in the next number if you will be so kind as to give us
permission. _transition_ is able to pay little or nothing now for
contributions, but, since our friend Varèse has told me that your essay
has never been printed in any journal, we feel that so splendid and
sincere a document should have wider circulation than private printing
has allowed it.
I have also a private favor of my own to ask of you. I should like
permission to use your painting of the Bridge as a frontispiece to a
long poem I have been busy on for the last three years--called _The
Bridge_. It is a remarkable coincidence that I should, years later, have
discovered that another person, by whom I mean you, should have had the
same sentiments regarding Brooklyn Bridge which inspired the main theme
and pattern of my poem. --/--/
318: TO GERTRUDE STEIN
[_Paris_] _Jan. 31, ’29_
Dear Miss Stein: May I introduce myself as a friend of your friend,
Laura Riding?
And on that presumption may I ask to see you some hour early next
week--whenever it may suit your convenience to have me call--?
I am going away for the weekend, but shall probably be back by Monday
evening. I hope I may hear from you.
319: TO MALCOLM COWLEY
[_Paris_] _Feb. 4 ’29_
Dear Malcolm: Time here flies faster than I can count. And now along
comes the good news from you about the book of poems. Of course I’m all
the happier that you got better terms from Hal [Smith]--it’s all to the
good. But I do hope that you have seen Munson by this time, and at least
thanked him for his interest. For the very fact that you were able to
make such an announcement to Hal may well have influenced his interest
to a great extent. Such matters are rather officious for me to mention I
fear, but I do think Munson deserves some real credit. --/--/
I’m dizzy, also, with meeting people. “Teas” are cocktails here--and
then that’s just the start of the evening. And as lions come these days,
I’m known already, I fear, as the best “roarer” in Paris.
Have just returned from a weekend at Ermenonville (near Chantilly) on
the estate of the Duc du Rochefoucauld where an amazing millionaire by
the name of Harry Crosby has fixed up an old mill (with stables and a
stockade all about) and such a crowd as attended _is_ remarkable. I’m
invited to return at any time for any period to finish _The Bridge_, but
I’ve an idea that I shall soon wear off my novelty. Anyway, Crosby, who
inherited the famous Walter Berry (London) library, has such things as
first editions of Hakklyt [Hakluyt] (I can’t spell today) and is going
to bring out a private edition of _The Bridge_ with such details as a
reproduction of Stella’s picture in actual color as frontispiece.
He’s also doing Lawrence, Cummings and Kay Boyle. It takes a book to
describe the Crosbys--but it has (I mean the connection) already led me
to new atrocities--such as getting drunk yesterday and making violent
love to nobility. As -- -- -- -- was just about to marry, I couldn’t do
better, though all agree (including Kay Boyle and Lawrence Vail) that I
did my best. --/--/
320: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Paris_] _February 7th, 1929_
Dear Waldo: It would take volumes to tell you all that’s
happened--mainly the people I’ve met, I fear, and just that sort of
thing. For I haven’t got down to work yet, and probably won’t do so
until I get off to some quieter place in the country. This City, as you
know, is the most interesting madhouse in the world. But I intend
getting away as soon as possible. Not to Spain, though, for a while. I
want to learn French--and as you know, Mallorca won’t teach me Spanish
either. So the above bank address is good for some time. And please
don’t forget to send me your _Re-discovery of America_ now, as soon as
possible. I need it as a balance against the seductions of Europe, for
I’m afraid I _am_ being seduced by the astonishing ease of life
hereabouts. Paris really is a test for an American, I’m beginning to
feel. And I’m so far from certain that I’m equal to it in my present
mood that I’m quite uneasy. However, things don’t look so bad. --/--/ I
had thought of going to Villefranche, but after last weekend at
Ermenonville I changed my mind. The beautiful grounds of the Chateau,
donkeys and bikes to ride, a whole tower to myself and all the service
that millionaires are used to having--all that is very alluring, and I
would be quite alone except for the gatherings on weekends. But Harry is
highly erratic and nothing may come of it. I may go out to Jolas’s place
in Haute-Marne instead. At any rate I won’t be far from Paris.
I can’t tell you how deeply I appreciate your generous pains in sending
me the letters of introduction. Gide, I heard, left for Africa a few
days before your letter reached me. I haven’t looked up Larbaud yet, but
intend to. I trust that I can use those for Spain at any time in the
future, for I do intend going to Spain, you know, perhaps before the end
of this year. Jolas took me around to meet Soupault and his wife who
entertain a good deal and who have been very generous with me. I haven’t
had a good talk yet with Aragon but have met him several times along
with others. An amazingly handsome fellow, I think, who possesses an
elegance that is rare. I went to see Gertrude Stein despite my
indifference to most of her work. One is supposed to inevitably change
one’s mind about her work after meeting her. I haven’t, but must say
that I’ve seldom met so delightful a personality. _And_ the woman is
beautiful! AND the Picassos!
Margy [Naumburg] has been here but I haven’t yet seen her. Everyone has
been having colds and flu and she didn’t escape. There is no point, I’m
sure, in listing more names, as it might well bore you. Certainly I’m a
bit tired with all the talking and chattering, however interesting it is
at times. I feel a great need to get into myself again, and into my
work. When I consider that it has been over a year since I have written
anything longer than scratch notes for _The Bridge_ I’m almost
overwhelmed. What a year it has been, too! It has been the most decisive
year of my life in a number of ways. But I also find that I now need
more strength than ever. --/--/
321: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
[_Paris_] _Feb. 26th, 1929_
Dear Charlotte & Richard: First of all--before you read another word of
this--you must swear to me not to repeat to anyone that you have even
heard from me, not even that you know where I am. I hate to begin my
letter so seriously, but in time you will know more about _why_ I don’t
want my family to find my whereabouts right now. I am very serious about
this request, and I’m sure that you have enough interest in my work to
abstain from any action which would cripple me.
It was fine to hear from you--two good long letters--and to know that
all is going along so well in every way. I’m especially glad that you,
Richard, have received such good notice and representation in the
theatre literature which you mentioned. And from the other matters
mentioned, I judge that Cleveland has been far from a cemetery--part of
the credit for which is due to you both, _I know_. The Christmas card
was a beauty, but then, so are all of them that you have ever made!
I scarcely know how to begin to tell you all that’s been happening to me
during the last year. But here’s a brief summary, omitting thousands of
details, all of which, however, are really important.... During my
sojourn with the millionaire in California last winter my mother made
life so miserable for me with incessant hysterical fits and interminable
nagging that I had to steal off east again, like a thief in the night,
in order to save my sanity or health from a complete breakdown. I went
back to Patterson and tried to pull myself together, without money or
prospects of any kind. Then in September, after I had secured a good job
with an advertising agency, my Grandmother died, leaving me the
inheritance which my grandfather bequeathed me over fifteen years ago.
Of course there had been a coolness between my mother and me ever since
I left California. The net result of this was that (being co-executor of
the estate with the Guardian Trust Co.) she held back her signature to
the papers for weeks, pretending to be too ill to sign her name. And
finally she threatened to do all sorts of things if I did not come at
once to California and spend it with her--among which she said she would
write to my father and try to get him to intercede with the bank against
paying me! This could have no effect whatever, but you may gather a
little bit from what I have said about just how considerate and
honorable she was! I can’t begin to tell you about all the underground
and harrowing tactics she employed. Got people who were practically
strangers to write me threatening and scolding letters, so that I never
came home from work without wonder--and trembling about what next I
should find awaiting me. She had, through abuse, destroyed all the
affection I had for her before I left the west; but now she made me
actually hate her. I finally had to consult a lawyer, who directed his
guns on the bank. This finally brought results. In the meantime I had
given up all my plans about buying a little country place in
Connecticut, for her ultimate home as much as mine. There was literally
no other sensible plan but to take my money and get out of communication
as soon as possible.
After having received written promise from the bank (as well as an
advance) that the money would be in my hands by a certain day, I went
ahead and engaged steamer passage to London. But the bank did not even
keep its word, and I did not actually get the money until a few hours
before the boat sailed. You can imagine my state of mind. I got on the
boat more dead than alive. And I have not since had the least desire to
know what is going on in California, and doubt if I ever _shall_ care.
Since my mother has made it impossible for me to live in my own country
I feel perfectly justified in my indifference. I have had no particular
quarrel with my father, and shall write him sometime after _The Bridge_
is done and I don’t fear mental complications. Meanwhile I’m so sure
that she has carried out her threat and written him certain things that
I’d rather keep out of it all. Twenty-five years of such exhausting
quibbling is enough, and I feel I owe myself a good long vacation from
it all. Neither one of them really cares a rap for me anyway. I have
much more to tell you sometime, but this is enough for now....
--/--/ Went to the famous dangerous and tough Limehouse section
expecting some exciting adventures, but found that most of the young
toughs drank only lemonade--and after I had had several swigs of Scotch
they all seemed to be afraid of me! O life is funny! I’d like to go back
to England sometime in the summer of the year. The damp, raw cold was
like a knife in my throat--and the hotels like cellars. I left there on
the 7th of January, and life has been like a carnival ever since--here
in Paris.
I’ve never been in such a social whirl--all sorts of amusing people,
scandalous scenes, cafe encounters, etc. Writers, painters, heiresses,
counts and countesses, Hispano-Suizas, exhibitions, concerts, fights,
and--well, you know Paris, probably better than I do. I had originally
intended to stop here only two or three weeks on the way to a permanent
location at Mallorca, one of the Balearic Islands (Spain). But I’ve
fallen so much in love with the French and French ways that I’ve decided
to stay here until summer anyway, and try to learn the language before
leaving.
All sorts of things have happened. Through Eugene Jolas, editor of
_transition_, I met Harry Crosby who is heir to all the Morgan-Harjes
millions and who is the owner of a marvelous de luxe publishing
establishment here. --/--/ He has renovated an old mill (16th century)
out on the ground of the chateau of the Comte du Rochefoucauld at
Ermenonville where I have spent several wild weekends. Polo with golf
sticks on donkeys! Old stagecoaches! Skating on the beautiful grounds of
the chateau! Oysters, absinthe, even opium, which I’ve tried, but don’t
enjoy. I had the pleasure, last week, of spending five days out there
working all by myself, with just the gardener and his wife bringing me
food and wine beside a jolly hearth-fire. And the beautiful forests all
around--like the setting for _Pelléas et Mélisande_! I’m going out again
soon. Meanwhile I dream of how fine they’ve promised to publish _The
Bridge_--on sheets as large as a piano score, so none of the lines will
be broken--and they have already sent to the Brooklyn Art Museum to have
the Stella picture of the Bridge copied in color for reproduction as a
frontispiece! --/--/
322: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN
(Postcard)
[_Collioure, France_] _April 23 ’29_
Nightingales all night and the sound of surf all day! I don’t know what
could rival this spot for form and color. Hope you are alright--you
certainly haven’t wasted much ink telling me!
323: TO SLATER BROWN
_Collioure, Pyrénées-Orientales_ _25 Avril ’29_
Bill: Why the hell don’t you write to me? You used to. And here I am,
sitting by the shore of the most shockingly beautiful fishing
village--with towers, baronial, on the peaks of the Pyrenees all about,
wishing more than anything else that you were on the other side of the
table.
This begins to look as good as the West Indies. Maybe--if I could talk
Catalan it would be better. I began to feel as you predicted about
Paris. Wish you were with me! I don’t know whether you want to hear from
me or not--since you have never written--but here’s my love anyway,
Bill--
324: TO GERTRUDE STEIN
(Postcard)
[_Collioure_] [_ca. April 29_]
There has been too much wind to notice odors. I like it so far, and
expect to stay awhile. Feel quite indigenous since spending last night
out on a sardine schooner. The dialect isn’t so easily assimilated.
325: TO ISIDOR SCHNEIDER
_Collioure, Pyr.-Orientales_ _May 1st, 1929_
Dear Isidor: --/--/ As regards creative writing--I can’t say that I’m
finding Europe extremely stimulating. I left home in a bad state of
nerves and spirit and haven’t exactly recovered yet, so perhaps my
reactions are not as fresh as they might be. Perhaps a few weeks of the
quiet of places like this ancient fishing port may change my mind--but
at any rate I haven’t so far completed so much as one additional section
to _The Bridge_. It’s coming out this fall in Paris, regardless.
-- -- -- -- If it eventuates that I have the wit or inspiration to add to
it later--such additions can be incorporated in some later edition. I’ve
alternated between embarrassment and indifference for so long that when
the Crosbys urged me to let them have it, declaring that it reads well
enough as it already is, I gave in. Malcolm advised as much before I
left America, so I feel there may be some justification. The poems,
arranged as you may remember, do have I think, a certain progression.
And maybe the gaps are more evident to me than to others ... indeed,
they must be. --/--/ I recently have been informed that the 1st edition
of _White Bldgs._ is sold out. There won’t be another for awhile, I
guess. There were only 500 printed, just half the number that I, until
recently, had supposed. But that’s the usual number, I’m told.
I do hope you prevail on L[iveright] to bring out Hopkins’ verse. But I
doubt it. I think he’s a bit thick-skinned to sympathize. Recently a
friend of Laura Riding and Graves, Geoffrey Phibbs, whom I’ve never met,
sent me a copy right out of a clear sky. I was dumb-foundered--for it
certainly is rare when such wealthy bibliophiles as Harry Crosby are
unable through all their London agents to locate a copy. So when I come
back, we’ll have at least one copy “in the family” as it were! whatever
Liveright decides.
London, I can still believe, might be delightful under proper
circumstances. I had incipient flu before I landed, then the raw cold of
the particular season, the bad hotel accommodations, the indigestible
food AND Laura’s [Riding] hysterical temper at the time--all combined to
send me off with no particular regrets. It’s certainly the most
expensive place I can imagine--more than even New York unless you’re
really settled down. I loved its solid, ponderous masonry--and the gaunt
black-and-white streakings and shadings. It’s a city for the etcher. I
must tell you about my excursion to Limehouse sometime--where, expecting
to be blackjacked, etc., I drank so many scotch-and-sodas during a game
of darts in one of the pubs, that I frightened people, actually scared
some of the toughs about--all of whom struck me as being very pleasant
people. I’d like to go there again and stay longer sometime--but not
during the winter!
As for Paris, I’ll have to wait until I see you to touch the subject.
Phillipe Soupault and his wife were about the most hospitable French
people I met, and Gertrude Stein about the most impressive personality
of all. The marvellous room of hers, the Picasso’s, Juan Gris and others
(including some very interesting youngsters) on the walls! Then there
were Ford Madox Ford, Wescott, Bernadine Szold (just back from the
Orient), Richard Aldington, Walter Lowenfels (who has an interesting
book of verse coming out in England--(Heinemann), Emma Goldman, Klaus
Mann, Eugene MacCown, Jolas (whom I like very much), Edgar Varèse, Rene
Crevel, Kay Boyle, (who has decided she likes me) and a hundred others
just as interesting, or more so, who aren’t particularly known. The
Tates are living in Ford’s apartment while he is away, and declare they
never want to leave Paris. I like it all too well, myself, but would
have to live there a long while before I could settle down to accomplish
any work, I fear. And lately--all cities get on my nerves after a few
weeks. I’d never want to settle down for good over here like many do,
however,--town _or_ country. For even here by the blue inland sea, with
ancient citadels and fortifications crowning the heights of a lovely
white-walled, village--I can’t help thinking of my room out there in
Patterson. Silly, I know ... but what can one do about it?
My plans are vague. May stay here two months more or only two weeks.
Spain is very near, but also, I hear, very expensive. I’m crossing over
to a nearby town to see a bull fight in a couple of days. But I may not
explore it much further at the time, regardless of my intense interest.
There are other small ports between here and Marseille which are very
intriguing. I can’t regret not seeing everything this trip--or even
never. You see I like France pretty well! -- -- -- --
326: TO ALLEN TATE
_Marseille,_ _11 June ’29_
Dear Allen: --/--/ I didn’t stay more than three weeks at Collioure.
Since then I’ve been in and about Marseille, a city which has a great
deal of interest to me, although there’s nothing whatever here to
interest the usual type of tourist. Have just come back from two weeks
visiting Roy Campbell and family out at Martigues, a sort of Venice and
Gloucester combined, being built on three islands made by canals joining
the Etang de Berre with the sea.
I have come to love Provence, the wonderful Cezannesque light (you see
him everywhere here) and the latinity of the people. Arabs, Negros,
Greeks, and Italian and Spanish mixtures. The Campbells rent a house and
have a maid for almost nothing, but swimming isn’t good there and there
are other features which might not appeal to you as much as the country
east of here where you are planning to go. Marsden Hartley whom I
encountered here knows the whole coast, both sides of the Rhone, and
prefers it here. I’m coming back to Paris within a couple of weeks but
may take a swift excursion over to Nice and environs beforehand, just to
see what I’ve missed by hanging around here so long. Then maybe my
advice will be worth more than at present.
I’m planning on returning to N.Y. before very long. How soon depends
largely on what I hear from the Crosbys on my return to Paris regarding
their edition of _The Bridge_. I’m anticipating a good visit with you
and Carolyn [Gordon] before many days. Thanks a lot for the money order,
exactly correct in amount, and quite providential at the moment as the
bank has been slow in forwarding me funds. -- -- -- --
327: TO WALDO FRANK
(Postcard)
[_Marseille_] _June 17, 1929_
Can’t get around to that long and grateful letter to you that you so
much deserve. Why?--don’t ask me yet! But it isn’t because I don’t often
long to see you. I have been in an undecided state since before we last
met. I pray for relief.
328: TO MALCOLM COWLEY
[_Paris_] _July 3rd, 1929_
Dear Malcolm: Since reading the proofs I’m certain that the book is even
better than before. And the notes!--When you first mentioned them to me
I admit having trembled slightly at the idea. But since seeing them I
haven’t a doubt. The maturity of your viewpoint is evident in every
word. Humor and sincerity blend into some of the cleverest and adroit
writing I know of, leaving the book a much more solidified unit than it
was before. I haven’t had the original mss. with me for comparison, but
wherever I have noted changes they seem to be for the better. Nor do I
regret any of the additions. I like the added bulk of the book. Really,
Malcolm--if you will excuse me for the egoism--I’m just a little proud
at the outcome of my agitations last summer. _Blue Juniata_ will have a
considerable sale for a long period to come, for the bulk of it has a
classical quality--both as regards material and treatment--that won’t
suffer rejection by anyone who cares or who will later care for American
letters.
I would particularize more copiously except that I’m expecting to see
you within relatively so short a time.... I’ll be back in NY by the
first of September at the latest, and I may be back a month before.
Perhaps it’s just as well that a good part of my money is tied up in a
savings account in New York and inaccessible to me here. As it is, I
haven’t any great regrets about coming back at this time. When I come to
France again I’ll sail direct for Marseille--and it’s certainly my
intention to come again! I’m looking forward to talking it all over with
you--so get a little cider ready for the occasion! --/--/
329: TO CARESSE CROSBY
_Patterson, New York_ _August 8th, 1929_
Dear Caresse: Herewith are the gloss notes that I showed you, now
corrected and ready to include with the composition of the first two
sections of _The Bridge_. You will see where each block of them falls by
the _key lines_ typed at the left. I have kept them narrow as that seems
to be the custom--and we don’t want to crowd our margins. (See
MacLeish’s _Hamlet_ and the version of “The Ancient Mariner” as printed
in the _Oxford Anthology_.) I can’t help thinking them a great help in
binding together the general theme of “Powhatan’s Daughter.” As for the
Columbus note, it simply silhouettes the scenery before the colors
arrive to inflame it....
I’m working on the other remaining sections indicated in the index of
the ms. as you have it, and hope to get a couple of them off to you
within ten days. I haven’t had a chance to see Mr. Fox, director of the
Brooklyn Museum, yet, as he has been away on his vacation, but have an
appointment made with his secretary for early next week. I’m hoping to
see Harry Marks as soon as he returns in order to ask his advice about
having a copy made of the picture, the amount to pay, etc. Meanwhile,
from what Harry [Crosby] said, I judge that you are going ahead with
setting certain sections. Don’t rush along too fast, though--please! If
we get it out by the last of November it will be soon enough. Meanwhile
I’m not negotiating with Liveright or anyone else. I don’t think there
will be any difficulty whatever in disposing of the 250 which you are
printing. I don’t know how many people have already bespoken copies, and
I’ll send you a list of names later on which will be pretty sure-fire.
New York seems better than ever to me. The beaches are wonderful--and
packed with pulchritude. Where are you these days? I somehow can’t
picture you as still in Paris.
P.S. Please ask Harry if he can think of any job for that nice Danish
boy I introduced him to the morning I sailed. He’s without work or
funds--and starving. He’s an expert trainer and keeper of horses (Danish
Royal Artillery) and speaks English fairly well. -- -- -- -- Honest,
industrious, and will do anything that’s honorable.
330: TO HARRY AND CARESSE CROSBY
_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _August 30th, 1929_
Dear Harry and Caresse: I had my first visit with Harry Marks today and
am glad to hear that he has nothing as yet to report about any work of
yours on _The Bridge_. For, as you know, I am anxious to add more--the
“Cape Hatteras” section, at least--before you bring it out. This is now
being worked out rapidly, and the aeronautical sections which you so
much admired have been improved and augmented considerably. However, the
line-lengths are longer than in any other section--so long, in fact,
that to preserve them unbroken across the page I think we ought to
change our plan regarding page size and use, instead of the
previously-agreed-on Perse book for a model, your Mad Queen volume--even
better looking in other respects, too, I think. I hope I can ask you for
this change without appearing too presumptuous!
How did you like the “gloss” I sent you recently? I’m passionately
anxious to hear from you as soon as possible. --/--/
I’m settled at last in a comfortable furnished apartment--not far from
the navy yard. There have been great house-warmings, especially since I
can buy corn whiskey from my janitor for only $6. per gallon! No more
querulous, farty old landladies for me for awhile. Write me from now on
directly at the above address instead of Patterson. Liveright is issuing
a second edition of _White Buildings_--_Vanity Fair_ bestows laurels in
the Sept. issue--Eliot urges me to contribute as well as old Mamby Canby
of _The Sat[urday] Review_, the old enemy camp. So I’m feeling
optimistic to a large extent.
331: TO CARESSE CROSBY
_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _6th September 1929_
Dear Caresse: Just received the first specimen proofs a little late,
unfortunately, as my old landlady out at Patterson had thought they were
“printed matter” and had failed to forward them as soon as certain other
mail. But you’ll be writing me direct to the above address in the future
anyway.
Please go ahead and set up what sections you already have in the large
sized type. I like it much better than the smaller sized Caslon.
Only--don’t you think that page (I’m using it as a model) would look
better balanced, and certainly not crowded, with about four more lines
of verse on it? I think that the extreme depth of the bottom margin
looks awkward rather than luxurious.
I have more to send--and it’s very important. I am working like mad
since I’ve found this apartment where I can keep my own hours, etc. I’m
too rushed to type you out a final copy of this finale to the “Cape
Hatteras” section yet, but you can get some idea of what I’m
accomplishing by the muddled copy I’m including herewith. You’ll have
the final version--including what you read in Paris--within a few days,
aeronautics and all. It looks pretty good to me, and at least according
to _my_ ideas of _The Bridge_ this edition wouldn’t be complete or even
representative without it.
Then the “Quaker Hill” section--and “Indiana,” the final subsection to
“Powhatan’s Daughter” (which won’t require any gloss, I think) will come
in quick succession. I know what to plan on fairly well when I get into
one of these fevers of work. So please be patient. The book must have
these sections and I can promise to have them in your hands by the
second week in October! Then clear steaming ahead! I’m very happy about
the paper, format and all which you have selected. I’ll try to get you
the fresh photo of Stella’s picture within a few days.
I hope you and Harry are still planning on a visit here next winter.
Then maybe I can make up for the kiss I missed when sailing! Do you
really like that little necklace that much?!! My gifts seldom have so
fortunate a reception!
332: TO CARESSE CROSBY
[_Brooklyn_] _Sept. 6th ’29_
Dear Caresse: I forgot to include this new version of “Cutty Sark” in
the earlier letter sent today. I have changed very little--what little
has been only to promote clarity--which includes a more generous
sprinkling of punctuation. So please use this instead of the version
you’ve had.
The same quotation as before is used on the introductory sheet:
O, the navies old and oaken
O, the _Temeraire_ no more!
--_Melville_
Hope this doesn’t put you out!
333: TO CARESSE CROSBY
_Patterson, N. Y._ _Sept. 17, 1929_
Dear Caresse: I sent you, registered, the “Cape Hatteras” last version.
But retyping it for a magazine, I couldn’t help glimpsing some necessary
improvements. So please use this _second_ version, as enclosed. I vow
that you’ll be troubled by no further emendations--excepting perhaps a
comma or so on the proofs.
Since I’m writing I can’t help saying that I’m highly pleased with the
way I’ve been able to marshal the notes and agonies of the last two
years’ effort into a rather arresting synthesis....
Gosh, how I’d like a bottle of Cutty Sark tonight to soothe my excited
nerves! The countryside is the dryest here in years--and nothing to hope
for next year, as frost and this later drowth have ruined the apple
crop! I had to flee the heat in the city for a week’s work up here in my
old farmhouse room. It’s lovely, too. Another week of it--by which time
I expect to have finished the two remaining sections,--and I’ll be back
in city quarters (130 Columbia Hts)....
334: TO LORNA DIETZ
_Patterson_ _Wednesday [ca. October 23, 1929]_
Dearest Lorna: I’ve been _weltschmerzing_ a little bit all by myself
here since last Saturday afternoon, when I suddenly picked up and left
town. I’ve never seen such color as this year’s autumnal shades, but the
storm that began this morning after three wonderful days of sunshine
probably won’t leave so much on the boughs to be gazed at....
Nevertheless I’m staying on at least until next Monday--and maybe
somewhat longer. I feel quite rested already, but I know that I need a
little “reserve” after the way I’ve been acting. I’m _hoping_ also, to
complete the last two sections [_The Bridge_], God ‘elp me! And then to
come back to town and see you again in your sweet, new, cheerful, rosy
little nest! -- -- -- --
335: TO CARESSE CROSBY
_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _December 26th, 1929_
Dearest Caresse: I am hastily enclosing the final version of “Quaker
Hill,” which ends my writing on _The Bridge_. You can now go ahead and
finish it all. I’ve been slow, Heaven knows, but I know that you will
forgive me. I haven’t added as many verses to what you took with you as
I had expected. I had several more, roughly, in notes, but think that my
present condensation is preferable. “Quaker Hill” is not, after all, one
of the major sections of the poem; it is rather by way of an “accent
mark” that it is valuable at all.
By the way, will you see that the middle photograph (the one of the
barges and tug) goes between the “Cutty Sark” Section and the “Hatteras”
Section. That is the “center” of the book, both physically and
symbolically. Evans is very anxious, as am I, that no ruling or printing
appear on the pages devoted to the reproductions--which is probably your
intention anyway.
I have an idea for a change in one line of the dedication “To B.
Bridge.” If you don’t like it, don’t change it. But I feel that it is
more logical, even if no more suggestive. Instead of:
“--_And elevators heave us to our day_”
I suggest
“--_Till elevators drop us from our day_”
I’ll leave the choice to you.
I think of you a great deal. This letter doesn’t represent _me_ really,
at all. But I must get it off for the _Mauretania_ or else risk the
delays of one of the slower steamers, and I fear that you are already
impatient. I shall write you more very soon, meanwhile I hope that you
have recovered somewhat from the exhaustion that must have followed on
your brave and marvelous endurance at the time of your departure. --/--/
P.S. Please send a review copy to Yvor Winters--RFD1, Palo Alto,
California. -- -- -- --
1930
336: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK
_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _February 11th, 1930_
Dear Charlotte: I shoulda, kinda, gotta, really write you before ... but
how time does fly! No, I’m not in Africa chasing lions and monkeys, but
right here in Babylon hunting jobs. Sometimes I am sure, very sure
indeed, that my days of romance are thoroughly dead and passed. I happen
to be in that mood now--and if money has anything to do with the matter
perhaps I’m right. Friends make a big difference however, and I hope I
may always be expecting another letter from you and Richard.
I almost shed tears when I think of how little I saw of you during my
last visit. My melodramatic departure and the attending circumstances
sent me to bed with a backache for three weeks after I got home. Then,
as you guessed, the terrible shock of Harry Crosby’s suicide threw me
flat again for another week. I had just given a big party for him and
his wife a few days before that happened, and I was with his wife and
mother on the evening when the disaster occurred. In fact it was I who
had to bring the terrible news to those two lovely women. Mrs. Crosby
left for France a couple of days later, just as she had planned to do
anyway. I think she has been a very brave woman to go right ahead and
bring out the Paris edition of _The Bridge_ on regular schedule. I heard
from her yesterday--and by now the edition is ready to be shipped to the
agent here, Harry F. Marks, ----. As I told you, it’s a beautiful job of
printing. The type used is a new French type, very much like the face
which Richard recommended, Garamond. The Liveright edition (ready April
1st) is in Garamond and will be quite handsome also. Great interest has
been aroused in advance and I am sure to get some very laudatory
reviews. I really don’t want to write any poetry for awhile now, but
just the same feel somehow depressed that I haven’t some ambitious
project on hand to take the place of _The Bridge_. I haven’t seen the
dancers that you spoke of, but hear that they are very good. If you ever
get a chance to see the pantomime of Angna Enters in Cleveland be sure
not to miss her. She is wonderful! Humor, pathos, tragedy--the whole
gamut of the emotions. And there have been some wonderful art shows here
this winter, better than any I saw in Europe. The Museum of Modern Art
right now has a marvelous collection of modern French painters, etc.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Marin shows--and I wish you could see the show of a
friend of mine, Peter Blume! --/--/
337: TO WALDO FRANK
[_Brooklyn_] _March 16th_
Dear Waldo: It was _so_ kind of you to have replied so quickly and
generously! I feel quite guilty for not having thanked you sooner. I’ve
really never known so discouraging a time job-hunting. Insomnia has got
me on the rack--and I really can’t envisage just what is in store, but
perhaps after the reviews of _The Bridge_ come out (Liveright’s edition
is due out next week) I’ll possibly be able to rally my confidence and
make a better impression in “the business world.”
Meanwhile the disintegrating forces of N.Y. strike me as pretty severe!
It was reassuring to know that you got your copy of _The Bridge_.
Cummings and one or two others didn’t--quite inexplicably. There’s much
in it new to your eyes, and I am quite tremulous of your opinion, though
perfectly content to wait for the time when you can afford to give it a
good reading.
I’ll try to find you a first edition of _White Buildings_--but I haven’t
much hope of locating one. Among your books somewhere you’ll find the
copy I gave you, inscribed too, for I’m awfully certain I didn’t fail in
that essential courtesy due long ago. Or you may have lost it. I’ll send
you a copy of the second edition anyhow, and if my memory has served me
wrong you’ll forgive me I’m sure. --/--/
338: To Paul Rosenfeld
_Patterson, N.Y._ _April 21st_,
Dear Paul: I’m sorry not to have the “Letter”[62] in your hands by this
time. I’m hoping that a week’s delay won’t afflict your schedule too
seriously.
As usual, when I attempt any sort of technical disquisitions I’m
struggling against the chronic habit I seem to have--of trying to cram
everything into one paragraph! I got clogged up, then paralyzed,--at
least momentarily thrown off. But my intentions are honest and good. And
I’m hoping to make my promise good by next Saturday.
There’s no liquor out here, at any rate.
339: TO HERBERT WEINSTOCK
_Patterson, New York_ _April 22nd, 1930_
Dear Herbert Weinstock: You have my sincerest gratitude for your
enthusiastic review of _The Bridge_. Van Vuren had already sent me a
copy, and I was just on the point of writing you my thanks when along
came your good letter.
I hope I am deserving of such lofty companions as you group me with. I
am almost tempted to believe your claims on the strength of your amazing
insight into my objectives in writing, my particular symbolism, the
intentional condensation and “density” of structure that I occasionally
achieve, and the essential religious motive throughout my work. This
last-mentioned feature commits me to self-consciousness on a score that
makes me belie myself a little. For I have never consciously approached
any subject in a religious mood; it is only afterward that I, or someone
else generally, have noticed a prevalent piety. God save me from a
Messianic predisposition!
It is pertinent to suggest, I think, that with more time and familiarity
with _The Bridge_ you will come to envisage it more as one poem with a
clearer and more integrated unity and development than was at first
evident. At least if my own experience in reading and rereading Eliot’s
_Wasteland_ has any relation to the circumstances this _may_ be found to
be the case. It took me nearly five years, with innumerable readings to
convince myself of the essential unity of that poem. And _The Bridge_ is
at least as complicated in its structure and inferences as _The
Wasteland_--perhaps more so.
I shall remember to write you my exact whereabouts in time to reach you
before you leave for the East and Europe, and we shall meet somewhere in
New York. At present the unemployment situation has me balked for any
definite location beyond the next day or so.
340: TO EDA LOU WALTON
_Patterson, New York_ _April 23rd, 1930_
Dear Eda Lou: I am enclosing an extract from a letter written to Otto
Kahn some time ago explaining my intentions in certain sections of _The
Bridge_. I submit it to you more or less as I did to him, not as a
justification for the poem but as a fairly accurate chart of certain
purposes in the poem which I may or may not have succeeded in
accomplishing. It may interest you. And since you have been kind enough
to include the poem in your course at N.Y.U., it may prove even helpful
in elucidating certain aspects of the poem.
Please keep this paper to yourself, however. I am at present busy with
an elaboration of it into a more or less formalized essay for _The New
American Caravan_. I’d like to have it back within two weeks if it won’t
trouble you too much.
341: TO SELDEN RODMAN
_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _May 22nd, 1930_
Dear Mr. Rodman: Your criticism of _The Bridge_ was very much to the
point, and I am grateful for your enthusiasm. I also share your
admiration for the poetry of Archibald MacLeish, though I feel that at
times he betrays too evidently a bias toward the fashionable pessimism
of the hour so well established by T. S. Eliot.
I tried to break loose from that particular strait-jacket, without
however committing myself to any oppositional form of didacticism. Your
diffidence in ascribing any absolute conclusions in the poem is
therefore correct, at least according to my intentions. The poem, as a
whole, is, I think, an affirmation of experience, and to that extent is
“positive” rather than “negative” in the sense that _The Waste Land_ is
negative.
In a few days I am leaving town for the summer, but I should like to
meet you next autumn if you are in this vicinity then.
342: TO ISIDOR SCHNEIDER
_Patterson, N.Y._ _June 8, ’30_
Dear Isidor: --/--/ That makes me all the more grateful for the evident
care which you took in your review of _The Bridge_. Certainly I don’t
see what more I could ask for--than your generous credit to and
recognition of practically all the aspirations implicit in the poem. I
hope the actual poem is deserving of it all. If you have read Winters’
attack in the June issue of _Poetry_ you cannot have been more
astonished than I was to note the many reversals of opinion he has
undergone since reading my acknowledgment to Whitman in the later “Cape
Hatteras” section.
Had it not been for our previous extended correspondence I would not, of
course, have written him about it. But as things stood I could hardly
let silence infer an acceptance on my part of all the wilful distortions
of meaning, misappropriations of opinion, pedantry and pretentious
classification--besides illogic--which his review presents par
excellence. I must read what prejudices he defends, I understand,
against writing about subways, in the anti-humanist symposium. Poets
should defer alluding to the sea, also, I presume, until Mr. Winters has
got an invitation for a cruise!
I haven’t any work whatever in mind. I guess I can trust my father’s
promise of a small allowance to carry me along out here until fall, when
the gates of employment may prove a little better oiled than they have
for some time past. If you hear of anything, Isidor, please let me know.
I’m aching to get busy at almost anything. --/--/
343: TO ALLEN TATE
_Gaylordsville, Conn._ _July 13th, 1930_
Dear Allen: Your last good letter and the admirable review of _The
Bridge_ in _The Hound & Horn_ deserved an earlier response, but time has
somehow just been drifting by without my being very conscious of it. For
one thing, I have been intending to get hold of a copy of _The Hound &
Horn_ and give your review a better reading, before replying, than I
could achieve at the tables in Brentano’s when I was in town about two
weeks ago. I still haven’t a copy and consequently may wrong you in
making any comments whatever. But as I don’t want to delay longer I hope
you’ll pardon any discrepancies.
The fact that you posit _The Bridge_ at the end of a tradition of
romanticism may prove to have been an accurate prophecy, but I don’t yet
feel that such a statement can be taken as a foregone conclusion. A
great deal of romanticism may persist--of the sort to deserve serious
consideration, I mean.
But granting your accuracy--I shall be humbly grateful if _The Bridge_
can fulfil simply the metaphorical inferences of its title.... You will
admit our age (at least our predicament) to be one of transition. If
_The Bridge_, embodying as many anomalies as you find in it, yet
contains as much authentic poetry here and there as even Winters
grants,--then perhaps it can serve as at least the function of a link
connecting certain chains of the past to certain chains and tendencies
of the future. In other words, a diagram or “process” in the sense that
Genevieve Taggard refers to all my work in estimating Kunitz’s
achievement in the enclosed review. This gives it no more interest than
as a point of chronological reference, but “nothing ventured, nothing
gained”--and I can’t help thinking that my mistakes may warn others who
may later be tempted to an interest in similar subject matter.
Personally I think that Taggard is a little too peremptory in dispensing
with Kunitz’s “predecessors.” We’re all unconscious evolutionists, I
suppose, but she apparently belongs to the more rabid ranks. I can’t
help wishing I had read more of Kunitz before seeing her review. He is
evidently an excellent poet. I should like to have approached him, not
as one bowing before Confucius, nor as one buying a new nostrum for lame
joints. Taggard, like Winters, isn’t looking for poetry any more. Like
Munson, they are both in pursuit of some cure-all. Poetry as poetry (and
I don’t mean merely decorative verse) isn’t worth a second reading any
more. Therefore--away with Kubla Khan, out with Marlowe, and to hell
with Keats! It’s a pity, I think. So many true things have a way of
coming out all the better without the strain to sum up the universe in
one impressive little pellet. I admit that I don’t answer the
requirements. My vision of poetry _is_ too personal to “answer the
call.” And if I ever write any more verse it will probably be at least
as personal as the idiom of _White Buildings_ whether anyone cares to
look at it or not.
This personal note is doubtless responsible for what you term as
sentimentality in my attitude toward Whitman.[63] It’s true that my
rhapsodic address to him in _The Bridge_ exceeds any exact evaluation of
the man. I realized that in the midst of the composition. But since you
and I hold such divergent prejudices regarding the value of the
materials and events that W. responded to, and especially as you, like
so many others, never seem to have read his _Democratic Vistas_ and
other of his statements sharply decrying the materialism, industrialism,
etc., of which you name him the guilty and hysterical spokesman, there
isn’t much use in my tabulating the qualified, yet persistent reasons I
have for my admiration of him, and my allegiance to the positive and
universal tendencies implicit in nearly all his best work. You’ve heard
me roar at too many of his lines to doubt that I can spot his worst, I’m
sure.
It amuses me to see how Taggard takes up some of Winters’ claims against
me (I expected this and look for more) in his article in the
Anti-Humanist volume, especially as that borrowing doesn’t seem to have
obviated his own eclipse according to her estimate of the new
constellation. I have the feeling that Miss Taggard is not only
conducting her own education in public (as someone once said of George
Moore) but also the education of her subjects.... At least she seems now
to have attained that acumen which is a confusion to all.
I’m leaving this week-end for a visit to Cummings in New Hampshire.
After a final row with Addie M. Turner (who is about to sell her place
anyway) I have moved my things down the road to Fitzi’s [Fitzgerald].
Occasionally I am appalled at my apparently chronic inability to
relinquish some hold or connection that has long since ceased to yield
me anything but annoyance--until some violence of fates forces my
release. That’s one of many ways I seem to keep of wasting time. --/--/
344: TO GUGGENHEIM MEMORIAL FOUNDATION[64]
[_Gaylordsville_] [_August 29, 1930_]
My application for a fellowship is prompted by a desire for European
study and creative leisure for the composition of poetry. I am
interested in characteristics of European culture, classical and
romantic, with especial reference to contrasting elements implicit in
the emergent features of a distinctive American poetic consciousness.
My one previous visit to Europe, though brief, proved creatively
stimulating in this regard, as certain aspects of my long poem, _The
Bridge_, may suggest. Modern and medieval French literature and
philosophy interest me particularly. I should like the opportunity for
a methodical pursuit of these studies in conjunction with my creative
projects.
My next volume of poetry will probably be issued by Horace Liveright,
Inc., who has already issued my two previous books, _White Buildings_
and _The Bridge_.
345: TO ALLEN TATE
_Gaylordsville, Conn._ _Sept. 7th, 1930_
Dear Allen: Have you ever had boils? I got my first specimen during my
visit to the Cummingses six weeks ago, brought it home along with
several up-and-coming progeny, and “the loyal and royal succession of
the Plantagenets” (as E.E. referred to them) has not left me yet. Since
the throne room is in my right arm pit, not to mention the chamber and
royal nursery, I’ve scarcely been able to manipulate my right arm to the
meek extent of writing a letter much of the time. I think that I have
now established at least my better intentions!
The pictures of your homestead were much appreciated and widely
circulated hereabouts. It’s my opinion that you now have about all one
could ask for in the way of rural comfort not to mention dignity.
Certainly it surpasses anything owned and directed by any of our mutuals
in this valley. I should enjoy the visit you suggested (many thanks!)
but, boils or no boils, I’ve got to get located in some office as soon
now as possible--or at least be on the scene of interrogation, prison,
palace, and supplication. --/--/
I was glad to get your _Three Poems_. The distinguished diction
throughout reminds me of the little advance I have ever made in
essential flexibility and the finer intonations. These qualities seem
most evident to me in the “Message from Abroad,” which, though it is
largely inferential to me in its substance, is in a way, all the more
welcome as a poem to be re-read for a multiple suggestiveness that may
very well take on clearer perspective with time. “The Cross” keeps me
guessing a little too strenuously. I can’t help thinking it perhaps too
condensed, and, as Bill [Brown] suggested, a not entirely fused mélange
of ecclesiastical and highly-personalized imagery. In which case you sin
no more than Eliot in the recent “Ash-Wednesday.” The “Ode to the
Confederate Dead” is as excellent as ever, I don’t think essentially
improved except as regards rhythm: the wind-and-leaf interpolations
adding a certain subjective continuity.
My summer seems like a blank to me right now. Perhaps my study of
Dante--the _Commedia_ which I had never touched before--will have been
seen to have given it some significance, but that isn’t much to boast
of. --/--/
346: TO SOLOMON GRUNBERG
_N.Y.C._ _Sept. 30th ’30_
Dear Mony: --/--/ Now that I am back in town again, looking for the
needles in haystacks and jobs in limbo,--now that the most monotonous
and familiar situation of _all_ engrosses, nay inundates me, I’m taking
“time off” to answer in the hope that you’ll write me more news and also
be sure to look me up on your next visit to these parts.
I’m most grateful for your continued interest in _The Bridge_. After so
much grandiose talk as I indulged myself in during its interrupted
progress it’s a wonder if most of my friends aren’t appalled at its
ultimate shortcomings. Some of them are. It’s gone into a second
printing, however, which means a sale exceeding the first thousand. If
last spring hadn’t ushered in such a calamitous slump in all books I
imagine I might have been more fortunate; at any rate I can’t complain
about most of the reviews.
My summer was a kind of steady doldrums, enlivened only by a sudden
insight into the values and beauty of Dante’s _Commedia_. Not that I’ve
learned Italian, but that I found a decent translation (Temple Classics
Edition) thanks to Eliot’s inspiring essay on Dante. My recent struggles
with a poem of large proportions and intricate framework, I think, gave
me a maturer appreciation of the _Commedia_ than I could have mustered
ten years ago. Sometimes one feels that one’s neglect or “indifference”
to a great masterpiece is almost justified, pending the proper
development of one’s own powers of perception proportionate to the
opportunity postponed. (I didn’t realize that alliteration was so “on
the job” this morning!) Of course I now realize how much more than ever
I have to work to accomplish anything whatever.
Some conversations with you again would be very welcome interludes in my
present job-obsession. Aren’t you planning on New York before long?
-- -- -- --
347: TO SELDEN RODMAN
[_New York City_] _October 27th, 1930_
Dear Mr. Rodman: Thank you for sending me a copy of _The [Harkness]
Hoot_. The copy that you had previously sent to _The New Republic_ (via
the hands of Slater Brown) had already afforded me considerable
pleasure. Despite the unfortunate sentimentality of Hale’s oration the
issue is amply justified by your essay on MacLeish, if I may say
so,--the most penetrating estimate that he has so far received.
As for Hale, I recommend his perusal of the recent rape of _The Woman of
Andros_ conducted by Mike Gold in the columns of _The N. R._--if he
wants to see himself outdone on his own ground. Not that I care for
Wilder. Never having read a word he wrote I cannot be expected to nurse
sighs or curses. But I _have_ read something of Spengler--and would just
as soon he showed an American visa, for once, before predicting any more
details of “our” future. --/--/
348: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT
_Brooklyn, New York_ _November 21, 1930_
Dear Bill: --/--/ The details of your summer program and the description
of your winter quarters reflect an enviable settled state of affairs.
New York is full of the unemployed, more every day, and the tension
evident in thousands of faces isn’t cheerful to contemplate. It is a
little strange to see the city so “grim about the mouth,” as Melville
might say. Yours truly has been having his grim moments, too; in fact
I’m pretty well convinced that unmitigated anxiety has a highly
corrosive effect on the resilience of the imagination. I am
trying to write a couple of articles for _Fortune_--that deluxe
business-industrial monthly published by Time, Inc.--and I am appalled
at the degree of paralysis that worry can impose on the functioning of
one’s natural faculties. One assignment is a “profile” of Walter Teagle,
president of Standard Oil (N.J.). I managed to keep the oil king talking
far beyond the time allotted, but when I come to write it up in typical
_Fortune_ style the jams gather by the hundred.
I am so pleased that you continue to enjoy _The Bridge_. I admit having
felt considerably jolted at the charge of sentimentality continually
levelled at the “Indiana” fragment, particularly when such charges came
from people who acknowledged a violent admiration for Hardy’s poetry.
For many of his lyrics have seemed to me at least as “sentimental” as
this “mawkish” performance of my own. But I approve of a certain amount
of sentiment anyway. Right now it is more fashionable to speak
otherwise, but the subject (or emotion) of “race” has always had as much
of sentiment behind it--as it has had of prejudice, also. Since “race”
is the principal motivation of “Indiana,” I can’t help thinking that,
observed in the proper perspective, and judged in relation to the
argument or theme of the Pocahontas section as a whole, the pioneer
woman’s maternalism isn’t excessive.
Did I mention my pleasure in reading a very skillful poem of yours about
various types of fur. It came out in _Poetry_, I think. Certainly
Baudelaire would have been charmed by its adept blending of beautiful
names with a world of tactile sensations. The geographical evocations
implicit in the list of animals mentioned were delightful. I see a great
many reasons for you to continue writing, especially since it brings you
none of the pangs that accompany a more professional concern with the
muses. I haven’t written a line for over nine months, and nine months is
not so promising a period in the seven arts as it may be in the physical
sciences.
I’ll try not to be so remiss in writing again. Would I be deemed
insensitive in requesting a temporary loan to help carry me over till a
check from _Fortune_ can be expected. Please be very frank. Money is
“hard” everywhere these days, and if you can’t spare 25 or 50 dollars,
or if you have any scruples against such transactions, I shall remain as
affectionate and as spontaneous a partner to our friendship as ever. In
fact I would prefer to shoulder double my present quandary before
exposing you to any stringencies.
I have applied for a Guggenheim Scholarship (which would give me a
year’s study and creative freedom abroad) and hope to God that I’ll gain
approval. Announcements are made early in March. Meanwhile I’m praying
that I can write well enough on industrial subjects to keep on with
_Fortune_. My room here is surprisingly cheap--a weekly rate that barely
exceeds rooming house costs--and with these articles I’ve had to be
located where messages could be taken in my absence. The requirement of
advance payment is none too comforting, however. --/--/
349: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT
_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _November 29th, 1930_
Dear Bill: Your imagination is evidently as magnanimous as your hand
is.... By ascribing my almost chronic indigence to so Nietzschean a
program as the attitude of “living life dangerously” infers, you make me
blink a little. For my exposures to rawness and to risk have
been far too inadvertent, I fear, to deserve any such honorable
connotations;--and my disorderly adventures and peregrinations I regard
with anything but complacency. However, it isn’t everyone who can lend
help with such graceful tolerance of evident shortcomings; and your
euphemisms make me doubly grateful.
The Teagle article is now awaiting approval. I hope to know more about
my immediate fate early next week. If that doesn’t eventuate in a check
and another assignment, then my best bet lies in the direction of
book-selling in one of the many Doubleday-Doran shops in the
metropolitan area. I know someone who may succeed in insinuating me
there. In normal times, of course, I should have been located with an
advertising agency months since. No, teaching isn’t a solution for me,
Bill. I haven’t any academic education whatsoever. You may have
forgotten that I left East High without even a diploma--in my junior
year. Mirabile dictu!... Noblesse oblige!... Pax vobiscum!... Nunc
dimittis est ... so who am I, therefore, to rule a class!
I’m hoping that I won’t need to cash your second check, a contingency
which I’ll do my best to avoid. You’ll hear from me again very soon.
Meanwhile I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your kindness.
350: TO ISIDOR SCHNEIDER
_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _December 2nd, 1930_
Dear Isidor: --/--/ As for the “Hymn Against Violence,” I’m all for it!
It is beautifully sustained, amazingly compact; its imagery is often as
startling as Rimbaud’s:
“--then overhear
reiteration’s tremor drum
upon your brain the changeless diaries of fear.”
and “Harder curds
the cloud. Waking in us no ease,
night comes of terror darkened infinite, of dying herds.”
A strange and sombre metre. Biblical as it is, and owing something
perhaps to Hopkins’ exclamatory use of violent internal stresses, it is
still highly original and by all odds the best poem of yours that I have
yet seen. It’s a poem that I imagine Eliot would be very glad to have
for _The Criterion_. But you probably got much better remuneration from
_The Menorah_; besides, Eliot is apt to deliberate a year or so before
informing one of his decision. --/--/
351: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN
[_Chagrin Falls, Ohio_] _December 29th, 1930_
Dear Sam: To make partial amends for my neglect of you, I am, as you
see, giving you the full, blazing benefit of the official stationery!
Of course, had I been consulted, I should never have permitted so
harmless a slogan as “The place to _bring_ your guest.” The fourth word
would still have begun with “b,” but there would have been more action
implied in the order of the other letters substituted, or I’m no
befriender of monks and monkery.
However, that might belie the nights hereabouts. As I have just written
to B---- A----, _la vie sportif_ continues its reckless pace hereabouts
without any too great abundance of absinthe, gobs, apple-vendors or
breadlines. It’s too bad that all this drouth and quietude should have
produced, so far at least, nothing better than a maidenly complexion and
a bulging waist line. Gone is that glittering eye of Sands St.
midnights, erstwhile so compelling; and the ancient mariner is facing
the new year with all the approved trepidations of the middle west
business man, approved panic model of 1931. So much for resignation. It
brings me at least a little more sleep than I was getting in New York.
For about ten days I was busy at my father’s store on Euclid, near
Higbee’s [Cleveland]. Driving in from the Falls here, wrapping Xmas
parcelpost bundles, and driving back at night, I lived in a veritable
whirl of excitement. Now that the Xmas “rush” is a memory only, I am
casting about for some connection or other with what remains of the
direct mail advertising business here. So far it doesn’t look promising.
But unless I manage to turn a few honest pennies I mayn’t get back to
your skyline for many months. Of course I knew that when I came out
here, but I had borrowed all I felt justified in borrowing and the
situation in NY looked, and still looks, hopeless. As you had no doubt
observed, it had gotten considerably under my skin. --/--/
PART FOUR
Mexico
(1931-1932)
1931
352: TO SOLOMON GRUNBERG
_Chagrin Falls, Ohio_ _Jan. 10_
Dear Mony: --/--/ I got terribly run down with the worry of it all--and
since my father had expected me out here for the holidays anyway I felt
I owed him the courtesy of complying, especially since he had been so
generous with me for some time past. Since the Teagle (Standard Oil)
article proved to be a flop there wasn’t much use in persisting
longer--in the face of the bread lines.
This humiliation, severe for awhile, doesn’t seem to have ruined me,
however, and in view of certain recoveries and gains in poise, I don’t
seriously regret my move. My father, of course, expects me to remain in
this locality permanently. I of course keep all contrary plans very much
to myself, including the secret of a bank balance sufficient at least to
my carfare east again, whenever my return seems advisable. But enough of
such explanatory details!
I’m anxious to hear from you--and what your plans are, etc. This is dull
enough around here to encourage a good deal of reading--which I am
enjoying. Spinoza (Einstein’s grandpop) furnishes plenty of discipline.
Cleveland has one of [the] best libraries in the country, admirably
conducted and with shelves practically wide open.
No writing is being done yet--or even in prospect. Can’t fool myself
that way, as you know. An old thing of mine from my West Indian days in
a forthcoming issue of _The New Republic_ which you may like, however.
-- -- -- --
353: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN
[_Chagrin Falls_] _January 16th, 1931_
Dear Sam: The Bridge photos were a joyous surprise! I can’t have it from
too many angles! And the roof portrait of yourself with all the chimney
pots! You are as generous and thoughtful a friend as ever.
Nothing much happens hereabouts. I haven’t even seen Bill [Sommer] yet,
but I have a line out. Did I tell you that I called on D---- B. one
morning? That was almost three weeks ago. He looked haggard, his
complexion splotched, and thoroughly miserable; though he made an effort
to be as suave as possible, I’m sure, it was evident that he _was_
making an effort. I made no further than a general allusion to his
illness and as no details were proffered I left him as ignorant in such
respects as I had come. There seemed to be no way of arousing his
interests to any extent. He’s evidently in a hell of a state, physically
and mentally--a combination of both interacting, I suppose.
You’ll be interested in the story of the enclosed card, I’m sure. I
chanced upon it just the other day in one of the local news stores. Then
someone told me a few anecdotes concerning the local blacksmith, named
Church, who died not so very long ago and was regarded as a most
“peculiar” individual by most of the townspeople. What struck me in the
first place was the obvious coincidence of a parallel use of symbols,
the serpent and the eagle, with my lines on Pocahontas in _The Bridge_.
“Time, like a serpent, down her shoulder, dark,
And space, an eaglet’s wing laid on her hair.”
The serpent isn’t hard to locate, and you’ll see the rather dim outlines
of the fore part of an eagle just below where I have indicated in the
margin. This blacksmith aroused considerable conjecture by his midnight
absences, until someone followed his lantern down to this rock where he
was busy night after night on this frieze. I think it has a real
aesthetic value, like other primitive sculpture--and I’m planning an
expedition to the rock as soon as the snow melts a little.
The blacksmith’s character must have been rather Blakeian, for he also
carved his own tombstone--a lion couchant beside a lamb and a figure of
a man walking. And imagine the surprise of his survivors when on the
occasion of his obsequies his own voice pronounced his own funeral
sermon from the disk of a phonograph! Well, I guess Sherwood Anderson
didn’t quite scoop up _all_ the characters of Winesburg!
My father and his wife have just left for a vacation in Havana, with
extensive notes in their pocket from me as to what French wines to
order, where to go, etc. Mrs. Crane #3 has never seen palms and
sparkling waters and was deservedly rife with expectations. It’s the
first real vacation either of them have had for several years and they
will forget business for the time being, I certainly hope, and have a
splendid time. They certainly have my affectionate wishes.
I’m going into town this afternoon for dinner with the Rychtariks, with
a Bloch quartet this evening. Altogether I’m feeling much better, Sam,
despite certain restrictions--which, however, may be good for me for a
while. Nothing has been found yet in the way of work, but the tension on
that subject has fortunately been temporarily somewhat relaxed. --/--/
354: TO LORNA DIETZ
[_Chagrin Falls_] _Feb. 10th ’31_
Dear Lorna: --/--/ As nothing more has been said about photography, I
guess I’m to be spared the useless apprenticeship to the village baby
tickler; instead I’ve been hammering, waxing, rubbing, painting and
repairing--odd jobs--around the place, and work which is rather amusing.
Once a week I generally go into Cleveland and spend some hours with my
old friends, the Rychtariks (a Prague painter and his wife whom you must
have heard me mention) who really “belong”--and are about the only
people in this district that I enjoy seeing. I can be more or less
myself with them, and that’s a great relief after the unmitigated rigor
of the parental regime. (Poetry or anything like that is an offense to
mention here, as something belonging in the category with “youthful
errors,” “wild oats,” et cetera, and the “reform” that has been
inaugurated has brought me back to just that pleasantly vegetable state
of mind that can read Coolidge’s daily advice without a tremor of
protest.) My father, you can visualize his type, is “enjoying” the
depression, or at least his incessant howls about it. Despite the losses
personally involved, I think he will actually be disappointed if matters
improve in less than five years. From his standpoint at any rate,
anything that disproved his doleful prediction would prove a calamity.
His great reiteration being that every one has been spending too much
money. He is willing to admit, however, that it hasn’t been spent on
candy! (which is among the luxuries, too, if I am not mistaken). All of
which makes very stimulating conversation, of course, especially when
you are obliged to agree on each and every occasion and reiteration, ad
infinitum....
The possibility of a Guggenheim keeps me restive. That failing, I may
hike back east in March anyway. Too prolonged a stay here at my present
age isn’t sensible, whatever the alternatives may be right now, and
however generously my father might feel.
You’ve been awfully generous in writing. Sounds as though your winter
were being rather pleasant after all. -- -- -- -- Partying seems to
continue unabated as well as discussions of Communism. But Eda Lou
Walton writes me that nobody is writing anything. Certainly I’m not
either. Some reading, however. No wonder F---- liked _The Story of San
Michele_ so much; it’s almost as full of dog sentiment as she is. But in
some ways a marvelous book. A friend of mine on _Fortune_, Russell
Davenport, has written a good book, _Through Traffic_, on a combined
business and love theme. I’ll send it to you to keep for me and read.
I’ve just gotten around to read _Jurgen_! Always resented the pow-wow
about it, but rather like it. Dos Passos’ _42nd Parallel_ is good--as
far as it goes. But Dos has yet to create a full portrait. What did you
think of Mumford’s series of leaders in the _Tribune_, just concluded? I
find myself agreeing pretty thoroughly with him. --/--/
355: TO WALDO FRANK
_Chagrin Falls, Ohio_ _Feb. 19th_
Dear Waldo: --/--/ These are bewildering times for everyone, I suppose.
I can’t muster much of anything to say to anyone. I seem to have lost
the faculty to even feel tension. A bad sign, I’m sure. When they all
get it decided, Capitalism or Communism, then I’ll probably be able to
resume a few intensities; meanwhile there seems to be no sap in
anything. I’d love to fight for--almost anything, but there seems to be
no longer any real resistance. Maybe I’m only a disappointed romantic,
after all. Or perhaps I’ve made too many affable compromises. I hope to
discover the fault, whatever it is, before long.
Since you seem to have retired completely from any journalistic
appearances I’m completely ignorant of your current opinions or
reactions. Do write me soon and tell me what you’re engaged in. And such
of your plans as you care to divulge. I’d like to have heard your recent
lecture mentioning _The Bridge_, as I gather. Present day America seems
a long way off from the destiny I fancied when I wrote that poem. In
some ways Spengler must have been right.
On the water wagon two months now.... If abstinence is clarifying to the
vision, as they claim, then give me back the blindness of my will. It
needs a fresh baptism.
356: TO HENRY ALLEN MOE
_Chagrin Falls, Ohio_ _March 16, 1931_
Dear Mr. Moe: My appointment as a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim
Memorial Foundation is appreciated greatly, not only as a welcome
opportunity to continue my creative endeavors, but also as a
distinguished honor conferred upon me as a poet. In accepting this
Fellowship for 1931-32 I feel a stimulating sense of pride and
gratitude. Needless to say, this evidence of trust in my abilities and
character, alone and quite apart from my instinctive response to such
good fortune, would prompt me to my utmost efforts to justify such
confidence as the liberal terms and the generous conditions of the
Fellowship imply. I fully subscribe to all these conditions as detailed
in your announcement,--not, however, without realizing that I am
assuming some serious responsibilities.
As I am at present among the vast horde of the unemployed--and with
nothing of consequence to detain me, I should like to situate myself
definitely as soon as possible in a favorable environment for
constructive work and study. It will therefore be most gratifying to
hear from you regarding the propriety and feasibility of taking up my
projected foreign residence at an early date. To be specific, I should
like to sail for France by the middle part of April, provided such
proposal meets the unreserved approval of the Trustees of the
Foundation. A statement from a local physician regarding my state of
health will be sent you very shortly. --/--/
357: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
_New York, New York_ _March 30th_
Dear Lotte & Ricardo: I am to sail to _Mexico_ (damn the gendarmes!)
next Saturday. The change [in Guggenheim Fellowship plans] was made
without any trouble and I am too happy at change to a _really_ (for
_me_) creative locality to be anything but pregnant.
Have been having too wonderful a time to breathe--and it still goes on.
Will write you more when I know my permanent address. First a week in
Mexico City with my old and wonderful friend, Katherine Anne Porter
(whom you will notice _also_ was awarded)--and then on to some country
location. --/--/
358: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN
_México, D.F._ [_Mexico City_] _April 12, 1931_
Dear Sambo: Got here last night (I always seem to arrive in cities on
Sat. nights) and have just had a Sunday dinner a la Mexicano. I begin to
feel at home here already, despite my complete ignorance of the
language. But kindly people and generous faces have a way of
compensating for one’s lack of palabra. The peons are the marvel of the
place, just as Lawrence said. So lovable, and although picturesque, not
in any way consciously so. What faces, and the suffering in them--but so
little evidence of bitterness.
We had one evening in Havana, and one night in Vera Cruz on the way, the
latter not to be repeated if I can help it. I had better than usual luck
by meeting on the second day out the great Dr. Hans Zinsser, of Harvard,
who is probably the world’s greatest bacteriologist. And what a man
besides! He arrived along with me last night with letters from the state
and war departments and a half dozen rats in the hold loaded with the
deadly typhus. He is to conduct some local experiments and then return
to Harvard in two weeks, leaving his assistant, Dr. Maximiliano
Castaneda here for 3 more months to complete the experiment. Castaneda,
being a native Mexican and very much a gentleman, has and will continue
to do all kinds of favors for me--and one thing is assured: I shall not
lack proper attendance here if I ever get sick. “Max” as I call him,
knows everyone from the president down.
Zinsser, a product of Heidelberg, the Sorbonne, Pasteur Institute and
other places besides American Universities, knows and has more
interesting ideas about literature than almost anyone I have ever met.
What conversations we had!--He’s about 51, bandy legged from riding fast
horses, looks about 40 at most, writes damn good poetry (which he claims
he’d rather do than excel as he does in the scientific world) and in
carelessness and largesse is a thoroughbred if I ever saw one.... But I
could write ten books about him and his incredible adventures in the war
and in various parts of the world. Next year he’s going to Abyssinia to
fight hook worm and other complaints. Well--and what is the best of
it--I guess I’ve made a friend who will be a perennial stimulus to the
best that I can do.
The ride up from Vera Cruz was marvelous, not alone the scenery, but the
country people all along the way who swarmed around the train selling
fruits, cakes, tortillas, serapes, canes, flowers, pulque, beer and what
have you! One rides up, up along incredible ledges over valleys filled
with tropical vegetation, waterfalls, etc., for about 5 hours. Then in
front of Orizaba everything suddenly begins to change. This is the great
plateau that in some ways seems even more splendid. Very austere--and
with the mountains rising in the distance on each side, here and there
the feudal walls of some old rancho--and the burros and brown natives
jogging along dry roads. How I wish you were here to witness it. But you
will come sometime. I know. --/--/
359: TO KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
[_Mixcoac_] [_April 28_]
DEAR KATHERINE ANNE: HAVE GONE TO THE MANCERA[65] UNTIL THE FIRST.
EXCUSE MY WAKEFULNESS PLEASE.
P.S. NO. HAVEN’T BEEN BUSY WITH “LOVERS.” JUST YEOWLS AND FLEAS. LYSOL
ISN’T NECESSARY IN THE BATHTUB. HAVEN’T GOT “ANYTHING” YET. --/--/
360: TO KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
[_Mixcoac_] [_April 30_]
Dear Katherine Anne: This is as near as I dare come to you today. Shame
and chagrin overwhelm me. I hope you can sometime forgive.
361: TO KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
[_Mixcoac_] [_May 1_]
Darling Katherine Anne: I’m too jittery to write a straight sentence but
am coming out of my recent messiness with at least as much consistency
as total abstinence can offer.
Your two notes were so kind and gave me so much more cheer than I
deserve that I’m overcome all over again. God bless you!!! I’ve got
myself in a fix with a hell of [a] bill at the Mancera--but I’ll get out
of it somehow. My father is sending me some money--meanwhile Hazel Cazes
is going to advance some.
This house is a love--and I’m glad to know that it won’t be ruined for
me now by any absence on your part--and -- -- -- --. The recent cyclone is
my last--at least for a year. Love and a thousand thanks.
When I get D.T.’s again I’ll just take it out on police.... They’ll have
at least a cell for me--or a straitjacket.
362: TO MALCOLM COWLEY
_Mixcoac, DF_ _June 2nd, 1931_
Dear Malcolm: --/--/ Don’t expect much more from me about Mexico for
awhile. Maybe it’s the altitude (which _is_ a tremendous strain at
times), maybe my favorite drink, Tequila; maybe my b----s and the
beautiful people; or maybe just the flowers that I’m growing or
fostering in my garden ... but it’s all too good, so far, to be true.
I’ve been too preoccupied, so far, with furnishing, from every little
nail, griddle, bowl and pillow, to look around much outside the
fascinating city markets and streets and bars. No chance to stretch
pennies--just to spend them. Ran out long ago on my Guggenheim
installment. But a house just can’t be lived in without a few
essentials. And the main “standard American” essentials in Mexico cost
like hell.
Lorna [Dietz] will have to relay to you the more complete details of my
house, should such matters interest you. I found, by advice, that singly
mozos weren’t apt to be much good. Pulque sprees three times a day, and
the evenings never certain. Besides I needed a woman to cook.
Consequently I have a delightful hide and seek combination--of both
functions (page Mormon be sneezed BUnson) besides a new installation of
electric lights with just enough “glim”--not to say Klim--to be
pleasant.
Moisés [Sáenz] has been swell to me. His innate Aztec refinement; his
quiet daring; his generosity (one should avoid an _et cetera_ in such
exceptional cases!) has made me love him very much. He was very
instrumental in my accidental possession of a real decoration: an
ancient silver pony bridle (bells and all!) from the period of the
Conquest, about my neck in a photo taken by Katherine Anne [Porter]--you
shall soon see, like it,--believe it, or not!
I have a quilty, besides a guilty conscience! Haven’t yet even written
to Waldo [Frank], whose letters gave me a wonderful send-off with
certain writers here. But Latin American manners, I have discovered, are
rather baffling. Great dinners are planned, but never come off! If
Katherine Anne couldn’t explain it all away with references to certain
previous experiences of her own, I’d feel quite crushed. As it is, I
don’t mind in the least. Because ... Mexico has incredibly fine native
painters. (You should see the new Diegos [Rivera] in the Palace!) But
all her pretenders to poesy have just read about orchids in Baudelaire,
apparently. I have my most pleasant literary moments with an Irish
revolutionary, red haired friend of Liam O’Flaherty, shot (and not
missed) seventeen times in one conflict and another; the most quietly
sincere and appreciative person, in many ways, whom I’ve ever met. It’s
a big regret that he’s Dublin bound again after three years from home,
in a few weeks. Ernest O’Malley by name. And we drink a lot
together--look at frescos--and agree! --/--/
363: TO WALDO FRANK
_Mixcoac, D.F._ _June 13th, 1931_
Dear Waldo: It seems to require much more determination to write a
letter, so far, than to fuss around in my flower garden that skirts
three sides of the house I have taken here in Mixcoac for a year. My
long-suppressed passion for a few plants and a “philosopher’s walk,”
however, is far from being the sole reason for my neglectfulness of you.
The novelty and turmoil incident to the first few weeks; then locating a
house; then furnishing it with the indispensables, from broom to
teakettle, from mop to mattress; then “breaking in” a native couple to
cook and sweep--all with my limited native vocabulary! Well, it’s been a
good deal to have undertaken, freshly lifted, as I am, to this high
altitude.
Despite this delay in getting down to work, I haven’t any regrets. You
may remember that I spoke of establishing a headquarters as soon as
possible on my arrival. I’ve had to squirm for money temporarily, but
corresponding later savings and the creative advantages of having a
place of my own--really for the first time in my life--ought to justify
my action.
As for Mexico--I’m not frothing over quite so much as I did for awhile,
but I’m still so fascinated and impressed by the people that I want to
stay much longer than one year, if I can manage to. You were right, it’s
a sick country; and God knows if it ever has been, or will be otherwise.
I doubt if I will ever be able to fathom the Indian really. It may be a
dangerous quest, also. I’m pretty sure it is, in fact. But humanity is
so unmechanized here still, so immediate and really dignified (I’m
speaking of the Indians, peons, country people--not the average mestizo)
that it is giving me an entirely fresh perspective. And whether
immediately creative or not, more profound than Europe gave me.... This
is truly “another world.” There isn’t much use for the present in
describing my reactions beyond saying that I find them all expressed in
my emphatic agreement with nearly everything said by Anita Brenner in
her _Idols Behind Altars_ which I’ve just finished reading. It would
take me, I imagine, a long residence here to be able to contradict any
of her statements, besides which I am so sympathetic to her attitude,
reactions and general thesis as not to care to court divergencies of
opinion.
A few days after my arrival I took a taxi and delivered the letters of
introduction that you so generously provided. I immediately heard from
Leon Felipe [Camino], and a few days later had an audience with Estrada.
The former I saw a couple of times later--and was introduced to a flock
of writers, doctors, etc., one afternoon at the Café Colon. Camino
seemed very cordial, but suddenly “dropped” me. Latin-Americans, I’ve
been told (and now I _know_) have a way of inviting you out on some
specific day, and then “letting you down” most beautifully--without
notice or subsequent apology or explanation. I’ve got so that I take it
quite for granted, and if any other more tempting occasion offers itself
in the meantime, I, too, humor my whim.
Estrada gave me two de luxe volumes of his poetry in response to the
copy of _The Bridge_ (Paris edition) I brought up to him. I can’t read
Spanish well enough yet to even attempt his books, nor any other
“Mexican” poetry; but off-hand I’ve more spontaneous respect for him
than for Camino, who, as soon as he heard I was about to call on
Estrada, began to ridicule both the man and his work in high glee. What
makes me rather indifferent to all of them is the fact that not one of
them is really interested one iota in expressing anything indigenous;
rather they are busy aping (as though it could be done in Spanish!) Paul
Valéry, Eliot,--or more intensely, the Parnassians of 35 years ago. And
they are all “bored”--or at least pleased to point the reference.
Estrada spoke very warmly of you, and after what some of the others
said, I should consider him a real friend of yours. In contrast to their
general directions and preoccupations, however, I still (to date, at any
rate) harbor the illusion that there is a soil, a mythology, a people
and a spirit here that are capable of unique and magnificent utterance.
Moisés Sáenz, who has had me out to his place at Taxco, and who has
treated me as hospitably and generously as anyone I ever remember, has
the same conviction. And he says that Casanova, whom I have merely met,
has a more natural attitude than the typical Mexican _litterateur_. I
hope to see more of Casanova later; he’s been ill most of the time since
I got here. I’ve not yet had a reply from Montéllano. Camino asked to do
some translations from _White Bldgs_ for _Contemporaneos_. I gave him
the book--and offered assistance. But since he found me out of the stiff
black round-shouldered “elegance”--in fact in my usual household white
sailor pants and shirt--he hasn’t been heard from--by mail or otherwise.
One must appear in veritable Wall Street gear to impress the Mexican
hidalgo!
He said that he was translating your new Latin Am. book, as I remember.
Will you tell me something about its publication date, etc.--since I
can’t get any reply from Camino? And now, how about your new work, your
novel? And your plans for this summer, etc.? I hope you are having a
smooth road toward some really individual expression. Hope you’ll
approve of my reference to you in the enclosed interview, from
_Excelsior_. _El Universal_ was also very kindly. Their feature writer,
Rafael Valle, is a very decent and intelligent and constant friend of
mine. -- -- -- --
Katherine Anne Porter and I are neighbors here in Mixcoac. You really
ought to get hold of her book _Flowering Judas_. The title story, and
another called “María Concepción,” are very profound comments on Mexico.
364: TO MORTON DAUWEN ZABEL
_Mixcoac, D.F., Mexico_ _June 20th, 1931_
Dear Mr. Zabel: The post (for books, etc. 2nd class) is apt to be very
slow to Mexico,--at any rate unreliable. If this be not too great an
impediment to either my reception or return of review books from
_Poetry_--then let me ask for the two books suggested by you for review
in your very kind letter of June 11th.
Further, I realize that my facilities for adequate reviewing of books
are somewhat restricted here, there being no library handy for
consultation on recent or even near-recent works on American poetry,
etc. But if you are willing to take the risk--then so am I. And if you
find the resultant estimates too biased or unfounded, you certainly need
be under no compulsion to print them.
Didn’t Roy Helton compile an anthology, or rather a study interspersed
with very good quotations, on Negro folk songs, spirituals, etc.? I
suppose the jacket of his book will contain whatever reference to his
earlier works are notable. But if not, please give me some word about
the above.
Allow me to thank you and Miss Monroe for the copy of _Poetry_ recently
received. I hope, and very earnestly, that I shall soon have something
worthy to submit to you. Since leaving the pattern of _The Bridge_ the
“new freedom” (call it rather a new restriction) has left me, at least
momentarily, rather speechless. I’m too attached to the consciousness of
my own land to write “tourist sketches” elsewhere. Mexico is well
enough. But I’d rather be in my favorite corner of Connecticut. The
first requirement of a scholarship, however, is to leave the U.S.A. It
doesn’t matter much whither. It wouldn’t so much matter if the entire
outside world didn’t positively hate us Americans so much. To create in
such an atmosphere isn’t so easy however!
365: TO SELDEN RODMAN
_Mixcoac, D.F._ _June 20th, 1931_
Dear Selden Rodman: --/--/ I hope you will not forsake the Muse, or her
pursuit. For in the light of your “Departure” it seems to me, you ought
certainly to write that “Unwritten Poem” mentioned in the subtitle; for
there are lines and passages in its “Prologue” that I like immensely. I
hope I can mention a few points without offense; the first six stanzas,
I think, present the longest solid stretch of sustained intention, some
of the rest seeming to me diffuse in patches, or at least susceptible of
condensation. But when I speak of condensation I am presumably alluding
as much to my own craze or weakness for that characteristic. For I’ve
carried that element to the extreme point of unintelligibility more than
once, as I well know. Here are a few of my favorite lines anyway:
I must leave, said the traveler, everything behind me:
The place that watched when no one else was by
The worth of life is the single shrill protesting
Voice; come near, listen but do not learn, he said.
What has the flashing train in a gorge at midnight
Carried from peace that a million years withstood?
Then there seems (to me) a rather blank or vague piling of lines until
one comes to the splendidly concentrated lines beginning:
_Yes, for the ink_, etc., and continuing for 16 lines of real intensity
that reminds me in the best sense of Rimbaud. And although you are
still a long way from the ending, I can’t so far see that between there
and the final stanza you gain much more than a few implications and the
statement of a few opinions (which statements, etc., don’t seem to rise
to the same level as the passages that I’ve already mentioned as being
so good). Please take my opinions as lightly as thistle down, however,
as I’m a cripple already to my own fetishes in style, and probably as
blind as a bat in any broad sense of criticism. Beyond that, I’ll have
to blame you, as you asked me for my opinion on that poem.
Hale’s article on the Future of the Novel is the only other thing in
this number I’ve had time to read. Hale rather frightens me: he’s so
declamatory and so sure. He must be a good sort to talk with; at least
I’d like the chance sometimes. I agree so much with some of his
statements, his keenness on the scent of such men as Thomas Wolfe, whose
_Look Homeward, Angel_ was one of the real experiences of life. But I
imagine that some of Hale’s very laudable intensity will have to take a
less declamatory form of expression if he wants to exert the influence
as a critic which is really his due. I don’t mean that this involves any
compromises, either.
Are you taking up some special studies in Europe? I hope you have such
intentions; for without such anchorage, I found that Europe had a very
debilitating effect on me. Not that I could have been so privileged as
to have had that chance, since I have never had a day in school beyond
my junior year in high school; but the case is considerably different
with you.
You mentioned MacLeish and the Conquistador poem in _The Yale Review_. I
wish I had bought the copy of that--the one I hastily glanced at in
Brentano’s basement months and months ago! I hope that he is well along
with the rest of that poem, so fine was the opening. MacLeish has a more
flexible literary genius than anyone writing in America today, and he’ll
probably be the most noteworthy poet of our times. His sensibility isn’t
as prodigal and startling as Cummings’; but then, Cummings will never
take the trouble to prune anything or discipline his genius. --/--/
366: TO KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
[_Mixcoac_] [_June 22_]
Dear Katherine Anne: My apologies are becoming so mechanical as (through
repetition) to savour of the most negligible insincerity. So I have to
leave most of this to your judgment of the potency and malfeasance of an
overdose of tequila.
Let Theodora[66] know--if I have any chance of talking with you and
explaining. Otherwise I’ll know that you don’t want to be molested even
to that point of endurance.
I spent the night in jail--as Theodora has probably told you. That was,
in its way, sufficient punishment. Besides having made a fool of myself
in Town.... However I was arrested for nothing more than challenging the
taxi driver for an excessive rate. But if it hadn’t been for waiting for
you--hour on hour, and trying to keep food warm, cream sweet, and my
damnable disposition--don’t suppose I’d have yelled out at you so
horribly en route to doom!
I don’t ask you to forgive. Because that’s probably past hope. But since
Peggy [Baird] will be here in a few days--I’d rather, for her sake as
well as mine, that she didn’t step into a truly Greenwich Village scene.
367: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT
_Chagrin Falls, Ohio_ _July 15th, 1931_
Dear Bill: --/--/ I’m very glad that you spoke about the check I sent
you early in April. I couldn’t figure it out any other way than that you
had waited until the following month before turning it in; and if that
wasn’t exactly the case I still can’t understand why it was returned as
invalid. For my account, at least until the last of May, stood well in
excess of the amount of your check. I was on the point of writing you an
inquiry about all this when I was called north. The check enclosed,
however, will not be at all questionable. I’m very sorry you’ve had to
wait so long, and let me repeat my profound thanks to you for your very
generous help.
As to my father’s business; certain branches and departments of it (that
is, several of its corporate entities in which he had controlling
interest) will undoubtedly be carried on. Inventories are now in
progress, statements regarding the net estate, etc., are in preparation;
and as yet it is, of course, impossible to know exactly what course will
be taken. Mrs. Crane was left with the authorization of deciding
practically everything. Which was right and proper, since I have never
taken any active part in any branch of my father’s concerns. I am left
in reasonably secure circumstances, at least for a few years, however,
and if I so choose I can probably pursue my own literary studies with a
somewhat free-er mind than formerly.
It is a real consolation to me now that I made the long stay here with
my father that I did last winter. As you already know, our relations for
many years, had been somewhat confused by general family disturbances
which were most unfortunate and which resulted in a great many
misunderstandings. Father and I had recently got acquainted all over
again. It made both of us very much happier. And if my father had to go
thus early in life--I’m very grateful that at least I am left with a
fuller appreciation of his fine qualities and of his genuine love for me
than might have been possible without the course of some recent events.
I can say that his character and the impress of it that I lately
received will be a real inspiration to me. That is the finest kind of
bequest that one can leave, I’m sure. --/--/
368: TO LORNA DIETZ
_Chagrin Falls, Ohio_ _July 15th, 1931_
Dearest Lorna: To begin with the same subject which you did in your
last--and to continue with what has been almost an obsession with me for
the last month--I want to say a few words about Katherine Anne Porter.
Not that I can possibly give even the outline of the whole queer
situation, but since she has done so much announcing, just a hint at the
circumstances.
Katherine Anne’s disposition, as I knew her initially in NY was
considerably different than I found it to be since -- -- -- -- in Mexico.
--/--/ Katherine Anne was quite lovely to me on more than one occasion,
and since I have always liked her a lot, it was hard to relinquish her
company.
The continuance, however,--and this is the only way I can put
it--resulted in some very strained situations and outbreaks on my
part--generally at times when I had had too much to drink. Since I have
no very clear recollection of everything said during those times I
presume I must have been pretty awful. Everything had been going very
smoothly for some time, however; Katherine Anne frequently dropping into
my place for afternoon chats, beer, etc., when the apparently decisive
moment occurred.
I had asked them both to have dinner with me on a certain day at my
house. It was well understood, etc. I made extensive preparations--and
was left to keep things warm the entire afternoon, nipping at a bottle
of tequila meanwhile, and going through the usual fretful crescendo of
sentiments that such conduct incurs. Toward evening, having fed most of
the natives in the vicinity and being rather upset, I went to town,
where more drinks were downed. But in an argument with the taxi driver
at my gate later in the evening I challenged him to arbitration at the
local police station. Result: a night in jail; for feeling is so high
against Americans in Mexico since the recent Oklahoma affair, that any
pretext is sufficient to embarrass one.
K.A.’s place is just around the corner from the house I took, so on the
way to the station I passed her gate. She and -- -- -- -- happened to be
within speaking distance. I remember having announced my predicament and
of having said, in anger at her response to the dinner engagement,
“Katherine Anne, I have my opinion of you.” I was furious, of course,
and I still have no reason for doubting that -- -- -- -- simply devised
that insult deliberately. I haven’t seen Katherine Anne since, nor has
she ever offered the slightest explanation of her absence. She told a
mutual friend that I said something particularly outrageous to her that
evening at the gate; but what it may have been beyond what I have just
mentioned I don’t know. I wrote her a very humble apology a few days
later, but there was no response.
It’s all very sad and disagreeable. But one imputation I won’t stand
for. That is the obvious and usual one: that my presence in the
neighborhood was responsible for a break or discontinuance of Katherine
Anne’s creative work. --/--/ I’m tired of being made into a bogey or
ogre rampant in Mexico and tearing the flesh of delicate ladies. I’m
also tired of a certain rather southern type of female vanity. And
that’s about all I ever want to say about Katherine Anne again
personally.
My father was buried last Saturday. Mrs. Crane, despite the fact that
the delay was really a great strain on her endurance, insisted on
awaiting my arrival, which wasn’t until late Friday, as I couldn’t get
airplane reservations beyond Albuquerque. She was so grief-stricken that
I’ve been worried about her. I’m more impressed by her sincerity and
dignity than I can tell you, however, and her feelings toward me make me
feel that I have a real home whenever I want to claim it here with her.
She had a room and bath all ready for me--and it’s to be regarded as
permanently mine.
I’m glad that I’ve already been able to be of some help to her in
matters of the estate. It will be some time before all inventories are
taken of various departments of my father’s business and I’ll certainly
be here beyond the time of your trip west, in August. You must plan on
stopping over at least a day. You really ought to see this country
place, for I think it’s worth more than a passing glance. And above and
beyond such considerations, I have a great yen to look you over, as you
might guess. Certainly you can “make it,” and I’m sure that a day’s
break in that long trip would be refreshing. Let me know.
My father’s will left very modest provisions for me, but they are as
good as an annual Guggenheim, anyway, and that is all I really require.
Quite properly, Mrs. Crane was left with the direction of most of his
property and concerns--along with two other executors. The chocolate
business will probably be discontinued, as it should have been anyway,
as soon as one or two expensive leases can be disposed of. I may or may
not take a hand in the picture business--but probably not. Nothing can
be definitely decided until we know more about the total status of the
estate.
As I just wrote Bill [Brown]--who surprised me by writing a very
thoughtful note--I’m increasingly glad that I had those three months
with my father last winter. The enormous advance in mutual understanding
and affection that was achieved has left me with a better and truer
picture of my father than I had ever had before. It’s good to remember,
too, that he was unusually contented and optimistic during the last few
months, about his business and all other concerns. And when he went he
had no more than a passing flash of recognition of the event before
complete unconsciousness supervened. --/--/
369: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN
_Mixcoac, D.F._ _Sept. 11th, 1931_
Dear Sam: --/--/ I have had the pleasure to meet a young archeologist
from Wisconsin, who is studying in the University here and who thinks he
has discovered a buried Aztec pyramid right in the vicinity of my house.
Yesterday we took pick and shovel and worked our heads off digging into
the side of a small hill, itself on a vast elevation overlooking the
entire valley of Anahuac. Except for a few flocks of goats and sheep the
entire neighborhood has been abandoned since the Conquest. A marvelous
stillness and grassy perfume pervade the district; one sees the two
great volcanoes in the distance and a part of the horizon glazed by Lake
Texcoco, seemingly below which floats, as in a dream, the City of
Mexico. It was an arduous and rich afternoon. I have a lame back today,
but also some very interesting chips and pieces of the true Aztec
pottery picked up here and there on the surface and from our little
excavation. The experience is haunting, melancholy too. But such “first
hand” contact beats the more artificial contacts that museums proffer.
We also ran across one of those incredibly sharp fragments of obsidian,
part of a knife blade used either to carve stone and other materials or
human flesh. It is still a mystery as to how they cut obsidian--but this
shard was perfectly edged and graded as though it had been as
conformable as wood. --/--/
370: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT
_Mixcoac, D.F. Mexico_ _Sept. 21, 1931_
Dear Bill: -- -- -- -- Vera Cruz was a hissing cauldron when I got there;
in fact the last two days on the boat were Turkish baths. But once here
on the plateau--I went back to my nightly blankets and recovered
quickly. The aforesaid port has had a pretty little hurricane since my
debarkation. I knew it couldn’t help but happen.
I felt awfully diffident about leaving the U.S., but I’m beginning to be
entirely glad that I came back here after all. In the first place there
was no settling down this time to be accomplished. I found my house in
good order, the servants joyful to see me, and my garden a perfect
miracle of growth and colorful profusion. I could begin “living” right
away without a moment in a hotel, a blanket or kitchen implement to
buy--having spent about three months in such preoccupations on my
previous visit. The rainy season is lasting unusually long, but it keeps
all the verdure so miraculously green that the countryside will hold its
colors all the longer into the long months of drowth to come.
During the mere two weeks since my return I’ve already had the most
interesting adventure that I think I ever remember. I came back with the
resolution to get out more into the smaller cities and pueblos, to get
as thoroughly acquainted with the native Indian population as possible.
So when I met a young archeologist from Wisconsin who asked me to go
along with him on a five days’ trip to Tepoztlan I didn’t linger. Though
two books and a dozen articles have been written about Tepoztlan (see
Stuart Chase’s _Mexico_ and Carleton Beals’ _Mexican Maze_) it has never
been invaded by tourists. And isn’t likely to be, either, for some time.
As there is nothing remotely resembling a hotel or lodging house in the
place I went prepared to sleep on the floor of the Monastery. One can
sleep soundly almost anywhere and be thankful for the limited diet of
beans and tortillas if one has spent the whole day walking, scrambling
over dizzy crags or hunting fragments of old Aztec idols, of which the
surrounding cornfields of Tepoztlan are full.
The town is practically surrounded by cliffs as high as 800 feet, basalt
ledges with a perilous sheer drop sometimes of 300 feet, covered with
dense tropical foliage and veritable hanging gardens--with cascades and
waterfalls galore. The descent begins about 3 miles from El Parque where
the train leaves one--about 4 hours from Mixcoac.
(Distances in linear miles are so deceptive here, since mountainous
country necessitates such inclines and devious windings. One can watch
the engine from the rear most of the way.)
But I’m not going to give an exhaustive description of the town as you
can read that, and better formulated too in Chase’s book, which everyone
seems to be reading now anyway. The most exciting feature of our trip
and visit was the rare luck of arriving on the eve of the yearly
festival (fiesta) of Tepozteco, the ancient Aztec god of pulque, whose
temple, partially ruined by the Spaniards and recent revolutions, still
hangs on one of the perilous cliffs confronting the town.
Only a small fraction of the populace (they are all pure unadulterated
Aztec) took part or even attended this ceremony; but we found those that
did, largely elderly, the finest and kindliest of all the lovely people
of the place. Aside from those who had climbed up to spend the night in
watch at the temple, there were only about twenty-five. These, divided
into several groups around lanterns (of all places!) on the roof of the
Cathedral and Monastery which dominates the town, made a wonderful sight
with their dark faces, white “pyjama” suits and enormous white hats. A
drummer and a flute player standing facing the dark temple on the
heights, alternated their barbaric service at ten minute intervals with
loud ringing of all the church bells by the sextons of the church. Two
voices, still in conflict here in Mexico, the idol’s and the Cross. Yet
there really did not seem to be a real conflict that amazing night.
Nearly all of these “elders” I have been describing go to mass!
And so kindly and interested in explaining the old myths of their gods
to us! Fortunately my archeologist friend speaks perfect
Spanish--besides knowing some Aztec and some local mythology. Meanwhile,
if you can possibly imagine such a night, the lightning flickered over
the eastern horizon while a crescent moon fell into the west. And
between the two a trillion stars glittered overhead! It was truly the
Land of Oz, with the high valley walls in the Wizard’s circle. Rockets
were sent whizzing up--to be answered by other rockets far up and over
from the lofty temple. After nine, when the playing stopped, we asked
the “elders” to a stall in the town market and served them each with a
glass of tequila. We were invited to join them again at 3 A.M. atop the
church again, for the conclusion of the watch.
I’m sorry to say I didn’t awake until five. But it was still pitch dark.
And to hear those weird notes of drum and fife in the dark valley,
refreshed as we were with sleep, it was even more compelling. We rushed
from the baker’s house (where we had found a bamboo bed and exquisite
hospitality) over the rough stone streets into the church yard,
stumbling up the dark corridors and narrow stairs of the monastery just
as a faint light emerged over the eastern break in the cliffs. There was
the same bundle of elders welcoming us and serving us delicious coffee,
all the hotter for a generous infusion of pulque, straight pulque
alcohol in each cup.
But most enthralling of all was the addition of another drum--this being
the ancient Aztec drum, pre-Conquest and guarded year after year from
the destruction of the priests and conquerors, that how many hundreds of
times had been beaten to propitiate the god, Tepozteco, the patron and
protector of these people. A large wooden cylinder, exquisitely carved
and showing a figure with animal head, upright, and walking through
thick woods,--it lay horizontally on the floor of the roof, resounding
to two heavily padded drum sticks before the folded knees of one of the
Indians. The people at the temple had played it up there the night
before, and now someone had brought it down to be played to the rising
sun in the valley.
Suddenly, as it was getting lighter and lighter and excitement was
growing more and more intense, one of the Indians who had been playing
it put the drum sticks into my hands and nodded toward the amazing
instrument. It seemed too good to be true, really, that I, who had
expected to be thrown off the roof when I entered the evening before,
should now be invited to actually participate. And actually I did! I not
only beat the exact rhythm with all due accents, which they had been
keeping up for hours; I even worked in an elaboration, based on the
lighter tattoo of the more modern drum of the evening before. This, with
such ponderous sticks, was exhausting to the muscles of the forearm; but
I had the pleasure of pleasing them so that they almost embraced me.
They did, in fact, several of them--put their arms around our shoulders
and walk back and forth the whole length of the roof, when at the
astronomical hour of six the whole place seemed to go mad in the
refulgence of full day. It is something to hear bells rung, but it is
inestimably better to see the sextons wield the hammers, swinging on
them with the full weight of their entire bodies like frantic
acrobats--while a whole bevy of rockets shower into such a vocal
sunrise!
Well, after that there was the whole series of tableaus and performances
incident to the Mexican Independence Day celebration (Sept. 15-16-17) in
which everybody took part. But of that another time. You can see how I
am enthusiastic about Tepoztlan. I went bathing in mountain streams with
a young Indian, gorged on beans and tortillas, found idols in the
surrounding cornfields and finally, the morning I was leaving, met the
Vicar at stool in the Cathedral. On the climb back to the station we
visited the ancient temple. It still has fragments of remarkable relief
and is staunchly and beautifully constructed. I may go back to Tepoztlan
for two weeks in October. I never left a town feeling so mellow and in
such pleasant relations with everybody in the place. --/--/
371: TO MALCOLM COWLEY
_Mixcoac, D.F._ _Oct. 5th, 1931_
Dear Malcolm: --/--/ Yes, Peggy [Baird] must have been pretty close to
danger for awhile judging by what she said about her symptoms. She
stayed in bed for a week or so, but went to Puebla over last weekend and
looked very well this morning when I called. I think she’s to keep
pretty quiet, however, if relapses aren’t to be expected. Bill Spratling
wired me to bring her along with me to Taxco tomorrow for a few days,
and I think she’s planning on joining me since I’ve had no word to the
contrary this afternoon. She was going to ask her doctor about it....
--/--/
As Bill [Brown] has probably told you, the Katherine Anne [Porter] upset
accounted for my more than diffidence about seeing most of our mutual
friends when I passed through NY. Sometime I may say more about it, but
I’m sick of the subject just now; and since Mexico is proving to be so
much more pleasant and absorbing to me during this second sojourn, I
don’t want to stir up any more unneighborly dust here in Mixcoac this
evening than matches a pleasant mood.
--/--/ I’m glad to be of any help I can to Peggy, love her as always,
and enjoy her company (and we see quite a lot of each other) immensely.
Old friends are a God-send anywhere! Especially when they’re as good
sports as Peggy is.... She’s pretty fragile, but I think she’s happy
here, possibly more so than anywhere else right now. --/--/
372: TO MORTON DAUWEN ZABEL
(Postcard)
[_Mixcoac_] [_ca. October 10_]
Your letter this morning--and now the books. Putnam is more surprising
and magnificent than ever! Am glad to have such a challenge of a review.
373: TO SLATER BROWN
[_Mixcoac_] _Oct. 22nd_
Dear Bill: Please tell Malcolm that his article on the Munson-Josephson
“debate” has delayed my dinner by two hours of sore sides! “Old Nick”
(Jamaica) Rum _may_ have contributed a little to some pleasant distress,
but I still owe a debt.... I wish I had the two previous articles of the
series at hand; can’t you get Betty to sort them out and send them to
me?
From cock-crow to sunset, here in Mixcoac, my life is extremely jolly.
And then beyond.... How I wish you and Sue [Jenkins] were here
sometimes! Guitars and _corridas_ galore. Even _I_ am learning how to
sing! One thing I can’t seem to get around to do--and that’s the reviews
I contracted to do for _Poetry_. Have you seen Putnam’s new book of
poems, _The Five Seasons_? I’ve got to “do” that, and it’s almost too
big a job.
“Old Nick” and Nicotine keep me too occupied.
PS--Allen’s note on Milton was one of the best things in modern
criticism I expect to anticipate!
374: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK
[_Mixcoac_] _Nov. 4, 1931_
Dear Charlotte & Richard: --/--/ Then there have been two rather
extensive visits to Taxco, pictures of which you’ve seen. David
Siqueiros, whom I consider to be the greatest of contemporary Mexican
painters, is living out there. He’s painted a portrait of me that is
astounding. When photographs are made I’ll have to send you one, and for
heaven’s sake don’t lose it, whether you like it or not. I don’t know
yet how I’m going to get the original up north. Siqueiros is the one who
painted the picture of that train flying along, that we took particular
notice of in the Carnegie exhibit at the Art Amusement last spring.
Remember? But that wasn’t a fair example of his vast power and scope at
all. He’s fundamentally a mural painter, and even his smaller paintings
have a tremendous _scale_. I bought a small water color of his, a
Mexican boy’s head, which you will be quite wild about. I’ve never seen
anything of Gauguin’s which was better. Indeed the two have a certain
plastic quality in common as well as the use of heavy pigments.
Siqueiros, however, is always _most_ Mexican and himself. The very soil
of Mexico seems spread on his canvasses.
The last two days have been important on the native Indian calendar: the
Day of the Dead. All over the country, and right here in this
metropolitan city, you will find the cemeteries full of dark-skinned men
and women, whole families in fact, sitting on tombstones day and night
holding lighted candles to the spirits of the dead. They bring their
food and drink with them. Far from being sad, it’s very merry. They
drink and eat much--and it all ends up by setting off firecrackers made
in the image of Judas. You must remember some of the amazing skeleton
toys and paper and clay skulls that we saw at that Mexican exhibition.
Well, they are for sale everywhere right now--and such a variety of
other beautiful trays, crockery, serapes, toys, etc., from all the
provinces as would drive you wild. A certain park in the city is set
apart for the _puestas_, or booths, that form this special market. A
walk through there beats the excitement of any museum I’ve ever been in.
--/--/
I’ve had some nice parties here in my house. I know more people than I
did before, and as far as space goes I might have sixty here at a time.
My servant plays the guitar and sings beautifully. Mexicans are always
bursting into song and strum away for hours. When I have a party it’s
easy to get him to bring in two or three of his friends, equally gifted,
and the result is such music, my friends, as would make your feet dance
and your eyes shine brightly all the night! The results were a little
too lively, in fact, one day last week when I gave a party to two
American boys who are touring down here in a big Lincoln car. One of
them suddenly climbed up on my roof, drawing the ladder after him, and
began pelting tiles down into the courtyard of my neighbor. I nearly had
heart failure before we got him down, since my neighbor is a crack shot,
and the provocations for shooting are much less here in Mexico than
anywhere I know. The kid had just drunk about a quart of _tequila_, so
of course it was only partly due to his response to the music! --/--/
375: TO SOLOMON GRUNBERG
(Postcard)
[_Mixcoac_] [_November 10, 1931_]
Haven’t heard since that long letter I wrote you. And wonder if you got
it. Mail is sometimes opened here and not forwarded. I never know. If
I’m tampered with any more I intend to object, to the Secretary of State
who is a poet and knows me.
376: TO PEGGY BAIRD
[_Mixcoac_] _Nov. 13th_
Dear Peggy: I don’t think you need bother to consider me a friend any
more.
377: TO PEGGY BAIRD
[_Mixcoac_] _Thursday [ca. Nov. 14]_
Dear Peggy: I don’t know why I felt impelled to write you that gracious
note of yesterday, except perhaps on account of the heeby-jeebies--and
the fact that when I called with Daniel[67] in the morning I was refused
admittance.
Of course, if you really feel that strongly about it, for whatever
causes I don’t know, then we’ll have to remain apart. Please let me
contradict that note of yesterday, anyway.
378: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN
_Mixcoac, DF_ _Nov. 17th_
Dear Sam: --/--/ I haven’t been any too well lately. First a week’s
spell of the grippe--then lately a kind of half relapse, bad cold, back
ache, etc. All this in spite of heavenly weather, but not, I’m afraid,
despite a strenuous program of dancing, _tequila_ and amor. I’m on the
water wagon for awhile.... Meanwhile my house is in considerable tumult.
David Siqueiros (who is certainly the greatest painter in Mexico)
arrived Sunday night from his house in Taxco, with his wife and
doctors--so deathly ill from malaria that he had to be carried into the
house. No really expert medical attention being available in a town so
small as Taxco--and after 8 days of mounting fever--there was nothing to
do but rush to Mexico City. He contracted it during a long trip through
the _tierra caliente_, or “hot country” which is the wild jungleland of
Mexico near Acapulco along the Pacific coast. It is a marvelous trip,
but very strenuous and dangerous, through native villages where a tax
collector has never dared venture, and where the people wear the same
Aztec costume that Cortez found them in, there being several towns
entirely of Negroes (escaped slaves) who wear nothing but the slender
loin cloths of Africa and who shoot with bow and arrows. It seems
incredible, but Mexico is more vast than you can ever realize by looking
at a map and more various in its population than any country on earth.
Layer on layer of various races and cultures scattered in the million
gorges and valleys which make the scenery so plastic and superb.
Siqueiros is going to pull through all right, but I shall probably have
him here with me for a couple of months. Malaria takes a long time. I’m
glad to be of help in such a crisis, however, and since I had three
rooms which I never used the house really isn’t crowded.
I bought two fine paintings of S. which I hope someday you will see. I
guess I wrote you that he painted a portrait of me (about 4 by 2-1/2 ft)
which is causing much favorable comment. Besides which I have a splendid
watercolor of an Indian boy’s head. You have never seen anything better
by Gauguin, which, however, doesn’t describe the originality and
authenticity of these works. Then I have about a dozen small
watercolors, mostly landscapes, painted by Mexican children none of whom
are older than eight--these for about 20¢ apiece!
Of course the Siqueiros works cost me _considerably_, so much, in fact,
that I’ve been worried about making ends meet until my next quarterly
from the Guggenheims falls due Jan. 1st. For what was my great shock
after buying them to be notified that none of the income that I had been
assured of from the estate would be paid, and would continue unpaid
indefinitely! This meant that the paintings had to be paid for out of
the Guggenheim allowance--and in consequence I’m stranded excepting for
a few dollars remaining in my personal N.Y. account--until January 1st.
And it will be hard to cash personal checks hereabouts. And if business
doesn’t pick up before next May it probably means that I can’t continue
to stay in Mexico for awhile longer, as I had hoped to do.
Those masks that you bought last fall are undoubtedly Mexican. Even the
neo-Greek mask that puzzled me so. I am sure about them all being
Mexican because I’ve seen dozens in private collections and museums here
that have the same variety of stylizations. There is a great tradition
of masks here, and while those of yours may not be extremely old they
are decidedly not new nor sold around in the shops here, and are really
valuable. You have to go out to some of the most remote settlements to
get that sort, and they’re seldom to be bought because of their
religious significance.
I haven’t been able to resist buying some other things like serapes,
giant hats, embroideries, lacquer trays and Guadalajara pottery. You’ve
never seen such beautiful arts and crafts as the Indian element here has
perpetuated. Wm. Spratling’s collection at Taxco is one of the best, and
when his book comes out, called _Little Mexico_ (Cape & Smith), for
heaven’s sake read it. Its illustrations are many and will give you more
detail than I could squeeze into twenty letters.
This letter is becoming ungodly long--and I haven’t been able to tell
one fragment of all there is to tell. I’m not upset about the Eastman
and Mencken notices. There _was_ a quite serviceable editorial in _The
New Republic_ on the former a couple of weeks back. And if it provides
something for Burke and Cowley to write about--then so much the better.
They’re bound to be fairly loyal to my _style_, even if not to my
“personality.” It is even more consoling that a few people like yourself
maintain a constancy to both.
379: TO HIS STEPMOTHER
[_Mixcoac_] _Nov. 23rd_
--/--/ Last Friday the situation [Siqueiros’ visit] got so on my nerves
that I bolted for Tepoztlan. It proved to be the best of all remedies.
Long strenuous walks over rocks and mountains with my pack on my back,
pleasant encounters with some of the natives who remembered me from my
former visit, and baths in nearby streams--there’s really nothing like
getting out in the wilds occasionally to clear one’s head. I was invited
to a very sociable weekend party at a lovely house in Taxco, but I
preferred to be absolutely alone for a change. Deciding to walk from
Tepoztlan to Cuernavaca Sunday I got lost on a false trail through a
dense forest and stumbled about, not knowing where on earth I was for
hours. Thirsty!!! and blistered feet!!! Finally I came upon the railroad
track, miles from where I should have been, but was so glad to find
something _definite_ that I walked the ties for about four hours more
until I came [to] a small station outside Cuernavaca, a filling station
for locomotives. And there wasn’t much water left in the tank for future
trains when I got through drinking there, I can tell you. I didn’t
attempt any further exploits, but took the next train through to Mexico
[City]. I must have walked about 35 miles at least that day. But I’ve
felt swell ever since. Next time, however, I won’t carry so much in my
pack!
380: TO EDA LOU WALTON
_Mixcoac, D.F._ _Nov. 27th ’31_
Dear Eda Lou: I’m very glad to hear that you are applying for a
Guggenheim. You certainly deserve it and would make splendid use of it.
Mr. Moe, the Secretary, has sent me a copy of your proposed program
(this being part of the usual routine regarding references) and I shall
be greatly disappointed if you do not have a chance to carry it out.
Naturally my response to Moe will be very warm in your favor. However
slight your hopes may be there is evidence that at least you are being
considered seriously.
These are dull times for poetry, even as Mr. Mencken says, and I must
admit that with all my present salutary circumstances my impulses in
that direction are surprisingly low. A beautiful environment and
economic security are far from compensating for a world of chaotic
values and frightful spiritual depression. And I can’t derive any
satisfaction in the spinning out of mere personal moods and attitudes.
Meanwhile, I am, however,--or at least I feel I am--penetrating to a new
kind of world in the psychology of the Indians, hereabouts, though it
hasn’t taken on any real outline as yet. Everyone says that it takes a
long time to make an adjustment here. The infinite variety of climate,
vegetation, and the distraction of a new language as well as thousands
of fascinating sights and speculations, all combine to uproot one and
hold one in a strange suspension. At least I feel that I am living fully
and absorbing a great deal, whatever else. And that, I suppose, is a
considerably better state to be in than the dubious tenure some office
job would provide, if such indeed were even accessible! I like Mexico
and the Mexicans (Indians) so much that I’d like to remain here
permanently. I’m even thinking of attempting some work like teaching
(English Lit.) in one of the many private colleges if I can locate such
work before my Guggenheim fellowship expires. --/--/
381: TO ----
_Mixcoac, D.F._ _Nov. 30th_
Dear ----: The nature of the Mexican Indian, as Lawrence said, isn’t
exactly “sunny,” but he is more stirred by the moon, if you get what I
mean, than any type I’ve ever known. The fluttering gait and the powder
puff are unheard of here, but that doesn’t matter in the least.
Ambidexterity is all in the fullest masculine tradition. I assure you
from many trials and observations. The pure Indian type is decidedly the
most beautiful animal imaginable, including the Polynesian--to which he
often bears a close resemblance. And the various depths of rich coffee
brown, always so clear and silken smooth, are anything but Negroid. Add
to that--voices whose particular pitch will make the welkin ring--and
you have a rather tempting setting for an odd evening. Even Lawrence,
with all his “blood-fear” of them, couldn’t resist some lavish
descriptions of their fine proportions.
--/--/ I have a project of a poetic drama on Cortes and Montezuma, but
the more I see the more I realize how intricate the subject is--and how
much longer it is going to take me than I anticipated. --/--/
382: TO HIS STEPMOTHER
[_Mixcoac_] _December 12th, ’31_
Dear Bess: There is a distinct smell of powder in the air this evening.
But that isn’t all! Rockets are whizzing up sporadically for miles
around, and the sound of church bells far and near, has been incessant
since dawn. All of which is to say that this is an important day in the
Mexican calendar--nothing less, in fact, than the annual Feast of the
Virgin of Guadalupe, the particular Patroness of all Mexicans. This
year’s celebration is all the more extravagant, as she is reputed to
have “appeared” here (before a humble peon named Juan Diego) just four
hundred years ago today.
For weeks the influx of Indians and pilgrims of all types from all the
provinces and tribes of Mexico has been in progress. It is probably no
exaggeration to say that there are two hundred thousand extra souls,
pious and near-pious, who have flocked here to continue the _fiesta_
until New Year’s. But today--all of them, including the majority of
Mexico City’s population of one million--went to the little town of
Guadalupe Hidalgo, practically a suburb now, of Mexico City, where a
great cathedral has been erected near the spot where the Virgin is
reputed to have made her first appearance.
I engaged a cab the night before, and got up at four this morning to get
an early start, arriving before the Cathedral just at dawn. Even then
one couldn’t elbow one’s way into the church without waiting in line for
an hour. I gave that up, having come more to see some of the native
Indian dances that take place here and there throughout the town--some,
in fact, right in front of the cathedral. The whole business is simply
indescribable without ten reams of paper; but suffice to say that the
dances were wonderful. Certain people are picked from each district or
tribe for their marked ability--and there is quite a rivalry between
districts in the excellence of their performance. There are from 24 to
45 in a group, generally in circular formation, with banners, guitars
which they play as they sway and turn, and elaborate pantaloons, skirts,
feather crests, etc. Death and the Devil weave in and out among
them--and other masked figures, like wild boars and old
man-of-the-mountain.
I pushed and prodded from one group to the other, until by 9:30 I was
ready to come home; and did. I had taken Daniel along, and was glad of
it, since I just missed causing a riot by attempting to photograph some
of the dancers in action, which is, it seems, forbidden. The dancing is
all very serious and very set and formal; it generally derives from very
ancient tribal rites. It isn’t any sort of Mardi-Gras mood at all that
the Indians express, despite the flamboyant colors of their costumes.
Well, when I consider that the Indians, all of those, at least, that I
saw--had been dancing the same measure for practically all the night
before--continued all day after I left and WILL continue on the same
schedule for practically two weeks more--and ALL for the sake of a
ritual and _not a cent of money_--I must say I admire their devotion to
custom and tradition. The figure of the Virgin of Guadalupe miraculously
unites the teachings of the early Catholic missionaries with many
survivals of the old Indian myths and pagan cults. She is a typical
Mexican product, a strange blend of Christian and pagan strains. What a
country and people! The most illogical and baffling on earth; but how
appealing! I enclose the authoritative portrait of this Virgin, who, I
think, is quite beautiful. She is really the Goddess of the Mexican
masses, and you will find her image or picture everywhere, even when you
can’t see it--as for instance, inside the hat bands of wide _sombreros_.
It is rare to escape the sight of her--on a postcard or stencil above
the windshield facing half the taxi drivers of Mexico. For protection
and good luck! I think I shall have to “wear” her around with me for
awhile--likewise for “Protection and good luck” against the wiles and
extortions of some of those same drivers!
I haven’t heard from you in a long while--no answer yet to my last. But
I’m not complaining. I know the season, the other trials--and how filled
your time is. Thank you very much, by the way, for having arranged the
money payment for me through the Chase bank. It saved me many pesos on
the “exchange.” I won’t need to bother you again this month--nor next.
Matters go more smoothly with me as I get myself more acclimated to
Mexico, its habits and the peculiar strain of the high altitude here.
I’m feeling very well, and am even accused of getting fat.
As Christmas draws near I think much of the Season’s loss in all it can
give to you and me this year. Christmas always probes the deepest
memories, and the fondest; and I know what you will be thinking about
this Christmas, and how apt it will be to make the hearth seem cold. I
know your fortitude also, Bess,--and your natural, spontaneous response
to all that is good and enduring. And I’m sure, therefore, that
surrounded as you are by the loyalty and love of those whose names need
no particular mention, you’ll still find many reasons for gratitude and
even a bit of seasonal merriment. --/--/
1932
383: TO PEGGY BAIRD
[_Mixcoac_] _January 6th_
Dearest Peggy: I hope you got the $75. I sent yesterday afternoon. I
went first to the Mancera where I ate like a horse; then rushed to the
bank in time to get all I wanted. Daniel I found as drunk as usual when
I got home, but he did manage to get me a hot bath before eight, after
which I really began to enjoy my weariness. Slept fairly well--waking to
find old Mizzentop flaunting the colors still in valiant dreams of you.
M---- was here, besides the family box of goodies and about a million
letters. I’ll just never catch up, I’m sure. M., as I expected, is as
settled as ever.... I can foresee a number of needs, or rather uses for
him in the next fortnight.
Lesley [Simpson] is coming to lunch with me at the Mancera this noon.
All things considered, I am hoping that he, rather than anyone else,
will want to take over the house. For one thing it would mean that I
could trust _all_ my belongings to the premises--and be freer than ever
to move about as I took a notion to. I wouldn’t lose any more money in
the end than storage costs and transportation otherwise necessitated.
I’m in such a hectic rush this morning that I can’t do more than remind
you that you already know the depth of my love for you. The ride back
yesterday was psychologically so strange and new a meditation to me that
it seemed almost like sheer delirium. When I get more of the pressure of
events eased and a moment for a little personal thinking, I’ll write you
a more decent expression of my gratitude. I’m dying now to be off to
Acapulco with you in two weeks time, and almost every moment must be
bent to that end.
I’ll see Mary [Doherty] today or tomorrow about your clothes. Has
Malcolm replied yet? Let me know when to write him if he hasn’t. DAMN
that Putnam review! Of all times, now, to sharpen the critical blade!
But that’s what I get for procrastinating. Mexico [City] doesn’t look
any more tempting and reassuring than I expected. It’s cold, bloody
cold, of course, too.
I’m expecting a letter from you tomorrow, and often afterwards, dear
Twidget! Apply yourself well; don’t forget the toilet paper, the water
wagon, your typewriter, nor your Hart. -- -- -- --
384: TO MALCOLM COWLEY
_Mixcoac, DF_ _January 9th, 1932_
Dear Malcolm: I’ve just returned Maddow’s poems to him with a brief note
of appreciation, tempered by some objections to his chaotic structural
tendencies, etc. It’s hard to say much against a person who has so
obviously experienced one’s own temper and angle of vision. Furthermore,
I suspect that he is no more obscure to me (at his _worst_) than I have
been to hundreds of others. But what the hell! I don’t pretend to excuse
myself for a lot of things. He has power and original vision, though--if
he’s got the conscience and brains to channel them....
Peggy and I had the pleasantest Christmas and New Years together that I
remember for ages. Peggy’s usual mixed crowd appeared for the former
date; but I stayed long enough to enjoy a week alone with her. Taxco is
so extremely beautiful--and the townsfolk still so affable--that
whatever one has to say about the Yankee occupation (and that ultimately
seals its doom) it’s still one of the pleasantest places to be. Peggy
has probably written you about encounters with Brett, Bynner, King, et
al. Lewd limericks were shouted from the rooftops--your collection being
more than ever in demand. A mad crowd, though. -- -- -- --
I enjoyed your attack on Munson very much--that is, the initial
broadside that appeared in _The N.R._ But having read answers and
replies since then in _Contempo_, I’ve lived to regret those later
readings--from both sides of the battle line. Of course it was a great
mistake for Munson to have replied at all. No dignity could be saved
that way--and in the end it put you, too, into a rather apologetic
position. Your advantage rests--not chiefly, but partially--in the fact
that you initiated the fracas--and in a journal of vastly greater
circulation and weight than that little receptacle on Chapel Hill. Now
people are beginning to accuse you of being a successful politician. But
I hardly agree with that; I think that greater conquests are necessary
for that title, even though Mr. Boyd lay flaccid under the same swipe.
--/--/
385: TO PEGGY BAIRD
[_Mixcoac_] [_January?_]
Dearest: In case I don’t get off tomorrow morning for Taxco--and hence
anticipate this letter by kisses and much contentment--I want you at
least to know that it won’t be long before we are together again, for I
shall be with you certainly before Sunday.
Your letter of this morning makes me ache for you. Why is it you love me
so? I don’t deserve it. I’m just a careening idiot, with a talent for
humor at times, and for insult and desecration at others. But I can, and
must say that your love is very precious to me. For one thing it seems
to give me an assurance that I thought long buried. You can give me many
things besides--if time proves me fit to receive them: the independence
of my mind and soul again, and perhaps a real wholeness to my body.
Do you remember me saying that I would _not_ fall in love with you, or
with anyone again? But I find that though I like to perpetuate that
statement, I have really overruled it in a thousand thoughts and
emotions.
(The period on that last sentence was accompanied by a convulsion under
the table from Palomo. Rather horrible, in fact. I roused M----, we
called a policeman; but though the dog has resumed all the appearances
of his normality--we’ve relegated him to the shedroom in back of the
kitchen. Rabies are common here, so M---- says, and I shouldn’t wonder
if we’ll have to shoot the “dove.”)
Since there seems to be such a slight chance of renting the house, and
since I really can’t welsh on Eyler Simpson (who is equally responsible,
since he signed the lease with me) by just walking out--I’ve decided to
pay the $70. odd dollars difference by just keeping it--wherever else I
spend my time during the next three months. The family will just have to
fork up a loan or something for me, and I feel sure they will. I’m going
to try and avoid spoiling my remaining time in Mexico; and much more
worry about the house and my few items of possession would succeed in
doing so. Don’t you think I’m right?
Besides, M---- will be in on weekends, and will watch over the servant’s
care of things, and forward my mail wherever I am. I want you to go to
Acapulco with me--and after that I’m going to spend some time up in
Michoacan, Morelia, Lake Chapala, etc. I may end up in Jalapa (which is
very near Vera Cruz) but by that time I rather expect you’ll be with me.
I feel serene and happy in your love today, mad dogs and convulsions
notwithstanding!
386: TO ----
_Mexico, D.F._ [_January 15_]
Dear ----: --/--/ Your Christmas gift was a great surprise--and an
inspiration. Lawrence never wrote a greater story, nor one which
provoked less divided feelings. It was a great revelation to me, and I
shall read “The Man Who Died” more than once again. In all honesty--it
has more to tell me--at least in my present state of mind--than any book
in the Bible. It was originally published by the same people in Paris
who brought out my _Bridge_--under the title of, “The Escaped Cock”; but
I never happened to have read it before. I remember that they had a
terrible time with the customs, getting it into this country--and
largely on account of that title! Imagine! --/--/
387: TO SOLOMON GRUNBERG
_Mixcoac, D.F., Mexico_ _Feb. 8th, ’32_
Dear Mony: As usual, I’m ignoring all the questions of your last
letter.... Don’t know how long I’m going to remain here, etc. Hate it
and love it alternately, but am not, as you surmise, in a constant
Bacchic state. Not by any means. However, I happen to be in something
approximating it at this present moment, since I’ve got to work on the
first impressive poem I’ve started on in the last two years.[68] I feel
the old confidence again; and you may know what that means to one of my
stripe!
The servants are all asleep--and I’m in that pleasant state of beginning
all over again. Especially as I’m in love again--and as never quite
before. Love is always much more important than locality; and this is
the newest adventure I ever had. I won’t say much more than that I seem
to have broken ranks with my much advertised “brotherhood”--and a woman
whom I have known for years--suddenly seems to “have claimed her own.” I
can’t say that I’m sorry. It has given me new perspectives, and after
many tears and groans--something of a reason for living.
So much for “Mexico.” I’m not able to write tourist sketches any more.
They take too long--and are only the more incomplete. I’ve lots to tell
you about all that some other day. And they needn’t be the less stirring
for a little delay. Meantime let me say that you are one of the few
heroes I know. I love your steadfastness and uncompromising attitude,
Mony. Have we the patience to endure? I say YES! -/-/
388: TO PEGGY BAIRD
[_Mixcoac_] _Feb. 10th_
Dearest: _So_ glad to hear from you this morning! I have been up late
for the past two nights, writing countless letters--and with a little
tequila (a very little!) walking back and forth the length of the room
to the tune of the records that we enjoyed so together. I haven’t really
seen anyone since you left; even M---- hasn’t shown up for 48 hours
again. The version of the beginning of “The Broken Tower” that I sent
you early this morning is probably to be changed a good deal yet. But
you seemed to hanker for it--and so I let ‘er fly.
I could be doing a lot these days, since I feel so much like working, if
the tension were less, around here. Sr. Daniel Hernandez is morose and
very threatening indeed, despite the fact that I haven’t even
reprimanded him for his recent drunkenness. Lisa is scared to death of
him, and warns me that there may be all kinds of trouble in store if I
fire him, since he knows about half the Police in Mixcoac, knows I have
no firearms on the place, etc. Well, neither can I bring myself to
endure his insolence and complete disregard of services much more. Sr.
Lepine, my landlord, is going to try to corner and talk to him this
afternoon, but Daniel won’t be around at the time, as Lepine, who called
this morning when D. was out, told his wife the hour when he’d return
this afternoon.
Oh Hell! I say. I’m getting so damned tired of the whole problem. Lisa
thinks she won’t dare remain after Daniel leaves on account of his
probably exposing her political affiliations. If you can’t find someone
from Taxco I shall probably be left here a perfect prisoner--without
even a telephone, and afraid to leave the place a minute. Well, don’t
see how I’m going to get any work done _this_ afternoon, nor probably
tomorrow. Damned outrageous, I think. Daniel will probably come lurching
in about 8 tonight and begin to flirt a knife and pistol about. Such a
quiet life in this pretty retreat!
It’s too bad you have to move so preemptorily--on the exact 15th. But
those scorpions worry me--especially their generous numbers. That house
will always attract them--being so on the side of a hill. I miss you a
lot, dear. Somehow we have such a lot to talk about together. I am
getting more and more serious and dignified day by day--getting maybe
back into myself--as well as into you.
389: TO PEGGY BAIRD
[_Mixcoac_] _Feb 11th_
Dearest: I was so tremulous and distracted with the domestic situation
as described yesterday to you, that last night I went on a mild tare
with Lisa here in the salon. I finally came to the decision of packing
up and leaving for the States within a week; there just didn’t seem to
be any other way of proceeding. I certainly felt fed up! Lepine didn’t
come round until this morning, and if he hadn’t offered me a new servant
who he swears is reliable, I think I should be sending you the telegram
I typed out last night, announcing my departure.
Lepine is sending me an old man he has known for 14 years, the most
honest soul, he declares, he has ever met. Lisa will stay, she says, and
cook. The combination will be perfect, and will result in little more
expense than I have been under right along. Lepine says that Daniel has
been wanting to work for “the general” for some time. I think they will
leave within a few days--and without umbrage. Certainly they have no
reason to resent my simple objection to constant drunkenness. Daniel
came home stewed again last night, after working all day at “the
general’s.” But I was too gay with Lisa and tequila and dancing--and my
secret resolution to pull out, to mind very much. I have a notion that
this rearrangement will be satisfactory. Certainly I’m lucky to have
Lisa here--so intelligent, generous, neat and efficient in a thousand
ways. She doesn’t ask for anything but her board and keep, but I shall
try to induce her into some sort of salary.
These photographs, I think, are perfectly splendid. I especially love
those of you with the goat! And you _ought_ to like the one of me.
Remember, I was looking at you--and the expression seems to bespeak a
lot of love and happiness. And what a scrumptious and monumental pose
that is of Lisa’s! Siqueiros really ought to see it.
Of course I’m anxious about your plans after leaving Natalia’s. You know
you’re welcome--more than that, my dear, to make this your future
headquarters. I miss you _mucho, mucho, mucho_! But I don’t think that
either of us ought to urge the other into anything but the most
spontaneous and mutually liberal arrangements. I am bound to you more
than I ever dreamed of being, and in the most pleasant and deep way. I
think I have wandered back to some of my early idealism, and in the
proper sort of way--without any arbitrary forcing or conscious
reckoning. You’re a great little “rouser,” my dear! -- -- -- --
390: To Peggy Baird
[_Mixcoac_] _Feb 13th_
Dear Peggy: I just can’t make up my mind to go traveling or even
visiting until I get through some real work here in Mixcoac. Somehow, it
seems to me that the time is ripe even though circumstances are
difficult; and if I can’t do any better I think I’ll just try to let the
domestic situation here “ride” as best possible--so long as there is no
pistol twirling. The place seems to run itself fairly smoothly with
Daniel away until 7-8-or-9 at night, and for the moment, at least,
relations are back again on a fairly friendly basis. I’m doing my best
not to think or worry too much about it. Certainly I shall avoid any
rows in the future. And it’s lucky--if I do finally dismiss Daniel--that
he can immediately go to work at a place such as the “general’s,” where
he has said for some time he wanted to remove, anyway. Under such
conditions I don’t see how he can possibly harbor much resentment.
I had a very enjoyable lunch and afternoon yesterday with Lesley and
Marion [Simpson]. She’s fundamentally very likable, I think. But I
should imagine that Lesley would welcome a little warmer company. He
seems more than satisfied, however, and is looking even better than
usual. In the morning I had been to the glass factory with Anita
[Brenner]. A very gratifying experience. I couldn’t resist buying a half
dozen wine glasses, of a smoky rose-purple transparency that set one
dreaming even when empty. Then some exquisite hand-woven textiles (table
and pillow covers, cotton) in the afternoon from Davis’s--made in
Oaxaca, and quite unique. I almost bought myself a turquoise and silver
ring; but Lesley and Marion dragged me out in time. It’s dangerous for
me to hang around town very long.
The strangest rumors circulate about Natalie’s house. She seems to have
written someone, I forgot whom, that she hasn’t sold it at all, and
doesn’t intend to. Then Davis, who seems to hear everything, reports to
me that “the Kings are leaving Taxco and intend to settle somewhere up
in northern New York.” I had to smile at this, recognizing the source,
etc. But I didn’t know that the plan had ripened to such a decided and
public extent as yet. If they aren’t coming in until Tuesday I wish they
would wire me to that effect by noon on Monday. I’ll expect them
overnight Monday otherwise. I want to have provisions on hand, too, and
fresh at the proper time.
I’m going to make a stab again at the Putnam review this afternoon. I’m
feeling shabbier and shabbier about my delay.... Must send up
_something_ anyway. And maybe later I’ll catch up the creative thread of
my poem again. After all I’ve been through lately, it just doesn’t seem
to exist any more.
So glad to hear you’ve finished your story! Where do you intend sending
it? Lots of love, dear! -- -- -- --
391: TO PEGGY BAIRD
[_Mixcoac_] _Feb 16th_
Dearest: I was in the mood for swearing last night that I wouldn’t write
you for at least a week. My blast at the Kings, I felt, needed some very
definite and concrete “substantiation”--such as a long, glum silence;
which I hoped might worry you. But, really, I find daily communication
with you quite irresistible. Especially when your reciprocation is so
regular and--need I say? charming. And then, besides, the entire
household has been in such a perfectly delightful mood all day,--I can’t
really be sad or important.
True to my word last night, I got very lit. Daniel had come home that
way anyhow, and I took the opportunity to talk to him about
sobriety--meanwhile pouring him glass after glass of the Tenampa I’d
bought for the Kings. The more he drank the more he talked of “his” or
“our” Pegguié--accent on the penult;--but you will be able to pronounce
that without the acquaintance of Quintilian anyway, I’m sure. You’re
very popular around here, and I’m sure that if you care to come and stay
with me for awhile you will be regarded as the pet of the place--since
Elise and Conrada both dote on you--as well as myself. M---- just isn’t
around for days and days any more.
Daniel is not drunk tonight; rather he appeared at 6 PM with a large
bush of _buena de noche_, from the _jardine del general_, as well as a
large bouquet of heliotrope. Judge what the sala smells like with a
large bunch of tuberoses also, which I purchased yesterday in honor of
the Kings! Some times I think this house is the nicest place in the
world. It certainly could be--in a not ambitious way. My temperamental
reversals of opinion regarding Mexico are a joke. I now regard myself as
a confirmed idiot who can’t make up his mind about anything whatever any
more.
I can’t yet figger how Tommy [Robert Thompson] could say we looked like
“two waifs” sitting on a strange doorstep. Yes, that letter was
distinctly below his usual level. Got a fine long letter from Peggy
Robson yesterday, which hints at the same relations with -- -- -- --that
you mentioned. Well, well, and _como no_! She also said that Malcolm (in
long underwear) and Waldo left together in the same truck for the scene
of action. Perhaps common suffering will weld a friendship there, after
all. By the way, I don’t believe a thing of your wagon wagon, water
wagon story. Especially with Luz around, who Lisa says is a great little
tanker. I have my own ideas about the sobriety of those nights of yours
in such company, and how “lonely” they are. Just as long as you don’t
let your right hand know what your left hand doeth, as they say. I’ll
keep the same code, at least with my index finger. --/--/
392: TO PEGGY BAIRD
[_Mixcoac_] [_Feb?_]
Dearest Peggy: Everything is very much at loose ends again since Daniel
appeared dead drunk again yesterday afternoon--and I had to spend the
rest of the day and evening cogitating and recogitating just what was to
be done about it. I’m very near firing him (the case seems to be
hopeless, and I just can’t stand being “run” by servants to such an
extent). Also, I’ve lost a lot of confidence in him since Lisa has
discovered that he has my watch and fob in his cabin, which Conrada
unwittingly showed her the other day. Whether Filemon took it or not in
the first place makes very little difference....
So, will you squint around--and ask Bill [Spratling] also to keep an
open eye for a mozo for me there in Taxco. There are plenty of honest
youngsters there who are known to be honest and would welcome the idea
of coming to Mexico for a few months. Lisa (and everybody else) says
that you’re sure to pick a thief no matter who you hire here in Mexico.
I would never have a peaceful moment with one of them around; whereas a
boy from Taxco [would] behave differently, especially if his family
could be referred to there. I don’t say send anyone at present, but I
wish you would be ready to immediately if I should wire you to one of
these days. Maria Luisa’s brother (not the goblin midget), or Raphael,
I’m sure, would be glad to come. Cleaning and gardening and errands--you
know the slight requirements. I would pay them 10-15 pesos a month with
board. I’m hoping to keep Lisa as cook, but she isn’t enough by herself
on account of having to remain constantly with her child. She’s done
more spontaneous cleaning around the place in the last two days than I
can tell you. Ask Bill to find out if Santiago is satisfied at the
Taxqueno. When I last talked to him he was very keen to come to
Mexico--at almost any cost. If I should wire for immediate action I’m
sure you wouldn’t mind advancing the bus and taxi fare, would you? You
know this house simply cannot be left alone a minute. And I don’t see
how I can possibly stand it much longer in its present equivocal state.
I worked late on my poem[69] last night despite all the disturbance, and
willy-nilly shall get some work accomplished, at least correspondence,
today. The enclosed was delivered by a man from Taxco last evening, and
I think it’s the money from Leslie that failed of being enclosed in his
letter to you of yesterday. M---- absent another night! --/--/
Clinton [King] wrote me a long letter of apology--which was more than
sufficient. I haven’t much ground to stand on myself when it comes to
drunken outbreaks and melodramatic abuse of my friends, so it makes it
very easy indeed for me to forgive and forget. They are two very decent
and lovable people and I’m glad they like me enough to speak as they do.
If Clinton ever bombs and bombards me again in the same manner I’ll know
better how to take it. I’m looking forward to some pleasant times
together when they come to Town. Please convince them of my affection
and hope of seeing them. --/--/
Don’t forget about my servant problem, dear. You know it’s yours in a
way, too. I want things to be smoother than before on your next “visit”
to Mixcoac, besides which I want to get my mind free for work as soon as
possible. I’m really in extraordinarily good condition and do hope you
also feel more settled and industrious.
I hope to send you more of the poem in a few days.
393: TO HIS STEPMOTHER
_Mixcoac, DF_ _Feb. 17th, 1932_
Dear Bess: --/--/ I get so aggravated at times that I swear I’ll pack up
and leave for the States on the first available boat. Then the next
clear and glorious morning comes around, with fresh flowers in the
garden, good coffee on the stove--and the renewed vision that sleep
brings.... Then I change my mind all over again. For I know that as soon
as I go back I’ll regret it--and long and long for Mexico again. Not
that I plan on staying here forever; but for the time being the business
situation in the States is zero. There’s nothing I can really do there.
And although I have found that living here is far from being as cheap as
it’s cracked up to be, it _is_ less, on the whole, and when one
learns--and how long it takes!--to wade around and learn one’s depth and
altitude--one can make a good deal of a lame proposition. At least
Mexico affords me time and space. I’m not so giddy as I once was about
_all_ its features; but a very pleasant residue remains. And I’m just
getting to know it well enough to get down to work on my poetry and
other creative work.
Bess, you certainly have given a demonstration of real heroism in
handling the factory rent problem as you have. I sense a certain amount
of weariness in your letter; and I can well understand the causes and
the justifications. The sheer day-to-day strain of management,
complicated as it is, I know to be a burden--a real cross to bear.
You’re one of the finest people I’ve ever met or expect to meet I’ve
always been so glad that Father found someone at last who really took
the pains to understand him; because he was certainly a difficult person
to comprehend. He had many faults, too. I only regret that I was so
late in realizing his many virtues. [The rest of this letter is lost.]
394: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN
_Mixcoac, DF_ _March 10th, 1932_
Dear Sambo: --/--/ Rather amazing things have happened to me since Xmas.
Peggy Cowley [Baird], whom you certainly remember as Malcolm’s wife, and
who is -- -- -- -- here in Mexico, is mainly responsible. You may have
heard that we are now living together, and I must admit that I find
conjugal life, however unofficial, a great consolation to a loneliness
that had about eaten me up. Maybe I am fulfilling some of your theories
and predictions. --/--/
Just about 20 more days before my scholarship is officially terminated.
But I have my doubts about coming back before six months, and maybe not
that soon. I can’t hope to find any interesting work in the States for
some time, meanwhile the estate has guaranteed me at least a portion of
the yearly allowance left me by my father, which will go farther here
than in the north. Besides I’m just getting to work on a few things--and
Peggy and I enjoy Mexico more than ever, being together.
How I wish you could step into our house here some afternoon! Week by
week I’ve collected more and more beautiful Mexican serapes, leather
work, pottery, embroideries, lacquers, etc. Fresh bunches of lilies,
tuberoses, violets, nasturtiums, etc., every day from the garden. The
white iris is just coming out, too. When my lease on this house
expires--6 weeks from now--we’re going to do more traveling. There are
at least twenty wonderful towns and places I haven’t yet visited. Last
week we went to Puebla. I only visited 2 of its 365 churches and chapels
(one for every day of the year) and what gold and decorations and
carvings I saw defies description. We came back laden down with gorgeous
pottery and serapes, etc., from the superb market there. --/--/
395: TO SOLOMON GRUNBERG
_Mixcoac, D.F._ _March 20th ’32_
Dear Mony: What a fine, understanding and spirited letter that was from
you! Proving not only your friendship again but the clean and heroic
attitude you hold toward life also.... Not that I have ever doubted
either one, but fresh reassertions of that kind are always highly
gratifying. --/--/
Peggy and I are still very happy together here. -- -- -- -- We’ve known
each other for nearly 12 years, intimately--but never dreamed, of
course, of our present happy relationship. How permanent that will be is
far from settled; but we have learned to enjoy the present moment
without too much romanticizing--which I think is wisdom.
Wish you could see--and smell--all the delicious flowers that surround
our house: calla lilies, freesia, roses, calendulas, white iris,
violets, cannas, a dozen colors of geraniums, pansies, feverfew, candy
tuft, morning glories, etc. The days are getting warmer and all the
deciduous trees are back again in fresh leaf. My fellowship is about
terminated, but I expect to stay on here for several months longer if
the income from my father’s estate seems to warrant. Am even thinking of
making my permanent home here. Mexico gets into your veins. Beautiful
people, manners, scenery, speech and climate.
The poem (“Broken Tower”) has undergone considerable change and
extension since the version I sent you. I’m so glad that you liked it.
I’m not sending any more of it to you, however, until it’s quite
finished.
There is a small group of quite interesting compatriots here which
gathers occasionally at one or the other of our houses--most of whom are
Guggenheim fellows like myself. Carleton Beals and wife; Anita Brenner;
Marsden Hartley, the painter, who has just arrived and who is wildly
enthusiastic; Lesley Simpson (University of California) and wife; Pierre
& Caroline Durieux, head of General Motors here; Wm. Spratling, whose
book _Little Mexico_ (just out) you ought to read, etc. Plenty of good
company, in fact, for one like myself who doesn’t care for a great many
people.
A way, way back you asked me a question about what I thought of _Moby
Dick_. It has passages, I admit, of seeming innuendo that seem to block
the action. But on third or fourth reading I’ve found that some of those
very passages are much to be valued in themselves--minor and subsidiary
forms that augment the final climacteric quite a bit. No work as
tremendous and tragic as _Moby Dick_ can be expected to build up its
ultimate tension and impact without manipulating our time sense to a
great extent. Even the suspense of the usual mystery story utilizes that
device. In _Moby Dick_ the whale is a metaphysical image of the
Universe, and every detail of his habits and anatomy has its importance
in swelling his proportions to the cosmic rôle he plays. You may find
other objections to the book in mind, but I’ve assumed the above to be
among them, at least, as I among others that I know, found the same
fault at first. --/--/
396: TO CARESSE CROSBY
_Mixcoac, D.F._ _March 31st, 1932_
Dear Caresse: --/--/ As I have not been near that Bank, c/o which you
wrote me, for months and months until yesterday, your message and gift
remained in complete limbo! Judge my surprise and pleasure at what
appeared--practically from limbo!
The poems for Harry [Crosby] are an everlasting litany of chivalry and
love. The whole collection achieves a power in repose, a
renunciation-plus, that is very rare. I hope you are writing more and
more, Caresse; for the sheer vision of your nature deserves an ever
branching extension and expression. You really come up to the great
themes of Love and Tragedy, as very few women can, at least in words.
My Guggenheim Fellowship terminates today. But I am remaining a while
longer in Mexico on the modest income afforded me from my father’s
estate, since his death last July. At that time I came North for two
months, but was very glad to get back here again as soon as possible.
Mexico with its volcanoes, endless ranges, countless flowers, dances,
villages, lovely brown-skinned Indians with simple courtesies, and
constant sunlight--it enthralls me more than any other spot I’ve ever
known. It _is_ and isn’t an easy place to live. Altogether more strange
to us than even the orient.... But it would take volumes to even hint at
all I have seen and felt. Have rung bells and beaten pre-Conquistadorial
drums in firelit circles at ancient ceremonies, while rockets went
zooming up into the dawn over Tepoztlan; have picked up obsidian arrows
and terra-cotta idols from the furrows of corn-fields in far valleys;
bathed with creatures more beautiful than the inhabitants of Bali in
mountain streams and been in the friendliest jails that ever man got
thrown in. There is never an end to dancing, singing, rockets and the
rather lurking and suave dangers that gives the same edge to life here
that the mountains give to the horizon. Harry would have adored it--past
expression--and I am sure you would. I should like to stay indefinitely.
My Spanish is still as lame as my French when I left France. Of the
“Epic”--I haven’t yet written a line. Only a few lyrics. But then, what
did I actually write while in Europe--an environment not half so strange
and distractingly new-old curious as this? Besides I’m nearly two miles
above you here in the air--at least while I remain in these headquarters
of mine in the suburbs of Mexico City,--an old-fashioned Mexican
residence of 8 rooms, 3 servants, a luxurious garden--with a goat,
fighting cock, cat, Spitz dog and an occasional scorpion--all for $50. a
month. But I’ve about made my adjustment now and am beginning to rap the
typewriter a good deal lately. With the world all going to hell--what
can one gather together with any confidence these days anyway? But I’m
realizing responsibilities--or doubtless should have written quite a bit
of trash, which might have been better mentioned than perused.
Do you see Kay [Boyle] and Lawrence [Vail] any more? Kay’s novel
_Plagued by the Nightingale_ (and how they please over here!) impressed
and delighted me immensely. --/--/
397: TO MALCOLM COWLEY
[_Mixcoac_] _Easter ’32_
Dear Malcolm: Peggy and I think and talk a great deal about you. That
means in a very fond way, or it wouldn’t be mentioned. I’m wondering
whether or not you’ll like the above poem [“The Broken Tower”]--about
the 1st I’ve written in two years.... I’m getting too damned
self-critical to write at all any more. More than ever, however, do I
implore your honest appraisal of this verse, prose or nonsense--whatever
it may seem. Please let me know.
And because I congratulate you most vehemently on your recent account of
the Kentucky expedition--please don’t tell me anything you don’t
honestly mean. This has already been submitted to _Poetry_--so don’t
worry about that angle.
I miss seeing you a great deal. Peggy is writing you some sort of
account of the Easter celebrations here. We’re very happy together--and
send you lots of love!
398: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN
[_Mixcoac_] _Easter ’32_
What a jolly long letter from you, Sam! I can’t get time to answer
immediately, but here’s a poem [“The Broken Tower”]--about the first in
2 years--tell me if you like it or not. Happiness continues, with also
all of the gay incidentals of a Mexican Easter--exploding Judases,
rockets, flowers, pappas (excuse me, that’s the spelling for Mexican
potatoes!), mammas, delicious and infinitesimal children wearing masks
and firemen’s helmets, flowers galore and a sky that carries you ever
upward! More anon, and soon!
399: TO SOLOMON GRUNBERG
_Mixcoac, DF_ _April 12th, 1932_
Dear Mony: So glad to hear that the lacquer box reached you--and I hope
there wasn’t duty on it. Things often get through (small articles) I’m
told--if not sent by registered mail. The cutter is awaiting me at the
main post office. At least I take the notice just rec’d to indicate
_that_ as the article, as I’m not expecting anything else of late.
-- -- -- --
I’m in a dull mood today, trying to get back into harness after a couple
of feverish weeks spent in running thither and yon every day or so to
borrow enough money to keep us going until my check from the estate
finally arrived. Somehow I can’t get people to understand that any break
in schedule regarding remittances in a foreign country like Mexico is
quite catastrophic, especially when, like myself, you’re asking for a
mere minimum for all expenses, and when the first of each month finds
you with less than a shoe string to meet all obligations. Finally after
borrowing money for wires, writing a dozen letters, etc., the check
arrived; but I hope for a little more consistent treatment in the
future. After all, it isn’t like asking for a favor; the money was left
me in the will, and the least the executors can do is to send it to me
on the schedule agreed on.
Through the son-in-law of the President I’m acquiring a permanent
passport; something damned hard to get here these days. Peggy and I
shall probably stay here at least until next fall, and maybe longer. We
like our isolation from mutual friends there in the north and our
domestic life here with a house, servants, garden, pets, etc., proves
more satisfying every day. If I can avoid drinking too much I’m
expecting to get nearer solid earth than I have for several years. Sheer
loneliness had nearly eaten me up. Peggy has sufficient sportsmanship,
mentality, taste and sensuality to meet me on practically every level.
And I think I’m learning considerable that would hardly be possible from
any other person.
--/--/ Most all the letters we get from the north are pretty damned blue
and dubious in tone. Well, no wonder, of course. I sometimes wonder if I
shouldn’t go back and wail around the grave of capitalism myself,
adopting sackcloth and ashes too, instead of the beautiful bright
woolen serape worn around here on cold evenings. All my friends are
turning at least a violent pink lately, and I’m almost convinced myself.
In fact, by all the laws of logic I _am_ convinced. But it goes so
against my native grain--seeing nothing but red on the horizon. --/--/
Speaking of music, did you ever hear any _real_ Mexican songs and
dances? Some of the best of them are now on disks which can be ordered,
if not in stock, at least from the factory through your dealer: _Las
Mañanitas_ (Brunswick #40397) might have been composed by Bach. It’s a
ceremonial song played to one or another Mexican in honor of his
birthday. Very solemn and eloquent. _La Marihuana_ (Victor 46107-A), a
wild jargon about the native drug of the same name (generally smoked in
cigarettes) and its effects. _Capulin_ (Victor 30323-A). A wild and
throbbing native canción that will set you prancing.
The Mexican singer uses a part of his throat or larynx never used
elsewhere that I know of, except in the Orient or Arabia. It has great
range, is generally shrill but capable of heart-wringing vibrations. Has
the old Hawaiian gargling backed off the map. It is nothing to have four
or five singers (masons, plumbers or pickslingers during the day) drop
in here for an evening’s singing. And to my mind they’re generally
preferable to all the trained and professional strummers and whoopers-up
I’ve ever heard. Tequila is passed around; or beer; or coffee. And the
corridas (endless ballads) and seranatas go on for hours and hours.
There are endless corridas about “poor Pancho Villa,” Zapata and other
dead revolutionaries. And then, if we’re drunk enough, someone dances a
_jarabe_, a dance that is all vibrant gristle, emphasis and exhausting
grace. -- -- -- --
400: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN
_Mixcoac, DF_ _April 13th, 1932_
Dear Sam: --/--/ Marsden Hartley, the painter, is here on his
Guggenheim, as well as Andrew Dasburg. I don’t know the latter, but
Hartley is delightful company and has brought a young nephew from
Cleveland along with him who paints, on canvas, I mean.... Then I got a
letter from Charlotte [Rychtarik] saying that she and Richard expected
to motor down with some of their wealthy Cleveland friends--only to hear
just yesterday, that a relative had died suddenly in Europe, money had
to be sent--and therefore the trip had to be abandoned. Charlotte is
philosophical enough, but I’m sorry not to see her refreshed by Mexico.
Well ... maybe later. My biggest surprise in a long while, however, has
been a note from dear old D---- C----. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten
our old Cleveland hero! Who is still trying to write novelettes and best
sellers in Des Moines. At least he says he’s still trying. Is also the
friend of some fellows who are trying to start up a quarterly, and
wouldn’t I kindly send them some poems of mine.... I must write him a
picture card at least in answer; but I’m damned if I want to continue
any correspondence of that kind.
That last of yours was a bang up letter, Sam. Say what you will, you
certainly haven’t lost your old good humor and sympathy. I love to think
of my “Ka” as you and the Egyptians call it, still haunting my basement
basinette on Col. Hts. Good lord, but how I jumped to my feet right into
a perfect salute yesterday when suddenly--over the neighbor’s radio--I
caught the chorus of that old favorite of mine, “The Navy Blues” ...
which certainly you can’t have forgotten either. Which reminds me that I
still haven’t heard from B---- S----since the recent fatal cyclones that
swept right across his home town in A----. I wrote immediately for
assurances of his welfare and safety. But no word yet. I can never
forget that sweet boy; and his letters to me for the last two years have
been so consistently affectionate and nostalgic that they sometimes
bring tears to my eyes.
--/--/ Peggy and I have each of us written Tommy [Thompson] a letter
today. I hope they cheer him up a little. He’s so shy he almost never
writes any tangible news about himself. Just wise cracks, burlesque
slogans, oblique hints: all very witty and amusing, but not quite
explicit enough about himself to really fully satisfy. He’s probably
having his worries these days. --/--/
Dos Passos has written a very important record of the war and the “war
mind” in _1919_. Do read it, Sam. My old friend (though an “enemy for
awhile”) Claire (Spencer) Smith, who wrote _Gallows Orchard_, and
another friend of Peggy’s, Wm. Seabrook’s wife, barged in on us the
other day on the way to Cuernavaca, and loaned me the book to read.
Claire has just finished her second novel, which Hal Smith is bringing
out in May. We had a great reconciliation and I’ve decided that I’m not
the only one who has improved since our ancient misunderstandings.
--/--/
401: TO SOLOMON GRUNBERG
_Mixcoac_ _April 20th_
Dear Mony: Just a hasty note in the fever of packing and final
arrangements.... My plans for staying in Mexico have been completely
reversed by a suit against the estate which may cut me off from any
income for years. Since I’m having to depend even now entirely on loans
from my stepmother’s salary the only thing possible to do is return to
Chagrin Falls and try to work some of it out in service to the
organization, several branches of which are approaching bankruptcy. Not
a very happy prospect....
Am sailing for NY on the _Orizaba_ from Vera Cruz on the 24th. Shall
probably land in NY without a penny. Could you send me a small loan of
some kind c/o Hotel Lafayette, University Place & 11th St.? It would be
wonderful if you could happen to be in NY sometime during the three or
four days I hope to be there before going into my middle western exile.
This crash has prevented my collecting the cutter as yet, but I hope to
get it before leaving if I have anything like the pesos to pay the duty
charges. If not it may come back to you. I’ve had an awful time all
round lately ... will tell you later. -- -- -- --
402: TO MORTON DAUWEN ZABEL
_Mixcoac, DF_ _April 20th, 1932_
Dear Morton Zabel: I’ve suddenly been called north on account of
business. Sailing immediately and probably won’t return to Mexico. Will
you kindly have my subscription address [changed] to my permanent
residence; _Box 604, Chagrin Falls, Ohio_....
About a month ago I sent you a poem, for possible use in _Poetry_, but
have not as yet heard from you about it. The letter may have gone astray
for all I know, as service isn’t any too reliable here.[70]
I hope I may hear from you soon after my arrival in Ohio. -- -- -- --
403: TO _Contempo_[71]
_Mixcoac, Mexico_ _April 20, 1932_
Dear Contempo: Delighted to hear that you like the “Bacardi” poem and
are using it.
I’m leaving for the States in a few days and can’t write you a decent
response at the moment. But I hope you meant what you said about sending
me _Contempo_ regularly. And I should like to do reviews when I get
settled in the north again.
Please address me from now on at Box 604, Chagrin Falls, Ohio, where I
shall probably be after May 10th.
P.S. I should love to review MacLeish’s _Conquistador_ for you if you
haven’t already assigned it elsewhere.
404: TO HIS STEPMOTHER
_Mixcoac_ _April 22nd ’32_
Dear Bess: Pardon me for wiring Byron [Madden] about money, but so many
difficulties came to a head at once here, and with myself weak from a
fever and dysentery I had to use every way of impressing on you the
urgency of my immediate needs. And I imagine that you may well have been
too preoccupied to realize the situation here anyway--even in part.
Altogether I’ve had a terrible time lately. I can’t begin to write the
details now in the finalities of packing. I leave for Vera Cruz tomorrow
night and sail Sunday morning on the _Orizaba_ for New York. I was
planning to return to Ohio even before the shocking news came about the
W---- matter. But with that having happened I wouldn’t have thought of
staying here another minute anyway. I may be able to be of some help to
you this summer. Anyway I want to make the effort, especially since you
must be quite crippled (at least at the Cottage) without Dorothy’s help.
You can’t imagine how difficult the Mexicans make it for any foreigners
to remain here--comfortably. I love the country and the people (Indians)
but certainly have had my fill of passport difficulties, servant
problems and other complications for awhile. I have been not only
ill--but frightened nearly out of my wits because I happened, in all
innocence, to put my passport-renewal problem in the hands of a
lawyer-crook. It’s all right; I have clearance papers; but it involved
me in a lot of expense, consultations with innumerable people and just
endless worry. Then at the last moment my servant got roaring drunk and
left, and came back and shook the gate to its foundations, yelling
threats against my life, terrorizing us for days, until we had to call
on the American Embassy for special police service, etc., and so on. Do
you wonder I’ve been anxious to get off as soon as possible. Thank God
the lease on my house is already expired--and there can be no further
complications that I know.
I hated to draw on you so heavily for money lately, but after all, I had
no way of knowing how matters would turn out with the estate; and the
expense of coming home now certainly seems justified in view of the
possibility of economizing later on. There are many things highly
important for us to discuss together, and besides that I am looking
forward to seeing you and the rest of our friends and relatives again. I
am bringing back a lot of very interesting things, some very beautiful,
that you’ll enjoy seeing, I’m sure.
A case of books had to be sent collect (Wells Fargo) direct to the
factory. Please be on the watch for it. The other things are all in a
large hamper which will go with me on the boat and will be expressed to
the factory later on from New York. I’ll be in New York a couple of days
as I simply must see some of my old friends after so long a time. I’ll
telephone you on the first night of my arrival around 10 o’clock when
rates are reduced.
Please give my love to poor little Dorothy. I haven’t had a moment to
write to anyone lately or I should have written her long ago. Had to
spend all day yesterday running around trying to get the telegraphed
money cashed. Wasn’t your fault, nor mine. Peggy nearly went crazy with
hers, sent from her former husband, too. The telegraph office paid us
off in six hundred and some odd “Tostons” (about like getting it all in
dimes) and neither the Ward Line office nor the official Banco de Mexico
would accept them.... It seems there’s a law against paying out any such
currency beyond a certain small amount. But how should we know--and
besides what does a government agency like the telegraph here mean by
paying you in currency which the government itself, through its own
official bank, turns around and refuses! We finally had to arrange a
special interview with the president of the bank himself. I was all
ready to complain to the embassy. So you see how slow things move here
and what incessant obstacles one has to fight for the simplest sort of
transactions. It certainly has about made a nervous wreck of me. But
I’ll rest up on the boat.
405: TO MRS. T. W. SIMPSON
(Postcard)
[_Havana, Cuba_] [_April 26, 1932_]
Off here for a few hours on my way north. Will write you soon. Am going
back to Cleveland to help in the business crisis. Permanent address--Box
604, Chagrin Falls, Ohio.
LIST OF CORRESPONDENTS
(_Numbers are those of the letters_)
----: 55, 103, 105, 121, 136, 245, 250, 267, 381, 386
---- and ----: 242, 273, 292, 300
Anderson, Sherwood: 54, 85
Baird, Peggy: 376, 377, 383, 385, 388, 389, 390, 391, 392
Baird, Peggy and Malcolm Cowley: 295
Brown, Slater: 216, 294, 298, 303, 323, 373
Bubb, Charles C.: 15
_Contempo_: 403
Cowley, Malcolm: 225, 237, 310, 311, 319, 328, 362, 371, 384, 397
Cowley, Malcolm and Peggy Baird: 255
Crosby, Caresse: 329, 331, 332, 333, 335, 396
Crosby, Harry and Caresse: 330
Dietz, Lorna: 334, 354, 368
Father (Clarence A. Crane): 3, 4, 8, 9, 173, 219, 221, 283, 286, 288,
291, 306, 307
Frank, Waldo: 119, 131, 137, 140, 182, 188, 211, 212, 213, 217, 228,
236, 244, 247, 248, 249, 253, 254, 257, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 265,
272, 296, 299, 304, 315, 320, 327, 337, 355, 363
Grandmother (Elizabeth B. Hart): 1, 2, 165, 209, 226, 230
Grunberg, Solomon: 346, 352, 375, 387, 395, 399, 401
Guggenheim Memorial Foundation: 344
Josephson, Matthew: 40, 57
Kahn, Otto H.: 222, 235, 289
Lachaise, Gaston: 231
Lachaise, Isabel and Gaston: 171, 258
Loveman, Samuel: 290, 297, 312, 313, 316, 322, 351, 353, 358, 369, 378,
394, 398, 400
Moe, Henry Allen: 356
Mother (Grace Hart Crane): 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20,
23, 25, 26, 146, 151, 153, 155, 157, 158, 159, 162, 163, 169, 174, 175,
176, 177, 180, 181, 183, 184, 186, 187, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194,
197, 198, 199, 201, 202, 205, 206, 207, 208, 210, 223, 227, 229, 238,
240, 243, 246, 251, 256, 268, 271, 278, 284
Munson, Gorham B,: 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 39, 41, 42, 43,
44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64,
65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84,
86, 88, 90, 91, 92, 94, 96, 97, 99, 101, 102, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111,
112, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 120, 122, 124, 125, 126, 128, 129, 132,
135, 138, 161, 167, 168, 172, 185, 195, 196, 233, 234, 239, 302
Porter, Katherine Anne: 359, 360, 361, 366
Rickword, Edgell: 270
Rodman, Selden: 341, 347, 365
Rosenfeld, Paul: 338
Rychtarik, Charlotte: 141, 143, 149, 156, 166, 170, 264, 309, 336
Rychtarik, Charlotte and Richard: 139, 145, 152, 179, 200, 203, 214,
215, 220, 224, 232, 241, 293, 308, 321, 357, 374
Rychtarik, Richard: 147
Schneider, Isidor: 274, 301, 325, 34 350
Schneider, Isidor and Helen: 305
Seltzer, Thomas: 204
Simpson, Mrs. T. W.: 266, 287, 405
Sommer, William: 144, 218
Stein, Gertrude: 318, 324
Stella, Joseph: 317
Stepmother (Bessie M. Hise): 379, 382, 393, 404
Stieglitz, Alfred: 142, 148, 150, 154, 160, 164
Tate, Allen: 98, 100, 104, 130, 133, 134, 178, 269, 275, 276, 277, 279,
280, 281, 282, 326, 343, 345
Walton, Eda Lou: 340, 380
Wiegand, Charmion: 28, 74, 98, 107, 113, 127, 314
Weinstock, Herbert: 339
Winters, Yvor: 285
Wright, William: 14, 21, 22, 24, 37, 38, 78, 87, 89, 93, 123, 252, 348,
349, 367, 370
Zabel, Morton Dauwen: 364, 372, 402
INDEX
(Asterisks denote works of Hart Crane)
“Abbott, Dorian” (J. B. Wheelwright), 125
_Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years_ (Sandburg), 272
_Aeneid, The_ (Virgil), 309
Aeschylus, 235
Aesop, 58
_Aesthete, 1925_, 196
*“Again” (“The Wine Menagerie”), 255
Aiken, Conrad, 69, 294 f.
Akron, Ohio, 23 ff.
Alden, Priscilla, 306
Aldington, Richard, 12, 341
_All God’s Chillun Got Wings_ (O’Neill), 177
Alleghany College, xi
_American, The_ (James), 41
_American Caravan, The_, 291
*“America’s Plutonic Ecstasies,” 120, 126
_Anarchism Is Not Enough_ (Riding), 321
Anderson, Margaret, 10, 30, 45 ff., 56-57, 61, 64, 70, 174
Anderson, Sherwood, 23, 26 ff., 34 ff., 37-38, 40, 47, 53, 56, 58 f.,
62, 65-66, 69, 73, 75, 83 ff., 95 ff., 103, 187, 208, 287, 364
_Anthology of Magazine Verse_ (ed. Braithwaite), 104
Annunzio, d’, Gabriele, 41
Apollinaire, Guillaume, 84 f.
Apuleius, 36
Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 313
Aragon, Louis, 84
Aristotle, 139, 311
_Atlantic Monthly_, 75
*“Atlantis,” 268, 270
_Atlantis in America_ (Lewis Spence), 255
*“At Melville’s Tomb,” 218, 259
“Ave Maria,” 242, 268, 291 ff., 305 f.
*“Bacardi Spreads the Eagle’s Wings,” 315, 410
Bach, J. S., 408
_Back to Methuselah_ (Shaw), 66, 104
Baird, Peggy, 232, 330, 376, 383, 393-394, 396, 403 f., 406 f., 409, 412
Barnes, Djuna, 28
Barney, Alice, 325
Barney, Nathalie Clifford, 325
Barrie, Sir James, 25
Barrymore, John, 38
_Bartholomew Fair_ (Jonson), 71
Bartók, Béla, 177
Baudelaire, Charles, 56, 58, 67, 88, 91, 115, 213, 358, 371
Bax, Arnold, 177
Beach, Rex, 73
Beals, Carleton, 404
Beardsley, Aubrey, 105
Beethoven, van, Ludwig, 109, 316
Benét, William Rose, 243, 324
Berners, Lord, 177
_Better Sort, The_ (James), 41
Biggers, Earl Derr, 5-6
Binet, Jean, 66
*“Black Tambourine,” 54, 58, 60, 63, 70, 72, 77
Blair, Mary, 195
Blake, William, 39, 88, 90, 100, 115, 132, 138, 176, 260, 288, 291,
294, 301, 322, 324, 364
Bloch, Ernest, 66, 78, 82, 129, 177
_Blue Juniata_ (Cowley), 330-331, 343
Blume, Peter, 349
Bodenheim, Maxwell, 9, 75, 295
Boni, Albert and Charles, 254
Boni and Liveright, 14, 136
Boone, Daniel, 307
*“Bottom of the Sea Is Cruel, The” (“Voyages I”), 69, 96, 99
Boyd, Ernest, 75, 243, 394
Boyle, Kay, 321, 335, 341, 406
Bradley, F. H., 322
Brahms, Johannes, 316
Braithwaite, William Stanley, 104
Brancusi, Constantin, 70
Braque, Georges, 177
Brenner, Anita, 399, 404
Breughel, 314
*_Bridge, The_, vii, ix f., xviii, 118, 119-120, 123, 124-125, 127 f.,
135 ff., 145, 147, 153, 178, 184, 191 f., 201, 222-223, 231-233, 236,
240-242, 248 ff., 254 f., 259, 261 f., 265, 267 f., 268-269, 269-270,
271 f., 273, 274-275, 276 ff., 280, 285, 293, 296 f., 302 f., 304-308,
309 f., 318, 322, 325, 334 ff., 338 f., 342, 343-349, 350 ff., 364,
366, 374
*“Bridge of Estador, The,” 55, 55n., 182
Brody, Alter, 40
*“Broken Tower, The,” viii, x, 396, 401, 404, 406, 410
Brookhaven, Long Island, 20 f.
Brooklyn Bridge, ix f., 181, 183, 232, 240, 261, 270, 283, 307, 334, 363
*“Brooklyn Bridge, To,” 267, 347
Brooklyn Heights, 181 ff.
Brooks, Charles S., 13, 56
Brooks, Mrs. Charles S., 13
Brooks, Van Wyck, 28, 47, 178, 195, 291
_Broom_, 76, 95, 101, 103 f., 106, 113, 117 ff., 123, 154 f., 161 f.,
185
_Brothers Karamazov, The_ (Dostoievsky), 49 f.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 67
Brown, John, 61 f., 241
Brown, (William) Slater, vi, 85, 133 ff., 155 ff., 160 ff., 167, 197,
205 f., 208 f., 214, 217, 226, 244, 268, 290, 293, 303, 321, 355, 379,
383
_Bruno’s Weekly_, xvii
Bullus, Leonard, 292
Burchfield, Charles, 56
Burke, Kenneth, 36, 63, 70, 99, 103-104, 106, 108, 135, 155, 158, 160,
162, 166, 185, 218, 388
Burleson, Albert S. (_Postmaster General_), 29, 47
Butler, Samuel, 98-99
Bynner, Witter, 37, 394
Byron, Lord, 67
Cabell, James Branch, 105, 108
_Cabinet of Dr. Caligari_, 65
_Calendar, The_, 259, 281
Calhoun, Alice, 14-15, 311
California, 311 ff.
Calles, Plutarco, 293, 319
Camino, Leon Felipe, 372 f.
Campbell, Roy, 342
Canby, Henry Seidel, 345
Candee, Harry, 29-30, 32, 43, 141
Cannan, Gilbert, 85
*“Cape Hatteras,” 308, 344 ff.
Casanova, 372-373
Casella, Alfredo, 177
Castaneda, Dr. Maximiliano, 368
Catel, Jean, 194 f.
Catullus, 29, 33
Cavalcanti, Guido, 67
Cazes, Hazel, 369
Cervantes Saavedra, de, Miguel, 17
Cezanne, Paul, 86, 342
Chagrin Falls, Ohio, 359 ff.
Chaplin, Charlie, 65 f., 68 f., 85, 149-150, 170, 311, 326
*“Chaplinesque,” 65 f., 68 ff., 74, 85, 195, 313
Chapman, George--_Homer_, 287
_Chartreuse de Parme, La_ (Stendhal), 39, 64
Chase, William Merritt, 7
Chatterton, Thomas, 67
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 17, 78, 299
Chekhov, Anton, 39
Chirico, de, Giorgio, 87, 251
Chopin, Frédéric, 59
Christian Science, xvii, 3, 12, 15-16, 33-34, 161, 180, 280
_City Block_ (Frank), 124, 128, 130, 132-133
Clarke, Donald, 292
Cleveland, Ohio, xvii, 30 ff., 45 ff.
Cleveland _Plain Dealer_, 12
Coburn, Alvin Langdon, 30
Cocteau, Jean, 72, 86
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 67, 215, 314, 343, 353
*_Collected Poems of Hart Crane, The_, v
Collioure, France, 339 ff.
Columbia Heights, Brooklyn, 181 ff.
Columbia University, 19-20, 21
Columbus, Christopher, 232, 234, 240 f., 268, 305
Colum, Mary, 6 f.
Colum, Padraic, 6 f., 14, 51, 63, 95, 149
_Commedia_ (Dante), 356
Comstock, Anthony, 30
Conrad, Joseph, 41, 187
_Conquistador_ (MacLeish), 375, 411
_Contact_, 51, 53
_Contempo_, 394
Coolidge, Calvin, 365
Copeau, Jacques, 85, 178
Copland, Aaron, 195
*Cortez-Montezuma epic, 276, 390, 405
Coué, Emile, 109
_Counterfeiters, The_ (Gide), 316, 322
Cowley, Malcolm, vi, 42, 75, 84 f., 97, 113, 135, 155, 160-161, 162,
166, 182, 184, 231 n., 244, 252, 256, 294, 321, 325, 327, 340, 384,
388, 393, 400
Craig, Gordon, 66-67
Crane, Bessie (aunt), 3
Crane, Bessie M. (stepmother, II), _see_ Hise, Bessie M.
Crane, Clarence Arthur (father), x-xii, xvii f., 3, 9, 18, 20-21,
22 f., 27 f., 32 f., 35, 41, 45, 48, 50-51, 55, 57, 82, 108, 167
f., 173-174, 175, 179 ff., 186, 207 f., 214, 219 n., 226, 284, 292,
296-297, 337 f., 360, 363 ff., 376-377, 378 f., 402-403, 404
Crane, Frances (stepmother, I), 173, 283-284
Crane, Grace Hart (mother), vi, x, xvii, 3, 7 f., 19, 24, 32, 33-34,
36, 48 f., 57, 82, 107-108, 110, 134, 140-141,
143, 153 f., 162, 169, 212, 214, 219, 226-227, 231, 234 f., 250, 252,
256, 276, 278, 303-304, 316, 320-321, 327, 337-338
Crevel, René, 341
_Crime and Punishment_ (Dostoievsky), 46
_Criterion, The_, 218, 308
_Critique of Humanism, The_ (ed. C. H. Grattan), 352, 354
_Crome Yellow_ (A. Huxley), 82
Crosby, Caresse, xviii, 340, 342, 348
Crosby, Harry, xviii, 335 f., 338-339, 340, 342, 344, 346, 348, 405
*“C 33,” xvii
Cummings, Anne, 310-311, 324
Cummings, E. E., 85, 96, 108, 120, 133, 167, 182, 213, 251, 307,
310-311, 321, 324, 349, 354 f., 375
Curtis, Charles, 188, 198, 224, 226, 243, 252, 284
*“Cutty Sark,” 268, 283, 294, 307, 346
Dadaism, 52, 70, 72
Daly, James, 123
Damon, S. Foster, 100
*“Dance, The,” 288-289, 292, 307
Dante Alighieri, ix, 67
_Dark Mother, The_ (Frank), 47
Dasburg, Andrew, 408
Davenport, Russell, 366
Davidson, Donald, 294
Davies, Sir John, 213
Debussy, Claude, 78, 108
_Decline of the West, The_ (Spengler), 267
Deming, Zell Hart (aunt), 14, 188, 226
_Democratic Vistas_ (Whitman), 354
Derain, Andre, 87, 90
_Destinations_ (Munson), 178, 323-324
Deutsch, Babette, 63
_Dial, The_, 27, 32, 35 f., 36, 40, 42 f., 47, 54, 55 f., 65, 70, 73,
75, 92, 94, 97, 101, 103, 115, 117 f., 124, 133, 135, 136-137, 154,
160, 162, 178, 180, 191, 218, 220, 289, 292
Dickinson, Emily, 213, 324
Dietz, Howard, 325
Dietz, Lorna, 370
D’Indy, Vincent, 129
Dio Cassius, 32
Dionysios, 91
_Dr. Transit_ (Schneider), 231, 287
Doherty, Mary, 393
Don Quixote, 261
_Don Quixote_ (Cervantes), 263
Donne, John, 25, 66 ff., 71, 73, 77, 86, 88, 176, 213, 301
Dos Passos, John, 213, 324, 366
Dostoievsky, Feodor, 46 f., 50, 52-53
_Double Dealer, The_, 58 f., 61 f., 66, 74, 87 f., 104, 115, 129
Douglas, Lord Alfred, 43
Drayton, Michael, 78, 86, 286
Dreiser, Theodore, 27, 69, 324
Duchamp, Marcel, 52, 177
_Duchess of Malfi, The_ (Webster), 90
Duncan, Isadora, 108 f., 322
Durieux, Caroline and Pierre, 404
Eames, Claire, 174
East High School, Cleveland, xvii, 4, 359
Eastman, Max, 388
_Egoist, The_, 91
Einstein, Albert, 311
El Greco, 114, 267, 333
_El Universal_, 373
Eliot, T. S., 24, 26, 28, 34, 36, 44, 66, 86, 88, 90, 102, 104 f.,
114-115, 117 f., 121, 123, 261, 308, 311, 313, 323, 345, 351, 355 f.,
359, 372
Ely, 3, 14
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 73
*“Emily Dickinson, To,” 277
_Enormous Room, The_ (Cummings), 96 f., 133
Enters, Angna, 349
*“Episode of Hands,” 37, 38-39, 40
Epstein, Jacob, 46, 95
_Erik Dorn_ (Hecht), 66, 68 ff., 73
Estrada, Genaro, 372
Evans, Walker, 347
_Excelsior_, 373
_Faust_ (Goethe), 94
*“Faustus and Helen, For the Marriage of,” 87, 89, 92-93, 96, 98,
100-101, 102 f., 113 ff., 120-121, 123-124, 125, 127 ff., 131, 135-136,
140, 154, 178, 181, 184, 195, 301
Fawcett, James Waldo, 24-25, 27
Fernandez, Ramon, 319, 322 f.
Field, Eugene, 29
Fielding, Henry, 300
Fisher, William Murrell, 107, 161 ff., 167
Fitts, Norman, 119 f., 126
Fitzgerald, Eleanor, 224, 303, 311, 354
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 78
_Five Seasons, The_ (Phelps Putnam), 384, 393, 399
Flaubert, Gustave, 75
Fletcher, Herbert, 25-26, 63
Fletcher, John Gould, 63, 295
_Fleurs du Mal, Les_ (Baudelaire), 33
Florida land boom, 209-210
_Flowering Judas_ (Porter), 373
Flynn, Bina, 216 f., 248, 252
Ford, Ford Madox, 285, 341
_Fortune_, 357 ff.
_42nd Parallel_ (Dos Passos), 366
Frank, Thomas, 263
Frank, Waldo, vii, 26-27, 28, 34-35, 95 f., 98-99, 104, 107 f., 113,
118 f., 124, 128 ff., 132-133, 136 f., 140 f., 145, 149 f., 154 f.,
162, 170, 178, 186 f., 193, 195 f., 199 f., 203, 206, 208, 218-219, 223
ff., 236, 251 f., 255 f., 269 f., 278, 284, 291, 312, 322 ff., 370, 400
Freeman, G. W., 204, 211
_Freeman, The_, 40, 58-59, 125
Freud, Sigmund, 268
Freytag-Loringhoven, von, Baroness Elsa, 23, 30, 52, 56, 62
_From Ritual to Romance_ (Jessie L. Weston), 314
Friedman, Dr. Paul, viii
Frost, Robert, 17, 27
_Fugitive, The_, 88, 123, 155, 161
_Fyodor Dostoyevsky_ (J. Middleton Murry), 53
Gale, Zona, 66
Garden, Mary, 65
*“Garden Abstract,” 31, 37, 39 f., 51-52
_Gargoyle_, 70, 79-80
Garman, Douglas, 281
Garrettsville, Ohio, xvii
Gauguin, Paul, 29, 36, 55, 385
Gide, André, 66, 85, 294, 317, 336
Gilmore, Louis, 290
Goethe, 240
Gogh, van, Vincent, 55
Gogol, Nikolai, 34
Gold, Michael, 357
_Golden Ass, The_ (Apuleius), 44
Goldman, Emma, 341
Gordon (Tate), Caroline, 225 f., 245-247, 283, 294, 341 ff.
Gorman, Herbert, 295
Gourmont, de, Rémy, 66, 73, 78 f., 123 _Marginalia_ on Poe and
Baudelaire, 64
Goya, Francisco, 114
_Graechische Vasenmalerei_ (Ernst Buschor), 116
Grand Cayman, West Indies, 257-258, 264-266, 293
_Grandmothers, The_ (Wescott), 316
Graves, Robert, 333
Gregory, Alyse, 136, 160
Green, Sonia, 187
Greenberg, Samuel B., 162-163
Grey, Zane, 73
Gris, Juan, 341
Grosz, George, 87
Grunberg, Solomon, 331
_Guardian, The_, 215, 218
Guest, Edgar A., 73
Guggenheim Fellowship, xviii, 358, 365, 367, 374
Gurdjieff, George Ivanovitch, 174, 298
Habicht, Charmion. _See_ Wiegand, Charmion
Habicht, Hermann, 22, 131, 180
Hackett, Francis, 28
Hale, William Harlan, 357, 375
_Hamlet of A. MacLeish, The_, 343
Hampden, Walter, 44-45
_Harbor, The_ (Ernest Poole), 256
*“Harbor Dawn, The,” 283, 306
Harcourt, Brace, 155, 213
Hardy, Thomas, 289, 300, 357
_Harkness Hoot, The_, 356-357
Harris, Charles, 121
Harris, Frank, 50
Hart, Clinton (grandfather), 249
_Hart Crane_ (Philip Horton), v, 240 n.
Hart, Elizabeth Belden (grandmother), xvii f., 10, 14, 23 f., 34, 140,
162 ff., 188, 214, 219, 224 f., 227, 233, 243, 270, 303, 321, 328, 337
Harte, Bret, 23
Hartley, Marsden, 27, 30, 75, 342, 404, 408
Havana, Cuba, 10, 251, 275, 412
Hays, Arthur Garfield, 330
Heap, Jane, 46 f., 61, 64, 100, 224
Hecht, 69 f., 104
Heine, Heinrich, 59, 71, 117
_Heliogabalus_ (Mencken & Nathan), 32
Helton, Roy, 373
Hemingway, Ernest, 287 f., 294
Hertha, 305
_Hints to Pilgrims_ (Charles S. Brooks), 56
Hise, Bessie M. (stepmother, II), 364, 377, 378 f., 410
_History of American Poetry, A_ (Gregory and Zaturenska), v
_History of Ferdinand and Isabella_ (W. H. Prescott), 235
Hoboken, New Jersey, 286
Hofmann, Josef, 177
Hollywood, California, 324-325
Homer, 120
Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 317, 319, 340, 359
Hoppé, E. O., 30
_Hound & Horn_, The, 352
Howells, William Dean, 47
Huebsch, B. W., 85, 96-97, 115, 171 f., 175
*“Hurricane, The,” 316, 363
Huxley, Aldous, 72, 90
Huysmans, Joris Karl, 69, 78
Ibsen, Henrik, 9
_Idols Behind Altars_ (Brenner), 372
_Imperial Purple_ (Saltus), 32, 49
_Iliad, The_ (Homer), 81
_In Our Time_ (Hemingway), 219
_In the American Grain_ (Williams), 277-278
*“Indiana,” 307, 345, 357-358
_Instigations_ (Pound), 51
*“Interludium,” 166
_International Studio_, 30
Isle of Pines, Cuba, vii, xvii f., 10, 151 ff., 210, 234, 248-249, 251
ff., 293
Jacobs, S. A., 201, 202-203, 205
James, Henry, 17, 41, 90, 106
Jammes, Francis, 104
Jenkins, Sue, 135, 174, 182, 197, 205, 209, 217, 262, 384
Jimenez, Juan Ramon, 187, 212
_John Brown_ (Oswald Garrison Villard), 61
Jolas, Eugene, 293 f., 334, 336, 338, 341
Jolson, Al, 32, 290
Jones, Robert Edmond, 166, 177
Jonson, Ben, 71, 78, 88, 129
Jordan, Virgil, 53
Josephson, Hannah, 63, 330
Josephson, Matthew, 23 f., 26 f., 35, 37, 48, 63, 64-65, 71 f., 74-75,
78-79, 84 f., 87, 95-96, 97, 100 ff., 104, 105-106, 113 f., 118 ff.,
135, 162, 166, 285, 384
_Journal of First Voyage to America_ (Columbus), 234 f.
Joyce, James, 47, 58, 61, 66, 69, 94 f., 99, 104 f., 108, 288
_Judge, The_ (Rebecca West), 102
_Jurgen_ (Cabell), 73, 366
Kahn, Otto H., xviii, 211, 225, 227, 232 f., 247 f., 250, 254, 259, 262
ff., 267, 274, 286, 310, 321, 351
Kafka, Franz, viii
Keats, John, 67, 353
_Kid, The_ (Charlie Chaplin), 65, 68 f.
*“Kidd’s Cove” (“O Carib Isle”), 259
King, Clinton, 394, 399 ff.
Kirkham, Hall, 292
Kling, Joseph, 25, 31-32
Knopf, Alfred A., 26, 125
Kreymborg, Alfred, 194 f., 244, 291
Kunitz, Stanley J., 353
Kuniyoshi, Yasuo, 107
Lachaise, Gaston, 135, 149, 159, 170, 205, 252, 258
Lachaise, Isabel, 159, 205, 252, 258
*“Lachrymae Christi,” 183
_Ladies Home Journal_, 75
Laforgue, Jules, 45, 67, 71, 85 f., 88, 90, 104, 123, 163, 261, 282
Landor, Walter Savage, 39, 73
Larbaud, Valery, 95, 294, 336
Lasky, Jesse, 325
Laukhuff, Richard, 12, 23, 277, 280
Laurencin, Marie, 87
Lawrence, D. H., 17, 52, 63, 390, 395
_Leaves of Grass_ (Whitman), 109
LeBlanc, Georgette, 174
_Leda_ (Huxley), 44
Leffingwell, 167
Leonardo da Vinci, 300
Lescaze, William, 56, 62-63, 66-67, 70, 77, 85, 91 f., 104
_Letters of Henry James, The_, 41
Lewis (Winters), Janet, 313
Lewis, Sinclair, 66
Lewis, Wyndham, 55, 196, 313, 319, 322 f.
_Liberator, The_, 31, 91
Light, James, 155, 166, 174, 213-214, 215, 224, 262, 267
Light, Sue. _See_ Jenkins, Sue
_Limbo_ (Huxley), 41
Lincoln, Abraham, 27
Lindsay, Vachel, 7, 295
Li Po, 67
_Literary Digest_, 68
_Little Mexico_ (Spratling), 388, 404
_Little Review, The_, 10, 12, 16-17, 18, 20-21, 23 f., 27 f., 30,
45-46, 47, 51, 56, 61, 64, 68, 70, 75, 117, 126, 191
Liveright, Horace, 125, 128, 171, 206, 218, 220, 254, 259, 262-263,
281, 292, 296, 340
_Lives of the Caesars_ (Suetonius), 49
*“Locations des Pierrots,” 87
Loeb, Harold, 113
London, 332-333, 338, 341
London _Times_, 295
Long, Haniel, 63
_Look Homeward, Angel_ (Wolfe), 375
Los Angeles, California, 314-315
Lovecraft, Howard, 187
Lovell, Wheeler, 267
Loveman, Samuel, x, 91, 100, 104, 106, 187 f., 190-191, 200, 201-202,
206, 331
_Love of Three Kings, The_ (Italo Montemezzi), 65
Lowell, Amy, 26, 89, 125
Lowenfels, Walter, 341
McAlmon, Robert, 53, 80
Macaulay Company, 291
MacCown, Eugene, 341
McFee, William, 256
Macgowan, Kenneth, 166
_Machinery_, 167
Mackenzie, Compton, 52
MacLeish, Archibald, 285, 294, 351, 357, 575
McPherson, Aimee, 314-315, 322
Macy, John, 105
Madden, N. Byron (uncle), 15, 411
Maddow, Ben, 393
Maeterlinck, Maurice, 174
_Magellan_ (A. S. Hildebrand), 235
Maillol, Aristide, 177
Mallarmé, Stéphane, 78
_Man Who Died, The_ (D. H. Lawrence), 395
*“Mango Tree, The,” 254 f., 259
Mann, Klaus, 341
_Many Marriages_ (S. Anderson), 103
_Marching Men_ (S. Anderson), 56
_Maria Chapdelaine_ (Louis Hémon), 81
Marichalar, Antonio, 313-314
Marin, John, 102, 177, 349
Marks, Harry L., 344
Marlowe, Christopher, 25, 67, 71, 86, 88, 300, 353
Marseille, France, 342 ff.
Martinique, West Indies, 310
_Masses, The_, 91
Massis, Henri, 313
Masters, Edgar Lee, 28, 295
Matisse, Henry, 87, 171
Maugham, W. Somerset, 29
Maupassant, de, Guy, 24
Maurras, Charles, 313
_Measure, The_, 64
Meleager, 100
Melville, Herman, 252, 331
Mencken, H. L., 26, 30, 32, 388 f.
_Menorah Journal, The_, 359
_Merchant of Venice, The_ (Shakespeare), 44-45
_Mercure de France_, 194
_Messages_ (Fernandez), 317, 319
_Mexican Maze_ (Beals), 380
Mexico, xviii, 368 ff.
Mexico (Stuart Chase), 380 f.
Michelangelo, 114
Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 67-68
Milton, John, 67, 384
Minns, Hervey W., 30, 46, 52, 54
Mitchell, Stewart, 182, 313, 321
_Moby Dick_ (Melville), 86, 258, 260, 404-405
_Modernist, The_, 22 f., 24-25, 27
Moe, Henry Allen, 389
Monroe, Harriet, 294, 374, 410 n.
Montéllano, 373
Moody, William Vaughn, 89
_Moon and Sixpence, The_ (Maugham), 29
Moore, George, 354
Moore, Marianne, 37, 85, 194 f., 215, 218, 220, 224, 255, 259, 275, 289
f., 294, 324
Moore, Thomas, 67
Morris, William, 333
Mumford, Lewis, 195, 366
Munson, Elizabeth, vi, 126, 133, 143-144, 146 f., 155, 166, 180, 184
Munson, Gorham, vi f., ix, 85, 88, 94 f., 97, 101, 106 ff., 117, 119,
127, 130 ff., 143-144, 146 f., 153-154, 158, 171 f., 176, 178, 180,
182, 184 ff., 201, 213 f., 224, 251, 270 f., 273-274, 275, 282, 298,
300, 330, 335, 353, 384, 394
Murry, J. Middleton, 75
*“My Grandmother’s Love Letters,” 22 f., 25 f., 32, 37, 39
_My Heart and My Flesh_ (Elizabeth Madox Roberts), 314
Nagle, Edward, 135, 155 ff., 159 ff.
Nathan, George Jean, 32
_Nation, The_, 49, 58-59, 283
_Natural Philosophy of Love, The_ (de Gourmont, trans. Pound), 73, 91
Naumburg, Margaret, 150, 154, 162, 166, 336
Negri, Pola, 149
Nelson, Ernest, 75, 93
_New American Caravan, The_, 351
_New Criterion, The_, 240
_New Masses, The_, 240
New Orleans, Louisiana, 303, 326
_New Republic, The_, 28, 40, 58-59, 108, 219, 290, 292, 388, 394
New York City, xvii, 4 ff., 130 ff., 165 ff.
New York _Evening Journal_, 24
New York _Times_, 36, 100
Newton, Sir Isaac, 238
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 67, 75, 93, 99, 358
_Nigger of the Narcissus, The_ (Conrad), 41
_1919_ (John Dos Passos), 409
_1924_, 185, 191 f.
_Noa Noa_ (Paul Gauguin), 39
_Nouvelle Revue Française_, La, 78, 85
*“O Carib Isle,” 283, 293
O’Flaherty, Liam, 371
O’Keeffe, Georgia, 114, 177, 195, 349
O’Malley, Ernest, 371
O’Neill, Eugene, 155-156, 166, 170, 174, 177, 180, 184, 190, 193, 203,
208, 211-212, 214-215, 216, 218, 220 ff., 224 f., 240, 254, 258-259,
262-263, 270
Orage, A. R., 282
_Ordeal of Mark Twain, The_ (Van Wyck Brooks), 28
_Oresteia of Aeschylus, The_ (trans. G. Warr), 235
Ornstein, Leo, 271
_Others_, 7, 9
_Our America_ (Frank), 26-27, 28, 34-35, 131
_Pagan, The_, xvii, 7, 12, 23, 31
*“Paraphrase,” 195
Paris, 333 ff.
Parker, Dorothy, 322
Parrish, Maxfield, 21
_Parsifal_ (Wagner), 35
Pascal, Blaise, 48
*“Passage,” 215, 218, 259
*“Pastorale,” 64, 69, 71
Pater, Walter, 108, 117, 161
Patterson, New York, xviii, 208 ff., 224 ff., 277 ff.
_Pavannes and Divisions_ (Pound), 24
_Pelléas et Mélisande_ (Debussy), 339
*“Persuasion, A,” 58, 64
_Petits Poèmes en Prose, Les_ (Baudelaire), 274
_Petrouchka_ (Stravinsky), 200
Phibbs, Geoffrey, 340
Picabia, Francis, 64
Picasso, Pablo, 55, 87, 146, 171, 177, 336, 341
_Picture of Dorian Gray, The_ (Wilde), 38
Pindar, 129
Pinski, David, 47
_Plagued by the Nightingale_ (Boyle), 406
Plato, 17, 238
_Plato and Platonism_ (Pater), 161
_Plowshare, The_, 34
_Plumed Serpent, The_ (D. H. Lawrence), 236
Pocahontas, 232, 241, 305, 307
Poe, Edgar Allen, 67, 231, 278, 290, 331
_Poetry_ (Chicago), 25, 51, 289, 373 f., 410 n.
Poetry Society of America, 7
Pollard, Percival, 44
Polo, Marco, 242
_Poor White_ (S. Anderson), 47, 53
*“Porphyro in Akron,” 40, 42 f., 51, 64
Porter, Katherine Anne, 367, 370, 373, 377-378, 383
_Port of New York_ (Rosenfeld), 202
_Portrait of the Artist_ (Joyce), 99, 313
_Possessed_, The (Dostoievsky), 46 f., 49 f.
*“Possessions,” 176
Potamkin, Harry Alan, 240
Potapovitch, Stan, 8
Pound, Ezra, 28, 41, 44, 51, 54, 61 ff., 64, 66, 70, 86, 88, 96
*“Powhatan’s Daughter,” 305
Powitzki, Mrs., 286
Powys, John Cowper, 136
*“Praise for an Urn,” 93, 104, 259
_Principles of Literary Criticism_ (I. A. Richards), 314
Proust, Marcel, 66
Provincetown Theatre, 40, 174, 177, 214
_Psychoanalytic Quarterly_, viii
*“Quaker Hill,” 345, 347
Quinn, John, 47
Rabelais, 30, 36, 56
_Rahab_ (Waldo Frank), 98-99, 108
_Rainbow, The_ (D. H. Lawrence), 43
Ransom, John Crowe, 100, 289
Rauh, Ida, 28
Ravel, Maurice, 66, 108, 129, 139-140
Ray, Man, 52, 94-95
*“Recitative,” 161, 176
Reeck, Emil, 84, 97
_Re-discovery of America, The_ (Waldo Frank), 318-319, 322 f., 326, 335
Rembrandt, 54
_Renaissance, The_ (Pater), 161
_Revista de Occidente_, 313 n., 314
Rickword, Edgell, 259, 281, 333
Riding, Laura, 217, 291, 294, 321, 333 f., 341
_Rimbaud_ (E. Rickword), 283
Rimbaud, Arthur, 43, 45, 85, 162, 213, 252, 260 f., 270, 272, 317, 359,
374
*“River, The,” 303, 306-307
Rivera, Diego, 371
Robeson, Paul and Essie, 333
Robinson, Boardman, 54
Robinson, Edwin Arlington, 89, 93
Robson, Peggy, 400
Rodin, Auguste, 46
Roebling, Washington, 293-294
Romains, Jules, 24
Rorty, James, 244
Rosenfeld, Paul, 75, 77, 95, 97 f., 102, 105, 126, 166, 178, 193-194,
202, 224, 291 f.
_Rouge et le Noir, Le_ (Stendhal), 64
Rousseau, Henri, 177
Russell, Bertrand, 240
Rychtarik, Charlotte, 106, 144-145, 247, 364 f., 408
Rychtarik, Richard, 106, 131, 132-133, 139, 141, 144-145, 147, 160,
247, 364 f.
_Sacre du Printemps, Le_ (Stravinsky), 200
_Sacred Wood, The_ (Eliot), 71
Sáenz, Moisés, 370, 372
Salmon, André, 66
Saltus, Edgar, 29, 44, 106, 187
_Salvos_ (Frank), 178
Sandburg, Carl, 69
San Pedro, California, 315, 319-320
Santayana, George, 240
Saphier, William, 70
Satie, Erik, 66
_Saturday Evening Post, The_, 284, 345
_Saturday Review of Literature, The_, 345
_Satyricon_ (Petronius Arbiter), 44, 105
Schmitt, Carl, 4 ff., 8
Schneider, Isidor, 231, 281
Schoenberg, Arnold, 177
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 41
_Science and the Modern World_ (A. N. Whitehead), 235
_Scientific American, The_, 271
Scriabin, Alexander, 63, 109, 129
Seaver, Edwin, 185, 218
_Secession_, 82, 84 f., 88, 94 f., 97, 100 f., 103, 105 ff., 108, 117,
121, 123 ff., 154 f., 178, 185
_Second April_ (Millay), 6
_S4N_, 120, 126
Seiberling, F. H., 30
Seldes, Gilbert, 70, 103
Seligmann, Herbert J., 195, 285
Seltzer, Thomas, 206
Service, Robert W., 73
_Seven Arts, The_, 9
Seltzer, Thomas, 206
_Shadowland_, 61, 63, 75
Shakespeare, 67, 129, 289, 299 f.
Shelley, P. B., 67
*“Sherwood Anderson,” 59-60, 61 ff.
Simpson, Eyler, 395
Simpson, Lesley, 393, 399, 404
Simpson, Marion, 399
Simpson, Mrs. T. W. (“Aunt Sally”), 152, 248-249, 251 ff., 286
_Since Cézanne_ (Clive Bell), 96
Siqueros, David Alfaro, 384-385, 386-387, 388
Sistine Chapel, 305
Sitwell, Edith, 44
_1601_ (Mark Twain), 26, 28, 30
_Smart Set, The_, 10 n., 25, 34
Smith, Captain John, 306
Smith, Claire. _See_ Spencer, Claire
Smith, Elizabeth, 172-173
Smith, Harrison, 17, 19 f., 22, 128, 155-167, 180, 224, 334-335
_Sodome et Gomorrhe_ (Proust), 316, 322
Sommer, William, 54 ff., 58 ff., 71, 75, 78, 83, 86, 89-90, 92, 95, 98,
101 f., 105, 107, 113-114, 115, 119, 137, 233, 363-364
Soupault, Philippe, 104, 294, 336, 341
_South Wind_ (Norman Douglas), 280
Spencer, Claire, 12, 17, 19 f., 22, 136, 180, 409
Spencer, Jessie, 12 f.
Spencer, Pat, 12
Spengler, Oswald, 158, 259 f., 267, 285, 293, 313, 319, 322, 357, 366
Speyer, Leonora, 67
_Spoon River Anthology_ (Masters), 28
Spinoza, Baruch, 363
Spratling, William, 388, 401, 404
Springhorn, Carl, 63
*“Stark Major,” 117-118, 121, 124, 126
_Starved Rock_ (Masters), 28
Stein, Gertrude, 121 f., 167, 294, 311, 321, 336, 341
Stella, Joseph, 335, 339, 345
Stendhal, 64, 79
Stevens, Emily, 43
Stevens, Wallace, 25, 37, 53, 71, 88, 289
Stieglitz, Alfred, 95, 107, 113-114, 128 f., 141, 166 f., 170, 177,
195, 202
_Story of San Michele, The_ (Axel Munthe), 366
Strand, Paul, 195
Strauss, Richard, 108, 129
Stravinsky, 200, 238
_Success_, 284
_Sun Also Rises, The_ (Hemingway), 286-288
*“Sunday Morning Apples,” 96, 195
Swann’s Way (Marcel Proust), 263
Swinburne, A. C., 332
Synge, John M., 71
Szold, Bernadine, 341
Szymanowski, Karol, 177
Taggard, Genevieve, 353 f.
“Tampa Schooner” (“Repose of Rivers”), 259
_Taras Bulba_ (N. Gogol), 80-81
_Tarr_ (Wyndham Lewis), 69
Tate, Allen, 87, 100 ff., 104, 107, 118, 121 f., 126, 131, 185, 195,
197, 211, 215, 224 ff., 237, 239 f., 244, 245-249, 267 f., 270 f., 273,
284 f., 296, 313, 321, 341, 384
Tate, Caroline. _See_ Gordon, Caroline
Teagle, J. Walter, 357 ff., 363
Teasdale, Sara, 67
_Tempest, The_ (Shakespeare), 317
_Temptation of Anthony, The_ (Schneider), 287
Tennyson, Lord, 67
Tepoztlan, Mexico, 380-383, 388
_Tertium Organum_ (P. D. Ouspensky), 124
Théâtre du Vieux Colombier, 178
_Their Day in Court_ (Percival Pollard), 105
Thomas, Edward, 72, 88
Thomas, Harold, 6
Thompson, Basil, 59
Thompson, Francis, 67
Thompson, Robert, 400, 409
_Three Soldiers_ (Dos Passos), 68
_Through Traffic_ (Russell Davenport), 366
Tiberius, 52, 63
_Time and Western Man_ (Wyndham Lewis), 317, 319
Toomer, Jean, 149 f., 155, 162, 166 f., 185, 195, 214
Torrence, Ridgely, 289
_transition_, 294, 334
_Tristram Shandy_ (Laurence Sterne), 91
_Triumph of the Egg, The_ (S. Anderson), 65, 73, 76
_Trois Poèmes Juifs_ (Bloch), 82
_Trans-Atlantic Review_, The, 185
Tschaikowsky, P. I., 109
*“Tunnel, The,” 274-275, 278
Turbyfill, Mark, 125
Turner, Addie M., 224, 242, 245 ff.,
255, 286, 292 f., 354
Turner, W. J., 330
Twain, Mark, 17, 26 f., 30
Tzara, Tristan, 84
_Ulysses_ (Joyce), 62, 69, 71-73, 94 ff., 101, 127, 143 f., 288
_Un Coeur Virginal_ (R. de Gourmont), 73, 79 f.
Underwood, Wilbur, 43-44, 155, 325
Untermeyer, Louis, 104, 107 f., 118, 244
Vail, Lawrence, 335, 406
Valéry, Paul, 195, 113, 300, 325, 372
Valle, Rafael, 373
Van Doren, Mark, 285
_Vanity Fair_, 61, 94, 345
Van Vuren, Floyd, 350
*“Van Winkle,” 290, 306
Varèse, Edgar, 177, 334, 341
Vaughan, Henry, 88, 301
Vedanta, 242
Verlaine, Paul, 239
Vielé-Griffin, Francis, 104
Vildrac, Charles, 37, 45, 60
Villon, François, 36
Virgil, ix
*“Virginia,” 272
_Virgin Spain_ (Frank), 235-236, 242, 274
_Vision and Design_ (Roger Fry), 57
Vlaminck, de, Maurice, 87, 90
*“Voyages,” viii, 187, 192, 215, 218, 224, 244
Wagner, Richard, 108, 135
_Waldo Frank_ (Munson), 104, 115, 119, 125, 128 f.
Walton, Mrs., 10
Walton, Eda Lou, 366
_Wall Street Journal, The_, 324
Warren, Ohio, xvii, 292
Warren, Robert Penn, 321
Washington, D.C., 42 ff.
_Waste Land, The_ (Eliot), 105, 127, 271 f., 350 f.
_Way of All Flesh, The_ (Samuel Butler), 39
Webster, John, 25, 67, 71, 86, 88, 129
Wells, H. G., 319
Wescott, Glenway, 125, 166, 316, 341
Watson, J. Sibley, 103, 136-137
_Whale Ships and Whaling_ (G. F. Dow), 235
Wheeler, Monroe, 125
Wheelwright, John B., 125-126, 154
*_White Buildings_, xviii, 199 ff., 202-203, 205, 213 f., 218 ff., 254,
258-259, 262-263, 267, 270, 277, 280 f., 284 f., 290-291, 292, 294-295,
340, 345, 353
White, Hervey, 34 f.
Whitehead, A. N., 321
_White-Jacket_ (Melville), 235
Whitman, Walt, 67, 73, 128, 184, 223, 241, 261-262, 284, 290, 308, 352,
353-354
Wiegand, Charmion, 131, 180, 333-334
Wilcox, Walter, 10
Wilde, Oscar, 38, 44
Wilder, Thornton, viii, 357
Wilkinson, Marguerite, 67, 104
Williams, William Carlos, 37, 51, 53, 102, 105, 114, 278, 294, 324
Wilson, Edmund, 195, 298, 301
*“Wine Menagerie, The,” 218, 220
_Winesburg, Ohio_ (S. Anderson), 34, 47, 75
*“Winesburg, Ohio” (review), 23
Winters, Yvor, 278, 284 f., 288 f., 294, 313 f., 317, 321, 348, 352 ff.
Wise, Herbert, 316, 318, 322, 324, 326, 331
Wolfe, Thomas, 375
Woodstock, New York, xvii, 154, 156 ff.
Wright, Cuthbert, 100
_Wuthering Heights_ (Emily Brontë), 316-317
Wylie, Elinor, 243
_Yale Review, The_, 375
Yeats, W. B., 86, 88, 95, 300
_Young Visitors, The_ (Daisy Ashford), 25
Zabel, Monroe Dauwen, 410 n.
Zigrosser, Carl, 158
Zinsser, Dr. Hans, 368
Zwaska, Caesar, 27, 96
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Christian Science.
[2] A Christian Science practitioner.
[3] Mr. Crane’s employee.
[4] “My novel about the Isle of Pines has been somewhat blown to pieces
by that blasting letter of yours. However I am busy thinking up plots
for _Smart Set_ stories. You see, I want to make my literary work bring
me in a living by the time I reach twenty-five and one cannot begin too
soon.” (Letter to his mother, Oct. 6, 1917.)
[5] Crane’s landlady. “Mrs. Walton and I are working out movie
scenarios. She has had considerable experience and is of great help to
me.” (Letter to his mother, Oct. 8, 1917.)
[6] “Mother, when you arrive, I hope you will take up the Noyes dancing
and enter the movies. You will find it fun I am sure, and I shall help
you too. I am really getting a reputation for poetry and can find space
now in at least two magazines for most of my better work.” (Letter to
his mother, Oct. 26, 1917.)
[7] Postcard. On the reverse side, over a photograph of Brooklyn
Bridge, Crane wrote: “Knowing your predilection for bridges, I send you
this!”
[8] “Garden Abstract”; see Brom Weber, _Hart Crane_ (New York: Bodley
Press, 1948), p. 76.
[9] “Garden Abstract.”
[10] “Episode of Hands”; see Weber, _op. cit._, p. 384.
[11] “Porphyro in Akron,” together with the comment: “The last is so
far the only satisfactory part. I include the first two sections merely
as hints for direction of the theme.” See Weber, _op. cit._, pp. 89-90.
[12] See Weber, _op. cit._, pp. 91-92.
[13] “Black Tambourine”; see Weber, _op. cit._, pp. 95-6.
[14] “The Bridge of Estador”; see Weber, _op. cit._, p. 385.
[15] See Weber, _op. cit._, pp. 108-9.
[16] “The Bottom of the Sea Is Cruel.” Sent to Munson, Oct. 1, 1921.
[17] John Webster, _The Duchess of Malfi_, III, ii, 66-70.
[18] The rest of this letter has been lost.
[19] “Glad you really like my Silenus letter.” (Letter to Munson, June
28, 1922.)
[20] See Weber, _op. cit._, p. 176.
[21] “Sunday Morning Apples.”
[22] “The Bottom of the Sea Is Cruel.”
[23] It was accepted by Josephson.
[24] _The Double Dealer._
[25] _Secession._
[26] Sommer’s work was accepted by _The Dial_.
[27] “Faustus and Helen” III.
[28] “Stark Major.”
[29] See Weber, _op. cit._, pp. 426-28.
[30] See Weber, _op. cit._, pp. 428-9.
[31] See Weber, _op. cit._, p. 224. For line 13, word 2, read:
alternating.
[32] “Interludium.”
[33] E. E. Cummings.
[34] Crane had written his father a six-line letter on Oct. 20, 1923
requesting that his father telephone him on the occasion of his next
New York visit. Mr. Clarence A. Crane regarded this letter as an
aggressive unaffectionate note after three years of silence on Crane’s
part (Letter, Oct. 27, 1923, C.A.C. to H.C.). Crane replied on Nov.
13th, informing his father of his trip to Woodstock. His father’s
letter acknowledged that he viewed the Nov. 13th letter as a sign
of friendship, and stated that he would be in New York sometime in
1924 (Letter, Dec. 10, 1923, C.A.C. to H.C.). On account of business
expansion and relocation problems, it seemed doubtful that Crane’s
father would be in New York as expected. Accordingly, in a letter of
Jan. 7, 1924, he offered his son a travelling salesman’s job. After
three years of satisfactory performance, his son would assume control
of the wholesale portion of the business. This letter of Jan. 12,
1924, is Hart Crane’s response to the offer. His father responded
sympathetically; he sent his son a check, stated that he would continue
to provide financial assistance, recognized the sincerity and wisdom
of his son’s choice, and attempted to demonstrate a similarity between
them by asserting that he (like his son) was primarily interested in
“accomplishment” rather than “money” (Letter, Jan. 15, 1924, C.A.C. to
H.C.). Hart Crane viewed his father’s letter of the 15th as a “sincere
and cordial document” (Letter, Jan. 19, 1924, H.C. to his mother).
[35] “And there have been other complications which may afford you the
pleasure of vindictiveness against my ideas and standards....” (Letter,
Feb. 14, 1924, H.C. to C.A.C.) Crane’s father resented this remark,
and denied ever being able to derive pleasure from such an attitude
to his son’s life and work. He explained his attitude as a failure to
understand how his son could ever hope to support himself unless he
took his advertising work seriously, and stated that he would be more
sympathetic if his son were to regard his writing as an “avocation”
rather than a “vocation,” a hobby similar to the pastime of “golf.”
(Letter, Feb. 21, 1924, C.A.C. to H.C.) In the letters which follow
Hart Crane’s rejection of a place in his father’s business, the elder
Crane appears bitterly hurt that his son doesn’t want to work with
him. At the same time, he makes it quite clear that he has a genuine
affection for his son, and reiterates that he does not question the
devotion to poetry, only its inability to provide financial returns.
Later, in a letter of Nov. 25, 1925, he introduces the point that
he believes his son to be interested in “pleasure,” rather than in
following his own example of a man who “worked strenuously.”
[36] See Weber, _op. cit._, p. 395.
[37] An early version of “Voyages IV.”
[38] Crane had visited Cleveland.
[39] A version of “At Melville’s Tomb.”
[40] Crane had asked his father for money in a letter of Nov. 4, 1925.
His father responded with a check for $50, accompanied by a letter in
which he expressed resentment at his son’s contemptuous tone and was
himself sarcastic at his son’s expense. (Letter, C.A.C. to H.C., Nov.
17, 1925). Replying to this letter of Nov. 21, 1925, C.A.C. denied
being uninterested in his son’s life, denied that “‘fate’” had caused
their estrangement, and put the blame on his son instead. He reiterated
his belief in the necessity for earning a living and putting writing on
a subsidiary level, and expressed a desire for friendlier relations in
the future. (Letter, C.A.C. to H.C., Nov. 25, 1925.)
[41] “The Flower in the Sea,” by Malcolm Cowley, dedicated to Crane.
[42] See Weber, _op. cit._, pp. 430-432.
[43] _The Oresteia of Aeschylus_, trans. George Warr (Longman’s Green:
1910).
[44] George Francis Dow, _Whale Ships and Whaling_ (1925).
[45] See Philip Horton, _Hart Crane_ (New York: W. W. Norton & Co.,
1937), pp. 323-28.
[46] Early version of lines for “Ave Maria.”
[47] An early version of “The Mango Tree.”
[48] Thomas Frank.
[49] “Ave Maria” (_The Bridge_).
[50] “Cutty Sark” (_The Bridge_).
[51] See Weber, _op. cit._, pp. 437-40.
[52] If not a simple error, Crane has coined a combination of
“petulant” and “pestilent.”
[53] An early version of “To Emily Dickinson.”
[54] “Ode to the Confederate Dead.”
[55] Review of _White Buildings_ in _The Dial_ (Feb. 1927).
[56] Marichalar had written on Crane in _Revista de Occidente_
(Madrid), February 1927.
[57] “Bacardi Spreads the Eagle’s Wings.”
[58] “The Hurricane.”
[59] Charlie Chaplin.
[60] Cowley’s _Blue Juniata_.
[61] Gorham Munson, at this time an editorial adviser for Doubleday,
Doran.
[62] See letter 340, April 23, 1930.
[63] In a letter to Crane, June 10, 1930.
[64] Crane’s “Plans for Work” in his application for a Guggenheim
Fellowship for 1931-32.
[65] A hotel. Crane had been living in Miss Porter’s home.
[66] Miss Porter’s cook.
[67] Crane’s Mexican servant.
[68] “The Broken Tower.”
[69] “The Broken Tower.”
[70] The manuscript of “The Broken Tower” alluded to here was
apparently never received by Mr. Zabel or _Poetry_ (Chicago), of which
he was an editor. A letter from Mr. Zabel, dated April 24, 1932, in
response to this note from Crane, has been found; it explicitly states
that the poem in question was not received either by Harriet Monroe or
himself. It is of interest that Crane’s ms. copy of the poem is dated
March 25, 1932.
[71] _Contempo_ (July 5, 1932).
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
impossiblity of shaping=> impossibility of shaping {pg xi}
my enthusastic “public”=> my enthusiastic “public” {pg 64}
wth potato and onion=> with potato and onion {pg 159}
without damage the drawings=> without damage to the drawings {pg 200}
much outdor exercise=> much outdoor exercise {pg 208}
would glady write=> would gladly write {pg 219}
advertising coypwriter=> advertising copywriter {pg 221}
Furtherfore, they are=> Furthermore, they are {pg 253}
he bane good company=> he made good company {pg 255}
answer my saluations=> answer my salutations {pg 273}
this vicnity=> this vicinity {pg 351}
metrooplitan area=> metropolitan area {pg 359}
do you inten=> do you intend {pg 399}
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