Truck direct with publishers is one of the few
avoidable
degradations.
Samuel Beckett
How is the book
8
9
ALS; 1 leaf. 2 sides; env to Thomas McGreevy Esq. 15 Cheyne Gardens, London SW 3; pm 17-7-36, Dublin; TCD, MS 10402/102. Dating: from pm.
1 SBhadsentthetwopoems,latermadeoneas"Cascando,"toMcGreevyon15July 1936 (TCD MS 10402/101).
2 SBreferstoIanParsons'sletterof15July1936rejectingMurphy. ItwasCharles Prentice's suggestion to try Frere-Reeves, ifChatto and Windus refused Murphy (see 7 July 1936). Beckett sent Murphy to Simon and Schuster before 7 July 1936 (see 27 June and 7 July 1936).
3 DenisDevlin'spoem"TheInvestitureofD'Artagnan"appearedinDublinMagazine 11. 3 Uuly-September 1936) 4.
going. He told me you were getting on with it.
Maurice Sinclair got back from Paris yesterday. I think he
saw Joyce but I was only talking to him for a second.
My copy of the Eluard came, duly signed by author & all available translators. He does come through after a fashion, the frailty & nervousness. But no attempt seems to have been made to translate the pauses. Like Beethoven played strictly to time. 10
God love thee. Write soon EVER
Sam
SB's review ofJack B. Yeats's novel The Amaranthers: "An Imaginative Work! " 80-81.
SB refers disparagingly to his own review in an Anglicism, as if"surfait" (overrated) meant "overdone. "
4 BrianCoffeywasinDublinonsummerholidays.
5 In1936,theNationalGalleryoflrelandpurchasedOurLordMeetsHisMother(NGI 982) and The Descent from the Cross (NGI 983) by Giuseppe Bazzani (1690-1769) and The Vision of St. Jerome (NGI 981) by Johann Liss (also Lys. c. 1595-1631). Gentileschi, David and Goliath: see 7 May 1936, n. 9.
6 Perugino'sPieta(NGI942)hadbeenpurchasedfortheNationalGalleryin1931(see 20 December 1931, n. 5). Sebastian Ysepp (n. d. ), Restorer to the Kiinsthistorische
359
17 July {1936}, McGreevy
Museum in Vienna, submitted his evaluation on 6 June 1936; it indicated that the Perugino had been "spoiled through early restoration - particularly through unnecessary overpainting, darkened retouching, cracks in the paint and dangerous blisters" (NG! Archives). The painting was sent to Vienna for reconditioning, via London for X-ray photo, in July 1936 (Homan Potterton, "Introduction," National Gallery ofIreland: lllustrated Summary Catalogue ofPaintings xxxv-xxxvi; the 23 June 1936 Agenda for the Board of Governors and Guardians meeting on 1 July 1936 [NG! Archives]).
7 SeeSBtoSeumasO'Sullivan,[mid-July1936].
8 JackB. Yeats,InTirnanOg(Gaelic,TheLandoftheYoung)(privatecollection,Pyle 491), pictures a young man reading beneath a hedge (Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonne ofthe Oil Paintings, I, 446; Ill, 209).
McGreevy had begun work on the essay published (under MacGreevy) asJack B. Yeats: An Appredation and an Interpretation (Dublin: Victor Waddington Publications, 1945).
9 Morris Sinclair's meeting with Joyce: 26 July [1936] and n. 9.
10 Eluard's poems in Thoms of Thunder were translated by SB, Denis Devlin, David
Gascoyne,Eugene Jolas, Man Ray, George Reavey, and Ruthven Todd. It is not known who had signedSB's copy.
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
July 26th [1936]
Foxrock [Co. Dublin]
Dear Tom
Many thanks for your letter & remarks on the poems. I think
you are probably right about the opening. I was afraid you would find the second halfsloppy & am relieved that you did not. I have added a line to the end: "Unless they love you. " 1
Had a note from Frere acknowledging MS. He was good enough to remember our brief meeting Place du Pantheon, & to regret we had not met in London. They won't touch it. What disquiets me is absence of news from Simon and Schuster. Not even an acknowledgement of MS though they have had plenty of time to do so. 2
About meeting Dolly & Lennox, I feel it would probably go quite well with her, but not at all with him -3
360
Frank left yesterday for a motoring holiday in Northern
Ireland, & will be away 10 days. He is 34 to-day. Mother is the
picture of misery, one of her periodical attacks. I brought her
last Tuesday to a donkey show at Goffs Stables, & found Jack
4
Was in the Gallery yesterday. Another new work, vaguely
Austrian primitive, a panel painted both sides, on one Veronica's
Sudarium, on the other the 12 in a strange scene. 5 The magnificent
glass case in which it is exposed in centre of floor of Brouwer's
room, cost £50. Good old Furlong. He hopes to take all the Dutch
pictures down to the print room, & extend the Italians into the
6
7
refuge, or perhaps seeks clarity for himself, in Thomist terms
that I do not follow. Perhaps the problem is common, the prob
lems, but stated so differently that no headway is possible. He
8
say they can do nothing more to help him. He is perhaps better
than when he went in 14 months ago. He returns to his family
next Tuesday week. Sonny saw Joyce for about 5 minutes only.
He was very pris & rather cold from what I can make out. His face
lit up at your name, but not at mine. What can only have been
9
bewildered & resentful.
Am reading Guarini's Pastor Fido again. Lancret to Tasso's
Watteau except that the technique is magnificent. Then I hope
Yeatsthere,makingsketchesforapicture. Motherhadnotmet him before. She remarked how sad & ill he looked.
26 July {1936}, McGreevy
Dutchrooms,insinglelinehanging. YesterdayIwaslookingat the drawings & found an Elsheimer, to my joy. And a Mantegna
sketch for the Triumph of Caesar.
The walk with Brian was ambling and incoherent. He takes
talked attractively of Spinoza.
Boss Sinclair is being turned out of Newcastle, where they
Leon arrived while Sonny was there.
Had a sad friendly note from Hester_Io I can imagine her
to settle down to Faust.
II
361
26 July {1936}, McGreevy
Newman has been very plausible on the symphonic ballet.
Is he a bad logician on purpose, because he knows how much
more persuasive sophistry is? And how appallingly English the
sense of humour. Surely a Wagnerite must admire Choreartium
for all the wrong reasons. And to extend a protest against sym
phony for balletic purposes to a protest against lyric for Lieder
12
may get a kind word at last. I got my copy & wince at my trans
lations. I extended the little finger ofreconciliation to G. R. & had
it cordially wrung. Transition has appeared with 3 Bones, but no
13
from hospital psychiatry to psychoanalysis. Ursula has been considerably ill but is well again now. 14
I can't get away till September at earliest, as Mother's brother & his wife are coming in the middle of August to stay
15
Charles is in London again & expects to have to stay there for about two months for post-operative treatment. He still has
16
Schone Grtisse to Hester17
362
purposes surely is nonsense.
Leventhal is reviewing Thorns of Thunder for Seumas, so I
payment.
The news of Geoffrey is good, & he hopes soon to escape
a fortnight.
I hope I am not too old to take it up seriously, nor too stupid about machines to qualify as a commercial pilot. I do not feel like spending the rest of my life writing books that no one will read. It is not as though I wanted to write them.
I think the next little bit of excitement is flying.
some bug in his gut.
God love thee & write very soon
Ever Sam
26 July {1936}, McGreevy
ALS; 2 leaves, 4 sides; env to Thomas McGreevy Esq, 15 Cheyne Gardens, London SW 3; pm 26-7-36, Dublin; TCD, MS 10402/103.
1 Theopeninglines,"whywereyounotsimplywhatIdespairedfor/anoccasion ofwordshed" were omitted when published as "Cascando," in Dublin Magazine, 3-4, but restored in subsequent publications. For the added line: [c. mid-July 1936], n. 4.
2 SB had sent Murphy to A. S. Frere-Reeves on 17 July 1936. Simon and Schuster: 7 July 1936, n. 6.
3 DollyandLennoxRobinson.
4 FrankBeckett.
Gaffs Stables, dealing in bloodstock sales, celebrated their fiftieth anniversary in 1936. The donkey show was on 21 July. Jack Yeats wrote to McGreevy on 23 July also mentioning his meeting with SB and May Beckett (TCD, MS 8105/138).
5 The two Austrian primitives purchased in 1936 were on separate, and not necessarily associated, panels: The Apostles Bidding Farewell (NG! 978) ascribed to the Styrian School (fifteenth century) may have been a central panel; The Crudfixion (NG! 979) by the Salzburg School (c. 1425) may have been a side panel. The National Gallery ofIreland purchased both from the Gallerie St. Lucas in Vienna in February 1936. A case for the Austrian primitives was authorized at the 29 June 1936 meeting ofthe Board ofGovernors and Guardians ofthe National Gallery ofIreland, where it was suggested that they be displayed together; no cost is noted (NGI Archives). The case was placed in the room where the paintings by Adriaen Brouwer were hung.
6 GeorgeFurlongrefurbishedthegalleries,movedDutchpaintingstoRoomI,and expanded the Italian Gallery for single-line hanging (for images ofthis change, see Fionnuala Croke, "Introduction to the Exhibition: Part I," in Fionnuala Croke, ed. , Samuel Beckett: A Passion for Paintings [Dublin: National Gallery ofIreland, 2006] 12-13, 16; for a discussion ofthe completed rehanging, see Elizabeth Curran, "The National Gallery Revisited," The Bell 2. 5 [August 1941] 65-72).
7 In 1936 the gouache was attributed to Adam Elsheimer as Wooded Landscape at Dusk, and later to the Dutch draughtsman, etcher, and painter Gerrit van Battem (1636-1684) as A Wooded Landscape at Night. Now it is attributed to Dutch draughtsman and etcher Pieter de With (fl. 1650-1660) as A Wooded Landscape after Sunset (NG! 2101) (Hans Mohle, "Eine bisher unbekannte Landschaftsgouache van Adam Elsheimer," Zeitschrift des Deutschen Vereins filr Kunstwissenschaft 19. 34 (1965) 192-196; Adriaan Waiboer, Northern Nocturnes: Nightscapes in the Age of Rembrandt [Dublin: National Gallery oflreland, 2005] 82).
The ink drawing, "The Corselet Bearers" (from The Triumph of]ulius Caesar, NGI 2187) is now considered to be after, not by, Andrea Mantegna (c. 1430-1506).
8 BrianCoffeywasstudyingtheworkofFrenchphilosopherJacquesMaritainwho was a Thomist (advocating the revival ofthe ideas ofthe Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas [1225-12741).
9 BossSinclairdidnotleavethesanatorium.
Morris Sinclair had a letter ofintroduction from his uncle Harry Sinclair to Joyce; Joyce was unable to read the handwriting and asked Morris to do so: "It proved highly
363
26 July {1936}, McGreevy
embarrassing telling him what a charming fellow I was. Standing, we chatted about this and that, whereupon, having asked me where I was staying (the Catholic hostelry visibly irked him), he said he would be in touch and that I must come to the apart ment one evening. I left, and there was no further communication" (Morris Sinclair, 9 May 1991).
"Pris" (preoccupied).
10 HesterDowden'ssister,HildaDowden,died17July1936.
11 GiovanniBattistaGuarini(1538-1612)wastheauthorofnpastorfido(1589;Pastor Fido), which emulates Tasso's L' Aminta (see 8 October 1932 SB to McGreevy, n. 10). SB compares Guarini to Tasso by analogy to a comparison of the French painter Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743) to Jean-Antoine Watteau.
SB intended to read Goethe's Faust in the German, Der Trag6die erster Tei! (1808) and Der Trag6die zweiter Tei! (1832).
12 Inhiscolumn"TheWorldofMusic"inTheSundayTimes,ErnestNewmanwrotea series of articles (5 July to 26 July 1936) on "Symphonies and Ballets" in which he takes issue with the argument raised against symphonic ballet by Richard Capell (1885-1954) in "Symphonic Ballets: Massine's Little Miscalculation of the Eloquence ofLegs," Daily Telegraph 17 June 1936: 9; the first ofNewman's articles was answered by J. A. Westrup, '"Choreartium' Again: A Footnote to Controversy," Daily Telegraph 18 July 1936: 7.
Choreartium is a symphonic ballet in four parts choreographed by Massine to Johannes Brahms's Symphony no. 4 in E minor, op. 98. In his first essay, Newman addressed the argument that, by attempting to combine poetry and music, Richard Wagner violated the essential nature of both ("Symphonies and Ballets: I. Clearing the
Ground" 5 July 1936: 7). Enthusiasts ofWagner held the opposite view, which extends, in SB's discussion, to Choreartium. In his third article in the series, Newman argued againstthepropositionthat"nothingthatiscompleteshouldbe,canbe,addedto. . . ," saying that this "seems to wipe off the slate . . . all the great songwriters from Schubert to Wolf; for if poems such as those of Goethe and Heine are not complete in themselves, and would have been [in]complete to the end of time had no composer ever added music to them, words seem to me to have no meaning. " ("III. A Further Clearing of the Ground" 19 July 1936: 7).
13 A. J. Leventhalwroteanarticle,notareview,tointroducesurrealismasamove ment ("Surrealism or Literary Psycho-Therapy," Dublin Magazine 11. 4 [October-December 1936] 66-73). In this essay he reprinted with admiration SB's translation of Eluard's poem, "Lady Love" (Eluard, Thorns ofThunder, 1; rpt. 72).
No letter to or from George Reavey regarding a reconciliation has been found.
"Malacoda," "Enueg 2," and "Dortmunder" were reprinted from Echo's Bones in transition 24 Uune 1936) 8-10.
14 The Thompsons moved to 71 Harley Street in 1936, where Geoffrey had a consulting room on the ground floor. Ursula Thompson had been ill with chickenpox.
15 EdwardandFlorenceRoe.
16 CharlesPrentice.
17 "SchoneGrtisse"(warmgreetings). HesterDowden.
364
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
Dear Tom
Heard from Frere-Reeves yesterday, a curt rejection. "On
commercial grounds we could not justify it in our list. " And of course what other grounds of justification could there be. I think
1
I have not seen the transition in which my poems appeared, nor heard what poems they used, nor received the payment
2
Sunday. I brought him back here for lunch, showed him the Yeats picture & lent him some Minotaures.
Geoffrey's mother died suddenly last Monday and he is over for the funeral. I have not seen him yet but shall do so to-day. His
4
the fuchsia picture again & liked it much better than the first time. He has an excellent new small picture also, shelling peas (green) in Moore St. It was one of my instantive afternoons and one can't peer in 18 without all kinds of perturbations to make sure the coast is clear. He inquired was there anything wrong with me, and advised 5 miles walking daily, whether it was
365
7 August 1936, McGreevy
Cooldrinagh. Foxrock.
Co. Dublin.
nowofdumpingtheworkonReavey. Ineithertrusthimnor like him, but know no other agent.
Truck direct with publishers is one of the few avoidable degradations.
guaranteed by Mme. Jolas.
Seumas O'Sullivan has accepted the poem for Dublin Mag. I had a pleasant bathe & conversation with Brian last
3
brother Alan is also ill, I think rather seriously.
I was with Jack Yeats Saturday afternoon. I saw the man in
7 August 1936, McGreevy
mental or physical. I thought, the ice is breaking at last. He was very pleased with Read's very favourable review in the Spectator of Amaranthers, and even though it was Read, so was 1. 5
[. . . ]
Read Cecil's life of Cowper, The Stricken Deer. Very bad. But what a life! 6 It depressed & terrified me. How did he ever manage to write such bad poetry?
Am stuck in Hughes's High Wind in Jamaica, A. A. Milne &
7
surprising amount of irrelevance for the work of a lifetime. In
8
I hope you saw W. B. 's advise [for advice] to young Indian
9
apparently not relishing the prospect of another long spell in
what he now calls the "Turmoil". When he heard Heinemann
had turned down the book he said, "Why can't you write the way
people want", when I replied that I could only write the one way,
i. e. as best I could (not the right answer, by the way, not at all the
right answer), he said it was a good thing for him he did not feel
obliged to implement such a spirit in 6 Clare St. Even mother
begins to look askance at me. My departure from here is long
overdue. But complicated by my owing them £10 apiece. The
10
copper in the face from correcting Moore proofs. He was crying
366
Rum.
Am half way through Faust Part I. There seems to be a
Auerbach's Cellar & the Witches' Kitchen for example. But perhaps it justifies itself later. I think he was the kind that couldn't bear to shorten anything.
poets quoted in the Irishman's Diary.
Frank came back from his 10 days in Donegal last Tuesday,
Yeats picture is paid off at last.
How is your own work going and how are you yourself?
I hope Dilly's sales keep good. I saw Joe Hone one day,
7 August 1936, McGreevy out for a book to translate in the long winter evenings. I sug
11
good old men go surrealiste. Haven't observed it myself. Tuohy
apparently said also when asked by Sean O'Sullivan why he
did not promote his income with contributions to Punch, that
only old men had a sense of humour. Sean looks forward to
getting a teaching job in the reorganized School of Art, at £6
a week, that will relieve him from the necessity of painting
12
Love ever Sam
"Schone Grosse" to Hester13
ALS; 2 leaves, 8 sides; letterhead; env to Thomas McGreevy Esq, 15 Cheyne Gardens,
LONDON SW 3; pm illeg, Dublin; TCD, MS 10402/104.
1 SBhadsentMurphytoFrere-Reeves(see7July1936,n. 6).
SB sent Murphy to George Reavey's European Literary Bureau, asking him to act as agent; he wrote to McGreevy: "As you say, they are all the same, & with Reavey I will be spared the labour & embarrassment of introducing myself. I had also thought of Wishart & suggested it to Reavey. They have rejected work of mine before" (Wednesday [19 August 1936[, TCD, MS 10402/105).
2 SB was aware that his three poems from Echo's Bones had been published in transition in June (26 July 1936, n. 13; the request for these poems: 7 July 1936). Maria Jolas served as Managing Editor of transition.
3 "Cascando,"DublinMagazine,3-4.
4 BrianCoffey. MorningbyJackB. Yeats.
Presumably SB lent Coffey some issues ofMinotaure, a lavishly illustrated art journal published in Paris from June 1933 to May 1939.
Geoffrey and Alan Thompson's mother, Lillian Thompson (nee Bourne).
5 JackYeatslivedat18FitzwilliamSquare.
SB describes In Tir na n6g: 17 July 1936, n. 8. Shelling Green Peas, Moore Street (Allied Irish Bank Collection, Dublin, Pyle 461) (Pyle. Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonne ofthe Oil Paintings, I, 420; III, 199).
Herbert Read compares Yeats to Joyce, Soupault, and Sterne, writing "The book is a magnificent satire, an irrational and hilarious farce written with the greatest verve and wit" ("A Surrealist Novel," The Spectator 31 July 1936: 211).
367
gested Breton's Nadja.
Leventhal says Faust Part 2 is very surrealiste & that all
at all.
Write very soon.
7 August 1936, McGreevy
6 Lord David Cecil, The Stricken Deer; or, The Life of Cowper (1930). English poet William Cowper (1731-1800) suffered from periods of melancholia, and attempted suicide several times.
7 RichardHughes,HighWindinJamaica:TheInnocentVoyage(1929). AlanAlexander Milne (1882-1566).
8 For SB's notes on Goethe's Faust, in an edition by Robert Petsch (Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, [19251), see BIF, UoR, MS 5004 and MS 5005; for a descrip tion, see Dirk van Hulle, "Samuel Beckett's Faust Notes," Notes Diverse Holo, Special issue SBT/A 16 (2006) 283-297. SB elaborated on his reading in his next Jetter to McGreevy:
I have been working at German & reading Faust. Finished Part I last night. It leaves me with an impression of something very fragmentary, often irrele vant & too concrete, that perhaps Part 2 will correct. Auerbach's Cellar, the Witches Kitchen & Walpurgisnacht, for example, - little more than sites & atmospheres, swamping the corresponding mental conditions. All the on & up is so tiresome also, the determined optimism a la Beethoven, the unconscion able time a-coming. The vinegar & nitre of Kant & Heraclitus. It takes a German to apotheose the busybody. I can understand the "keep on keeping on" as a social prophylactic, but not at all as a light in the autological darkness, or the theological. And the "pure doing" affects me like the "cordial fornica tion" of DHL, the "Sentimentique" of a fidgeter, fit for the D. -J. Reddins. (SB to McGreevy, Wednesday [19 August 1936], TCD, MS 10402/105)
"Vinegar & nitre" refers to Proverbs 25:20: "As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singethsongs to an heavy heart," In this context, SB suggests opposition between German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Heraclitus.
SB refers to D. H. Lawrence: he mentions reading D. H. Lawrence: A Personal Record by E. T. Uessie Chambers] (1935), "his mining district, on & off fiancee" (SB to McGreevy, Wednesday [19 August 1936], TCD, MS 10402/105).
"Sentimentique" (a French portmanteau word, combining the ideas of "sentimen tal" and "romantic": sentimantic).
D[istrict]-J[ustice] Kenneth Sheils Reddin (1895-1967), from 1922 to 1957 and from 1958 to 1964 Principal Justice, and his wife; he was a playwright, having had two productions at the Abbey Theatre in 1924, The Passing and Old Mag.
For SB's further notes on Goethe's Faust, BIF, UoR, MS 5004/33, see Dirk van Hulle, "Samuel Beckett's Faust Notes," 295; Nixon, "'Scraps of German,"' Notes Diverse Holo, Special issue SBT/A 16 (2006) 272. SB's German-language study notes can be found in BIF, UoR, MS 5002 and MS 5003; the cover of the first notebook is dated 13/7/36.
9 AmessagefromW. B. YeatstoyoungIndianpoets:"Writeinyourmothertongues. Choose that smaller audience. You cannot have style and vigour in English . . . When you write, speak, think in English, you are a musical instrument without a sounding board" (The Madras Chronicle 17 June 1936: n. p. ; rpt. "The Irishman's Diary: Yeats and India," The Irish Times 6 August 1936: 6).
10 FrankBeckettisreferringtoBeckettandMedcalf,6ClareSt. Jack B. Yeats's Morning.
11 GeraldineCummins'snovel,FiresofBe! tane;see27June1936,n. 11. Joseph Hone, The Life of George Moore (1936). Andre Breton, Nadja (1928).
368
19 September 1936, McGreevy
12 A. J. Leventhal. The classical witches' sabbath is in part II of Faust.
Irish artist Patrick Tuohy (1894-1930).
The Dublin Metropolitan School of Art was reorganized by the National Board of
Education as the National College of Art in September 1936, and invited applications for professorships at £500 per year Uohn Dowling, "The National College of Art," Ireland To-Day 1. 4 [September 1936] 54-55).
13 "Schone Grosse" (warm greetings). Hester Dowden THOMAS McGREEVY
LONDON
19/9/36 Foxrock
Dear Tom
No I have heard nothing ofthe Exagmination. I have no copy,
but think it was published by SylviA. No doubt we are being roule,
but I am too tired to do anything about it. When I think of that
10 year stale push, I would willingly withhold it & forgo the 1%,
1
if any. And ifl protested it would have to be in that sense.
I have booked passage in the Washington sailing from Cove 29th inst. , calling at Le Havre and reaching Hamburg Oct. 1sr_ Frank may have to go to Waterford about a job, in which case I would drive that far with him. Otherwise I shall go down by train next Monday week. The prospect of getting away is a great relief. My plans are none. Simply to get to Germany, & then selon le vent. 2 I hope to be away a loong, loong time. I was promising myself return by Holland, but by all accounts things there are
frightfully expensive, so I don't expect it will come off.
Frank has had an awful month with neuritis in his shoulder & it is only now that it begins slowly to improve. At the same time he is up to his eyes in the office, working till 8 every evening, with the feeling all the time in the not so remote background that he is strangling his life. But who does not.
369
19 September 1936, McGreevy
Only a question of the hold employed. I think it is perhaps a little easier for him when I am not here, though I think also he misses me.
[. . . ]
I think I told you about S. O'S. 's request for an inch off the poem. Circumcised accordingly, it now begins with the abortion dilemma. 3
I don't know exactly what Mrs Howe said to Dev. I know she
4
Rose. The first two are exquisite. The third less so. The refusal of
the rose to crumble, its embalming of itself instead, compelled
him to take it off the mantelpiece & on to a table with the room
all round. So that 3 is less of a flower than of an interior. I had
5
feel no inclination to go on, though I am told it improves in
6
(Hone's collaborator in Berkeley & Swift books). Lady Gregory
he apostrophises at length with opulent curves as coextensive
with the "spirit" of Ireland. Glendalough is a "luogo dolce".
Walter Starkie is the finest product of Trinity humanism
"homo singolarment vivace ed umano . . " [for "uomo singolar
mente vivace, umano"] & Gogarty is the all round man of the
Quattrocento. And a chapter is entitled: "Serenita Protestante. "
In fact the work of a professor. He wrote a "Saggio sul rimorso"
7
mentioned absurdity of not having reproductions available.
I saw J. B. last Saturday. He had extended his rose picture 2 stages further 1. Tyranny of the Rose. 2. Rose dying. 3. Dusty
him alone, Cotty spared us.
The Klassische Walpurgisnacht was too much for me & I
Acts 3 & 5. I have just read Viaggio in Irlanda by Mario Rossi
full of false teeth, as soft as the old man's mentula.
I do not know if Brian is back. I want to see him before I leave. He lent me Brunchwiffs Spinoza et ses Contemporains, the Ethica in the Classiques Garnier with Latin en regard, of
370
19 September 1936, McGreevy
which I have had time only for enough to give me a glimpse of
Spinoza as a solution & a salvation (impossible in English trans
lation), and Maritain's nauseating Docteur Angelique, which I
soon lay down. Feeling what a pity the tetragonal Peripatetic did
8
treatment.
Reavey still in Belfast, whence he sent a first chapter of a
translation of yet another Berdaiev [for Berdyaev] for the kind ness of suggestions. He promises to let me know about Murphy next week. Nothing from New York. 10
Now I have to go to Cabinteely Barracks & fill up application
11
1 SB refers to the reprint edition of Sylvia Beach, ed. , Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (London: Faber and Faber, 1936).
"Roule" (done, cheated), with reference to royalties for their essays.
SB probably refers to publication and promotion of Joyce's Work in Progress, which had been published in sections, the first fragment appearing as "From Work in Progress," Transatlantic Review 1. 4 (April 1924) 215-223.
2 SBleftfromCove(nowCobh).
SB had written to McGreevy on Wednesday [19 August 1936]: "I still live in hopes of getting away in September, but shall probably go direct from Cove to Hamburg. And perhaps this time next month I'll be on the Brocken" (TCD, MS 10402/105). The Brocken, also called Blocksberg, is the highest mountain in the Harz region of north ern Germany, and the site of rites enacted on Walpurgis Night (30 April), the setting for Walpurgisnacht in Goethe's Faust.
On 9 September [1936], SB had written to McGreevy: "! fl had the price of it I'd fly to Amsterdam" (TCD, MS 10402/107).
"Selon le vent" (as the wind takes me).
3 SB cut the first two lines of his poem "Cascando," for publication in Dublin Magazine; he wrote to McGreevy: "Seumas O'S. sent another proof with request to make one line of two somewhere, anywhere, in the interests of his pagination"
371
not fall for the whore proposed by his brother.
A letter from Charles. Still lingering on in London, having
9
for a new passport. I am wondering will it be put through in time. Love ever. If I don't hear before I leave, write Postlagernd,
12
ALS; 3 leaves, 3 sides; TCD, MS 10402/108.
8
9
ALS; 1 leaf. 2 sides; env to Thomas McGreevy Esq. 15 Cheyne Gardens, London SW 3; pm 17-7-36, Dublin; TCD, MS 10402/102. Dating: from pm.
1 SBhadsentthetwopoems,latermadeoneas"Cascando,"toMcGreevyon15July 1936 (TCD MS 10402/101).
2 SBreferstoIanParsons'sletterof15July1936rejectingMurphy. ItwasCharles Prentice's suggestion to try Frere-Reeves, ifChatto and Windus refused Murphy (see 7 July 1936). Beckett sent Murphy to Simon and Schuster before 7 July 1936 (see 27 June and 7 July 1936).
3 DenisDevlin'spoem"TheInvestitureofD'Artagnan"appearedinDublinMagazine 11. 3 Uuly-September 1936) 4.
going. He told me you were getting on with it.
Maurice Sinclair got back from Paris yesterday. I think he
saw Joyce but I was only talking to him for a second.
My copy of the Eluard came, duly signed by author & all available translators. He does come through after a fashion, the frailty & nervousness. But no attempt seems to have been made to translate the pauses. Like Beethoven played strictly to time. 10
God love thee. Write soon EVER
Sam
SB's review ofJack B. Yeats's novel The Amaranthers: "An Imaginative Work! " 80-81.
SB refers disparagingly to his own review in an Anglicism, as if"surfait" (overrated) meant "overdone. "
4 BrianCoffeywasinDublinonsummerholidays.
5 In1936,theNationalGalleryoflrelandpurchasedOurLordMeetsHisMother(NGI 982) and The Descent from the Cross (NGI 983) by Giuseppe Bazzani (1690-1769) and The Vision of St. Jerome (NGI 981) by Johann Liss (also Lys. c. 1595-1631). Gentileschi, David and Goliath: see 7 May 1936, n. 9.
6 Perugino'sPieta(NGI942)hadbeenpurchasedfortheNationalGalleryin1931(see 20 December 1931, n. 5). Sebastian Ysepp (n. d. ), Restorer to the Kiinsthistorische
359
17 July {1936}, McGreevy
Museum in Vienna, submitted his evaluation on 6 June 1936; it indicated that the Perugino had been "spoiled through early restoration - particularly through unnecessary overpainting, darkened retouching, cracks in the paint and dangerous blisters" (NG! Archives). The painting was sent to Vienna for reconditioning, via London for X-ray photo, in July 1936 (Homan Potterton, "Introduction," National Gallery ofIreland: lllustrated Summary Catalogue ofPaintings xxxv-xxxvi; the 23 June 1936 Agenda for the Board of Governors and Guardians meeting on 1 July 1936 [NG! Archives]).
7 SeeSBtoSeumasO'Sullivan,[mid-July1936].
8 JackB. Yeats,InTirnanOg(Gaelic,TheLandoftheYoung)(privatecollection,Pyle 491), pictures a young man reading beneath a hedge (Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonne ofthe Oil Paintings, I, 446; Ill, 209).
McGreevy had begun work on the essay published (under MacGreevy) asJack B. Yeats: An Appredation and an Interpretation (Dublin: Victor Waddington Publications, 1945).
9 Morris Sinclair's meeting with Joyce: 26 July [1936] and n. 9.
10 Eluard's poems in Thoms of Thunder were translated by SB, Denis Devlin, David
Gascoyne,Eugene Jolas, Man Ray, George Reavey, and Ruthven Todd. It is not known who had signedSB's copy.
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
July 26th [1936]
Foxrock [Co. Dublin]
Dear Tom
Many thanks for your letter & remarks on the poems. I think
you are probably right about the opening. I was afraid you would find the second halfsloppy & am relieved that you did not. I have added a line to the end: "Unless they love you. " 1
Had a note from Frere acknowledging MS. He was good enough to remember our brief meeting Place du Pantheon, & to regret we had not met in London. They won't touch it. What disquiets me is absence of news from Simon and Schuster. Not even an acknowledgement of MS though they have had plenty of time to do so. 2
About meeting Dolly & Lennox, I feel it would probably go quite well with her, but not at all with him -3
360
Frank left yesterday for a motoring holiday in Northern
Ireland, & will be away 10 days. He is 34 to-day. Mother is the
picture of misery, one of her periodical attacks. I brought her
last Tuesday to a donkey show at Goffs Stables, & found Jack
4
Was in the Gallery yesterday. Another new work, vaguely
Austrian primitive, a panel painted both sides, on one Veronica's
Sudarium, on the other the 12 in a strange scene. 5 The magnificent
glass case in which it is exposed in centre of floor of Brouwer's
room, cost £50. Good old Furlong. He hopes to take all the Dutch
pictures down to the print room, & extend the Italians into the
6
7
refuge, or perhaps seeks clarity for himself, in Thomist terms
that I do not follow. Perhaps the problem is common, the prob
lems, but stated so differently that no headway is possible. He
8
say they can do nothing more to help him. He is perhaps better
than when he went in 14 months ago. He returns to his family
next Tuesday week. Sonny saw Joyce for about 5 minutes only.
He was very pris & rather cold from what I can make out. His face
lit up at your name, but not at mine. What can only have been
9
bewildered & resentful.
Am reading Guarini's Pastor Fido again. Lancret to Tasso's
Watteau except that the technique is magnificent. Then I hope
Yeatsthere,makingsketchesforapicture. Motherhadnotmet him before. She remarked how sad & ill he looked.
26 July {1936}, McGreevy
Dutchrooms,insinglelinehanging. YesterdayIwaslookingat the drawings & found an Elsheimer, to my joy. And a Mantegna
sketch for the Triumph of Caesar.
The walk with Brian was ambling and incoherent. He takes
talked attractively of Spinoza.
Boss Sinclair is being turned out of Newcastle, where they
Leon arrived while Sonny was there.
Had a sad friendly note from Hester_Io I can imagine her
to settle down to Faust.
II
361
26 July {1936}, McGreevy
Newman has been very plausible on the symphonic ballet.
Is he a bad logician on purpose, because he knows how much
more persuasive sophistry is? And how appallingly English the
sense of humour. Surely a Wagnerite must admire Choreartium
for all the wrong reasons. And to extend a protest against sym
phony for balletic purposes to a protest against lyric for Lieder
12
may get a kind word at last. I got my copy & wince at my trans
lations. I extended the little finger ofreconciliation to G. R. & had
it cordially wrung. Transition has appeared with 3 Bones, but no
13
from hospital psychiatry to psychoanalysis. Ursula has been considerably ill but is well again now. 14
I can't get away till September at earliest, as Mother's brother & his wife are coming in the middle of August to stay
15
Charles is in London again & expects to have to stay there for about two months for post-operative treatment. He still has
16
Schone Grtisse to Hester17
362
purposes surely is nonsense.
Leventhal is reviewing Thorns of Thunder for Seumas, so I
payment.
The news of Geoffrey is good, & he hopes soon to escape
a fortnight.
I hope I am not too old to take it up seriously, nor too stupid about machines to qualify as a commercial pilot. I do not feel like spending the rest of my life writing books that no one will read. It is not as though I wanted to write them.
I think the next little bit of excitement is flying.
some bug in his gut.
God love thee & write very soon
Ever Sam
26 July {1936}, McGreevy
ALS; 2 leaves, 4 sides; env to Thomas McGreevy Esq, 15 Cheyne Gardens, London SW 3; pm 26-7-36, Dublin; TCD, MS 10402/103.
1 Theopeninglines,"whywereyounotsimplywhatIdespairedfor/anoccasion ofwordshed" were omitted when published as "Cascando," in Dublin Magazine, 3-4, but restored in subsequent publications. For the added line: [c. mid-July 1936], n. 4.
2 SB had sent Murphy to A. S. Frere-Reeves on 17 July 1936. Simon and Schuster: 7 July 1936, n. 6.
3 DollyandLennoxRobinson.
4 FrankBeckett.
Gaffs Stables, dealing in bloodstock sales, celebrated their fiftieth anniversary in 1936. The donkey show was on 21 July. Jack Yeats wrote to McGreevy on 23 July also mentioning his meeting with SB and May Beckett (TCD, MS 8105/138).
5 The two Austrian primitives purchased in 1936 were on separate, and not necessarily associated, panels: The Apostles Bidding Farewell (NG! 978) ascribed to the Styrian School (fifteenth century) may have been a central panel; The Crudfixion (NG! 979) by the Salzburg School (c. 1425) may have been a side panel. The National Gallery ofIreland purchased both from the Gallerie St. Lucas in Vienna in February 1936. A case for the Austrian primitives was authorized at the 29 June 1936 meeting ofthe Board ofGovernors and Guardians ofthe National Gallery ofIreland, where it was suggested that they be displayed together; no cost is noted (NGI Archives). The case was placed in the room where the paintings by Adriaen Brouwer were hung.
6 GeorgeFurlongrefurbishedthegalleries,movedDutchpaintingstoRoomI,and expanded the Italian Gallery for single-line hanging (for images ofthis change, see Fionnuala Croke, "Introduction to the Exhibition: Part I," in Fionnuala Croke, ed. , Samuel Beckett: A Passion for Paintings [Dublin: National Gallery ofIreland, 2006] 12-13, 16; for a discussion ofthe completed rehanging, see Elizabeth Curran, "The National Gallery Revisited," The Bell 2. 5 [August 1941] 65-72).
7 In 1936 the gouache was attributed to Adam Elsheimer as Wooded Landscape at Dusk, and later to the Dutch draughtsman, etcher, and painter Gerrit van Battem (1636-1684) as A Wooded Landscape at Night. Now it is attributed to Dutch draughtsman and etcher Pieter de With (fl. 1650-1660) as A Wooded Landscape after Sunset (NG! 2101) (Hans Mohle, "Eine bisher unbekannte Landschaftsgouache van Adam Elsheimer," Zeitschrift des Deutschen Vereins filr Kunstwissenschaft 19. 34 (1965) 192-196; Adriaan Waiboer, Northern Nocturnes: Nightscapes in the Age of Rembrandt [Dublin: National Gallery oflreland, 2005] 82).
The ink drawing, "The Corselet Bearers" (from The Triumph of]ulius Caesar, NGI 2187) is now considered to be after, not by, Andrea Mantegna (c. 1430-1506).
8 BrianCoffeywasstudyingtheworkofFrenchphilosopherJacquesMaritainwho was a Thomist (advocating the revival ofthe ideas ofthe Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas [1225-12741).
9 BossSinclairdidnotleavethesanatorium.
Morris Sinclair had a letter ofintroduction from his uncle Harry Sinclair to Joyce; Joyce was unable to read the handwriting and asked Morris to do so: "It proved highly
363
26 July {1936}, McGreevy
embarrassing telling him what a charming fellow I was. Standing, we chatted about this and that, whereupon, having asked me where I was staying (the Catholic hostelry visibly irked him), he said he would be in touch and that I must come to the apart ment one evening. I left, and there was no further communication" (Morris Sinclair, 9 May 1991).
"Pris" (preoccupied).
10 HesterDowden'ssister,HildaDowden,died17July1936.
11 GiovanniBattistaGuarini(1538-1612)wastheauthorofnpastorfido(1589;Pastor Fido), which emulates Tasso's L' Aminta (see 8 October 1932 SB to McGreevy, n. 10). SB compares Guarini to Tasso by analogy to a comparison of the French painter Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743) to Jean-Antoine Watteau.
SB intended to read Goethe's Faust in the German, Der Trag6die erster Tei! (1808) and Der Trag6die zweiter Tei! (1832).
12 Inhiscolumn"TheWorldofMusic"inTheSundayTimes,ErnestNewmanwrotea series of articles (5 July to 26 July 1936) on "Symphonies and Ballets" in which he takes issue with the argument raised against symphonic ballet by Richard Capell (1885-1954) in "Symphonic Ballets: Massine's Little Miscalculation of the Eloquence ofLegs," Daily Telegraph 17 June 1936: 9; the first ofNewman's articles was answered by J. A. Westrup, '"Choreartium' Again: A Footnote to Controversy," Daily Telegraph 18 July 1936: 7.
Choreartium is a symphonic ballet in four parts choreographed by Massine to Johannes Brahms's Symphony no. 4 in E minor, op. 98. In his first essay, Newman addressed the argument that, by attempting to combine poetry and music, Richard Wagner violated the essential nature of both ("Symphonies and Ballets: I. Clearing the
Ground" 5 July 1936: 7). Enthusiasts ofWagner held the opposite view, which extends, in SB's discussion, to Choreartium. In his third article in the series, Newman argued againstthepropositionthat"nothingthatiscompleteshouldbe,canbe,addedto. . . ," saying that this "seems to wipe off the slate . . . all the great songwriters from Schubert to Wolf; for if poems such as those of Goethe and Heine are not complete in themselves, and would have been [in]complete to the end of time had no composer ever added music to them, words seem to me to have no meaning. " ("III. A Further Clearing of the Ground" 19 July 1936: 7).
13 A. J. Leventhalwroteanarticle,notareview,tointroducesurrealismasamove ment ("Surrealism or Literary Psycho-Therapy," Dublin Magazine 11. 4 [October-December 1936] 66-73). In this essay he reprinted with admiration SB's translation of Eluard's poem, "Lady Love" (Eluard, Thorns ofThunder, 1; rpt. 72).
No letter to or from George Reavey regarding a reconciliation has been found.
"Malacoda," "Enueg 2," and "Dortmunder" were reprinted from Echo's Bones in transition 24 Uune 1936) 8-10.
14 The Thompsons moved to 71 Harley Street in 1936, where Geoffrey had a consulting room on the ground floor. Ursula Thompson had been ill with chickenpox.
15 EdwardandFlorenceRoe.
16 CharlesPrentice.
17 "SchoneGrtisse"(warmgreetings). HesterDowden.
364
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
Dear Tom
Heard from Frere-Reeves yesterday, a curt rejection. "On
commercial grounds we could not justify it in our list. " And of course what other grounds of justification could there be. I think
1
I have not seen the transition in which my poems appeared, nor heard what poems they used, nor received the payment
2
Sunday. I brought him back here for lunch, showed him the Yeats picture & lent him some Minotaures.
Geoffrey's mother died suddenly last Monday and he is over for the funeral. I have not seen him yet but shall do so to-day. His
4
the fuchsia picture again & liked it much better than the first time. He has an excellent new small picture also, shelling peas (green) in Moore St. It was one of my instantive afternoons and one can't peer in 18 without all kinds of perturbations to make sure the coast is clear. He inquired was there anything wrong with me, and advised 5 miles walking daily, whether it was
365
7 August 1936, McGreevy
Cooldrinagh. Foxrock.
Co. Dublin.
nowofdumpingtheworkonReavey. Ineithertrusthimnor like him, but know no other agent.
Truck direct with publishers is one of the few avoidable degradations.
guaranteed by Mme. Jolas.
Seumas O'Sullivan has accepted the poem for Dublin Mag. I had a pleasant bathe & conversation with Brian last
3
brother Alan is also ill, I think rather seriously.
I was with Jack Yeats Saturday afternoon. I saw the man in
7 August 1936, McGreevy
mental or physical. I thought, the ice is breaking at last. He was very pleased with Read's very favourable review in the Spectator of Amaranthers, and even though it was Read, so was 1. 5
[. . . ]
Read Cecil's life of Cowper, The Stricken Deer. Very bad. But what a life! 6 It depressed & terrified me. How did he ever manage to write such bad poetry?
Am stuck in Hughes's High Wind in Jamaica, A. A. Milne &
7
surprising amount of irrelevance for the work of a lifetime. In
8
I hope you saw W. B. 's advise [for advice] to young Indian
9
apparently not relishing the prospect of another long spell in
what he now calls the "Turmoil". When he heard Heinemann
had turned down the book he said, "Why can't you write the way
people want", when I replied that I could only write the one way,
i. e. as best I could (not the right answer, by the way, not at all the
right answer), he said it was a good thing for him he did not feel
obliged to implement such a spirit in 6 Clare St. Even mother
begins to look askance at me. My departure from here is long
overdue. But complicated by my owing them £10 apiece. The
10
copper in the face from correcting Moore proofs. He was crying
366
Rum.
Am half way through Faust Part I. There seems to be a
Auerbach's Cellar & the Witches' Kitchen for example. But perhaps it justifies itself later. I think he was the kind that couldn't bear to shorten anything.
poets quoted in the Irishman's Diary.
Frank came back from his 10 days in Donegal last Tuesday,
Yeats picture is paid off at last.
How is your own work going and how are you yourself?
I hope Dilly's sales keep good. I saw Joe Hone one day,
7 August 1936, McGreevy out for a book to translate in the long winter evenings. I sug
11
good old men go surrealiste. Haven't observed it myself. Tuohy
apparently said also when asked by Sean O'Sullivan why he
did not promote his income with contributions to Punch, that
only old men had a sense of humour. Sean looks forward to
getting a teaching job in the reorganized School of Art, at £6
a week, that will relieve him from the necessity of painting
12
Love ever Sam
"Schone Grosse" to Hester13
ALS; 2 leaves, 8 sides; letterhead; env to Thomas McGreevy Esq, 15 Cheyne Gardens,
LONDON SW 3; pm illeg, Dublin; TCD, MS 10402/104.
1 SBhadsentMurphytoFrere-Reeves(see7July1936,n. 6).
SB sent Murphy to George Reavey's European Literary Bureau, asking him to act as agent; he wrote to McGreevy: "As you say, they are all the same, & with Reavey I will be spared the labour & embarrassment of introducing myself. I had also thought of Wishart & suggested it to Reavey. They have rejected work of mine before" (Wednesday [19 August 1936[, TCD, MS 10402/105).
2 SB was aware that his three poems from Echo's Bones had been published in transition in June (26 July 1936, n. 13; the request for these poems: 7 July 1936). Maria Jolas served as Managing Editor of transition.
3 "Cascando,"DublinMagazine,3-4.
4 BrianCoffey. MorningbyJackB. Yeats.
Presumably SB lent Coffey some issues ofMinotaure, a lavishly illustrated art journal published in Paris from June 1933 to May 1939.
Geoffrey and Alan Thompson's mother, Lillian Thompson (nee Bourne).
5 JackYeatslivedat18FitzwilliamSquare.
SB describes In Tir na n6g: 17 July 1936, n. 8. Shelling Green Peas, Moore Street (Allied Irish Bank Collection, Dublin, Pyle 461) (Pyle. Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonne ofthe Oil Paintings, I, 420; III, 199).
Herbert Read compares Yeats to Joyce, Soupault, and Sterne, writing "The book is a magnificent satire, an irrational and hilarious farce written with the greatest verve and wit" ("A Surrealist Novel," The Spectator 31 July 1936: 211).
367
gested Breton's Nadja.
Leventhal says Faust Part 2 is very surrealiste & that all
at all.
Write very soon.
7 August 1936, McGreevy
6 Lord David Cecil, The Stricken Deer; or, The Life of Cowper (1930). English poet William Cowper (1731-1800) suffered from periods of melancholia, and attempted suicide several times.
7 RichardHughes,HighWindinJamaica:TheInnocentVoyage(1929). AlanAlexander Milne (1882-1566).
8 For SB's notes on Goethe's Faust, in an edition by Robert Petsch (Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, [19251), see BIF, UoR, MS 5004 and MS 5005; for a descrip tion, see Dirk van Hulle, "Samuel Beckett's Faust Notes," Notes Diverse Holo, Special issue SBT/A 16 (2006) 283-297. SB elaborated on his reading in his next Jetter to McGreevy:
I have been working at German & reading Faust. Finished Part I last night. It leaves me with an impression of something very fragmentary, often irrele vant & too concrete, that perhaps Part 2 will correct. Auerbach's Cellar, the Witches Kitchen & Walpurgisnacht, for example, - little more than sites & atmospheres, swamping the corresponding mental conditions. All the on & up is so tiresome also, the determined optimism a la Beethoven, the unconscion able time a-coming. The vinegar & nitre of Kant & Heraclitus. It takes a German to apotheose the busybody. I can understand the "keep on keeping on" as a social prophylactic, but not at all as a light in the autological darkness, or the theological. And the "pure doing" affects me like the "cordial fornica tion" of DHL, the "Sentimentique" of a fidgeter, fit for the D. -J. Reddins. (SB to McGreevy, Wednesday [19 August 1936], TCD, MS 10402/105)
"Vinegar & nitre" refers to Proverbs 25:20: "As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singethsongs to an heavy heart," In this context, SB suggests opposition between German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Heraclitus.
SB refers to D. H. Lawrence: he mentions reading D. H. Lawrence: A Personal Record by E. T. Uessie Chambers] (1935), "his mining district, on & off fiancee" (SB to McGreevy, Wednesday [19 August 1936], TCD, MS 10402/105).
"Sentimentique" (a French portmanteau word, combining the ideas of "sentimen tal" and "romantic": sentimantic).
D[istrict]-J[ustice] Kenneth Sheils Reddin (1895-1967), from 1922 to 1957 and from 1958 to 1964 Principal Justice, and his wife; he was a playwright, having had two productions at the Abbey Theatre in 1924, The Passing and Old Mag.
For SB's further notes on Goethe's Faust, BIF, UoR, MS 5004/33, see Dirk van Hulle, "Samuel Beckett's Faust Notes," 295; Nixon, "'Scraps of German,"' Notes Diverse Holo, Special issue SBT/A 16 (2006) 272. SB's German-language study notes can be found in BIF, UoR, MS 5002 and MS 5003; the cover of the first notebook is dated 13/7/36.
9 AmessagefromW. B. YeatstoyoungIndianpoets:"Writeinyourmothertongues. Choose that smaller audience. You cannot have style and vigour in English . . . When you write, speak, think in English, you are a musical instrument without a sounding board" (The Madras Chronicle 17 June 1936: n. p. ; rpt. "The Irishman's Diary: Yeats and India," The Irish Times 6 August 1936: 6).
10 FrankBeckettisreferringtoBeckettandMedcalf,6ClareSt. Jack B. Yeats's Morning.
11 GeraldineCummins'snovel,FiresofBe! tane;see27June1936,n. 11. Joseph Hone, The Life of George Moore (1936). Andre Breton, Nadja (1928).
368
19 September 1936, McGreevy
12 A. J. Leventhal. The classical witches' sabbath is in part II of Faust.
Irish artist Patrick Tuohy (1894-1930).
The Dublin Metropolitan School of Art was reorganized by the National Board of
Education as the National College of Art in September 1936, and invited applications for professorships at £500 per year Uohn Dowling, "The National College of Art," Ireland To-Day 1. 4 [September 1936] 54-55).
13 "Schone Grosse" (warm greetings). Hester Dowden THOMAS McGREEVY
LONDON
19/9/36 Foxrock
Dear Tom
No I have heard nothing ofthe Exagmination. I have no copy,
but think it was published by SylviA. No doubt we are being roule,
but I am too tired to do anything about it. When I think of that
10 year stale push, I would willingly withhold it & forgo the 1%,
1
if any. And ifl protested it would have to be in that sense.
I have booked passage in the Washington sailing from Cove 29th inst. , calling at Le Havre and reaching Hamburg Oct. 1sr_ Frank may have to go to Waterford about a job, in which case I would drive that far with him. Otherwise I shall go down by train next Monday week. The prospect of getting away is a great relief. My plans are none. Simply to get to Germany, & then selon le vent. 2 I hope to be away a loong, loong time. I was promising myself return by Holland, but by all accounts things there are
frightfully expensive, so I don't expect it will come off.
Frank has had an awful month with neuritis in his shoulder & it is only now that it begins slowly to improve. At the same time he is up to his eyes in the office, working till 8 every evening, with the feeling all the time in the not so remote background that he is strangling his life. But who does not.
369
19 September 1936, McGreevy
Only a question of the hold employed. I think it is perhaps a little easier for him when I am not here, though I think also he misses me.
[. . . ]
I think I told you about S. O'S. 's request for an inch off the poem. Circumcised accordingly, it now begins with the abortion dilemma. 3
I don't know exactly what Mrs Howe said to Dev. I know she
4
Rose. The first two are exquisite. The third less so. The refusal of
the rose to crumble, its embalming of itself instead, compelled
him to take it off the mantelpiece & on to a table with the room
all round. So that 3 is less of a flower than of an interior. I had
5
feel no inclination to go on, though I am told it improves in
6
(Hone's collaborator in Berkeley & Swift books). Lady Gregory
he apostrophises at length with opulent curves as coextensive
with the "spirit" of Ireland. Glendalough is a "luogo dolce".
Walter Starkie is the finest product of Trinity humanism
"homo singolarment vivace ed umano . . " [for "uomo singolar
mente vivace, umano"] & Gogarty is the all round man of the
Quattrocento. And a chapter is entitled: "Serenita Protestante. "
In fact the work of a professor. He wrote a "Saggio sul rimorso"
7
mentioned absurdity of not having reproductions available.
I saw J. B. last Saturday. He had extended his rose picture 2 stages further 1. Tyranny of the Rose. 2. Rose dying. 3. Dusty
him alone, Cotty spared us.
The Klassische Walpurgisnacht was too much for me & I
Acts 3 & 5. I have just read Viaggio in Irlanda by Mario Rossi
full of false teeth, as soft as the old man's mentula.
I do not know if Brian is back. I want to see him before I leave. He lent me Brunchwiffs Spinoza et ses Contemporains, the Ethica in the Classiques Garnier with Latin en regard, of
370
19 September 1936, McGreevy
which I have had time only for enough to give me a glimpse of
Spinoza as a solution & a salvation (impossible in English trans
lation), and Maritain's nauseating Docteur Angelique, which I
soon lay down. Feeling what a pity the tetragonal Peripatetic did
8
treatment.
Reavey still in Belfast, whence he sent a first chapter of a
translation of yet another Berdaiev [for Berdyaev] for the kind ness of suggestions. He promises to let me know about Murphy next week. Nothing from New York. 10
Now I have to go to Cabinteely Barracks & fill up application
11
1 SB refers to the reprint edition of Sylvia Beach, ed. , Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress (London: Faber and Faber, 1936).
"Roule" (done, cheated), with reference to royalties for their essays.
SB probably refers to publication and promotion of Joyce's Work in Progress, which had been published in sections, the first fragment appearing as "From Work in Progress," Transatlantic Review 1. 4 (April 1924) 215-223.
2 SBleftfromCove(nowCobh).
SB had written to McGreevy on Wednesday [19 August 1936]: "I still live in hopes of getting away in September, but shall probably go direct from Cove to Hamburg. And perhaps this time next month I'll be on the Brocken" (TCD, MS 10402/105). The Brocken, also called Blocksberg, is the highest mountain in the Harz region of north ern Germany, and the site of rites enacted on Walpurgis Night (30 April), the setting for Walpurgisnacht in Goethe's Faust.
On 9 September [1936], SB had written to McGreevy: "! fl had the price of it I'd fly to Amsterdam" (TCD, MS 10402/107).
"Selon le vent" (as the wind takes me).
3 SB cut the first two lines of his poem "Cascando," for publication in Dublin Magazine; he wrote to McGreevy: "Seumas O'S. sent another proof with request to make one line of two somewhere, anywhere, in the interests of his pagination"
371
not fall for the whore proposed by his brother.
A letter from Charles. Still lingering on in London, having
9
for a new passport. I am wondering will it be put through in time. Love ever. If I don't hear before I leave, write Postlagernd,
12
ALS; 3 leaves, 3 sides; TCD, MS 10402/108.
