6 "Joyce's Gazetteer" may refer to an atlas owned by James Joyce or to one of the books by Irish
geographer
Patrick Weston Joyce (1827-1914): Irish Names of Places (1913), Atlas and Cyclopedia of Ireland (1900), Philips' Atlas and Geography of Ireland (1883).
Samuel Beckett
2.
3 McGreevyhadalsovisitedCastelfranco,thehometownofGiorgione,beforehis return to Paris (Prentice to McGreevy, 11 November 1930, UoR, MS 2444 CW 130/541).
3 December 1930, Prentice
1
Thank you
cally no changes made.
the entire proceeding. I expected more generous rifts in the paralysis.
I must apologise for the absurdity of
57
1931 24 January By25January
By 18 February 19-21 February
5 March
By 11 March
12 March
25 March 26 March
5April 1 May
By29 May
SB visits Jack B. Yeats with Georges Pelorson.
Sends manuscript ofProust to literary agent
J. R. Pinker who refuses to represent it in the United States, saying there is not enough time before March publication by Chatto and Windus
Sends TMS of Proust requested by The Bookman.
Performance of"Le Kid," parody ofCorneille's
Le Cid written by Georges Pelorson with SB, at the Peacock Theatre, as the French contribution to the annual theatrical event ofthe Modern Languages Society.
Chatto and Windus publishes Proust.
Dublin Magazine asks SB to review McGreevy's Thomas Stearns Eliot and Eliot's translation of St. -John Perse's Anabase.
T. C. D. : A College Miscellany publishes, anonymously, SB's "The Possessed," written in reaction to a critical review of"Le Kid. "
In London en route to Paris.
In Paris for Adrienne Monnier's Joyce evening. Visits Kassel for Easter.
Nouvelle Revue Franfaise publishes French translation of"Anna Livia Plurabelle," reflecting the first draft by SB and Peron that was revised by Joyce and others.
Begins writing the "German Comedy" which will become part ofDream ofFair to Middling Women.
59
CHRONOLOGY 1931
Chronology 1931
29June
30June 6July 8-12July
12-20July
21-27 July 27July 28July August
2 August
8August
By 15August
By 31 August
By 22 September By 8 October
13 November By 27 November 8December
By 20 December
26 December
Leaves Dublin with brother Frank to travel in France.
In Rouen. In Toulon.
In Le Lavandou, where McGreevy has been staying with Aldington.
To Paris via Digne, Grenoble, Annecy, Dijon, and Troyes.
In Paris.
In London.
Meets Prentice, proposes a book on Dostoevsky.
New Review publishes "Return to the Vestry. "
SB travels from London to Dublin; stays in rooms at Trinity College Dublin.
Submits two "Albas" to Dublin Magazine.
Sends story "Walking Out" to Pinker. Sends story
"Sedendo et Quiescendo" to Prentice.
Pinker returns "Walking Out. " SB sends it to McGreevy. Prentice returns "Sedendo et Quiescendo" with his personal reactions.
Dublin Magazine accepts poem "Alba" ("the sheet poem"). Dublin Magazine rejects "Yoke of Liberty" ("lips of her desire").
SB sends "Yoke of Liberty" to Everyman. Translates Rene Crevel's "Negresse du Bordel" and plans to do more translations for Nancy Cunard's Negro, Anthology Made by Nancy Cunard, 1931-1933.
Publication of The European Caravan.
Sends "Enueg 1" to Dublin Magazine.
MA from Trinity College Dublin conferred.
Dublin Magazine returns "Enueg. " SB sends it to McGreevy.
Leaves for Germany.
60
THOMAS McGREEVY PARIS
25/1/31 39 Trinity College [Dublin]
My dear Tom
I am very sorry to hear that you are laid up again: at the
Corneille, n'est-ce pas? Write soon and say that you are up again & well. - Does no one but Thomas come and see you? I heard about Sophie J. and that her sister had gone over to Paris; I
1
exasperation - I retyped the Proust and posted it to Pinker. He
says that he might have been able to place it in America ifhe had
received it a month ago, but that it is too late to do anything now,
since C. & W. are publishing it in March. A short cold note without
2
scepticism can't find the necessary ascriptions for beauty & light &
honour. I had a very calm letter from Lucia, advising me to accept
the world and go to parties. 3 I also received the 'Henry Music' and
4
that Pelorson is here. I see something ofhim, and nothing of anybody else (not even Ruddy) except a fortnightly collapse
5
think S. O'S. en profite, from what I am told.
I am looking forward to reading your Eliot. In a fit ofenergy -
any sign ofbonne volonte.
Rue de Grenelle sounds all very terrible & complicated and my
then a letter from Henry from London when I wrote to thank him. Term starts next Thursday, and I will have less work, now
upon the disquieted bosom of my family. Wilful seclusion is the natural measure ofprotection and it is only an inadequate compromise. Yesterday afternoon P. [elorson] & I went round to Jack Yeats, but he was not receiving so we went for a long walk
61
25 January 1931, McGreevy
6
beautiful and nervous & melancholy & windy, with that livid
Dublin evening light on the shallows. To[-]day I am alone until 1
or 2 to-morrow morning, phrase-hunting in St Augustine and
7
through Ringsend and out towards the Pigeon house. Very
ekeingoutthelastofmycoal,assoupi. Thethoughtofteaching again paralyses me. I think I will go to Hamburg as soon as I get my Easter cheque, by boat & stay there & waste my substance for a month and perhaps hope for the courage to break away. Frank is rather down on his luck, aware of a kind of suspended futility, & permanent, absolutely incapable of rejection or acceptance & talks about growing old in the shadow of a compromise.
Have you read Malraux: 'Les Conquerants' and 'La Voie Royale'. I had a peer at the opening of the latter, & it looked
8
You don't say if there is any chance of your coming to
Ireland - I mean for me. You know I have a spare bed and could
put you up fairly comfortably. My skip is discreet and attached to
9
end. I liked Miss Travers-Smith's back-cloth. 10
You know I can't write at all. The simplest sentence is a
torture. I wish we could meet & talk - before I become inartic ulate or eloquently suave. God bless and look after yourself. I suppose The Workhouse Ward is off. 11 Have you seen Alan since Harry Clarke's death? 12
Much love Yours ever
Sam.
ALS; 2 leaves, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/15.
1 McGreevystayedattheHotelCorneille,5RueCorneille,acrossfromtheTheatre de l'Odeon. He had been ill with flu (Charles Prentice to McGreevy, 15 January 1931, TCD. MS 8092/23). "N'est-ce pas? " (isn't that right? ).
62
promising. Pelorson has much admiration for 'Les Conquerants'.
me and Fry never comes near the place.
I saw L. R[. ]'s Critic. Rate and positively lamentable at the
Jean Thomas.
Sophie Jacobs (nee Solomons, 1887-1972) studied opera in France and sang with the Beecham and Quinlan opera companies before her marriage to Bethel Jacobs (1881-1955) (Bethel Solomons, One Doctor in His Time [London: C. Johnson, 1956] 20, 67). SophieJacobs's personal circumstances at this time are not known. Her sister was the Irish painter Estella Solomons (1882-1968), who was known by her maiden name although married toJames Starkey (known as Seumas O'Sullivan).
"En profite" (is making the most ofthe opportunity).
2 McGreevy's Thomas Steams ffiiot was published by Chatto and Windus on 22 January 1931 (Charles Prentice to Richard Aldington, 23 January 1931, ICSo, Aldington 68/6/1). In his letter offering to publish Proust, Prentice had indicated that SB would retain "the U. S. A. and translation rights" (15 September 1930, UoR, MS 2444 CW letterbook 129/858). McGreevy may have suggested that SB send a copy of Proust to his literary agent, James Ralph Pinker, to place it in the United States.
"Bonne volonte" (goodwill).
3 TheJoycefamily;LuciaJoyce.
4 SB'spoem"FromtheOnlyPoettoaShiningWhore:forHenryCrowdertoSing" was set to music by Henry Crowder (Henry-Music, 12-14); the copy dedicated to SB by Henry Crowder is at Ohio State University. SB's letter to Henry Crowder has not been found.
5 Pelorson had returned to his duties as Lecteur at Trinity College Dublin after Christmas holidays in France.
6 SBandPelorsonwalkedalongtheareaknownasRingsend,extendingeastinto Dublin Bay, from the canal at its junction with the River Liffey. A mile and a quarter from Ringsend, on the south wall of Dublin Bay, was Pidgeon House (also spelled Pigeon House), named afterJohn Pidgeon (n. d. ) who was once caretaker ofthe building (Bruce Bidwell and Linda Heffer, TheJoycean Way [Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981[ 59, 139; Eamonn MacThomais, Me Jewel and Darlin' Dublin [Dublin: O'Brien Press, 1974] 97).
7 SB'sphrase-huntingintheConfessionsofSt. Augustine,BishopofHippo(354-430), is evident in his notebook for Dream ofPair to Middling Women (BIF, UoR, MS 1227/1-3). In Beckett's Dream Notebook, John Pilling indicates that SB read from the edition of Confessions translated by E. B. Pusey in the Everyman's Library (London: Dent, 1907); although there are some references in SB's notebook to a Latin text, the edition is not known (Pilling, ed. , Beckett's Dream Notebook [Reading: Beckett International Foundation, 1999] 11-30). SB's notes onAugustine's life and work can be found in TCD, MS 10968; see Everett Frost and Jane Maxwell, "TCD, MS 10968: Augustine of Hippo and Porphyry on Plotinus," Notes Diverse Holo, Special issue SBT/A 16 (2006) 91-93.
"Assoupi" (drowsy).
8 Les Conquerants (1928; The Conquerors) and La Voie royale (1930; The Royal Way) by French writer Andre Malraux (1901-1976).
9 SB'sskip(collegeservant)was]. Power(SBtoA. J. Leventhal,6August1953,TxU; TCD, MS 3717d-e [also TCD MUN/V/75/62]). As a Fellow ofTrinity College Dublin, Matthew Joseph Fry had a room in 39 Trinity College where he could give tutorials, but he would have had no need ofit as accommodation, since he was married and had a home in Dublin Uohn Luce, 4 August 1993).
63
25 January 1931, McGreevy
25 January 1931, McGreevy
10 Lennox Robinson directed The Critic, or, a Tragedy Rehears'd by Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816); the play opened at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin on 6 January 1931; Robinson adapted the burlesque of eighteenth-century London to contemporary Dublin. Dublin theatre critic Joseph Holloway (1861-1944) called it a "mutilation" Uoseph Holloway. Joseph Holloway's Irish Theatre, I. 1926-1931, ed. Robert Hogan and Michael J. O'Neill ! Dixon, CA: Proscenium Press, 1969] 71).
"Rate" (no good).
Dublin artist and set-designer Dorothy Travers-Smith (known as Dolly, 1901-1977) married Lennox Robinson in London on 8 September 1931.
11 TheWorkhouseWard(1908)byLadyGregorywasonadoublebillwithTheCriticat the Abbey Theatre (6 to 17 January 1931).
12 AlanDuncan.
Harry Clarke died in Caire, Switzerland, on 6 January 1931.
THOMAS McGREEVY PARIS
3/2/31 39 Trinity College [Dublin]
My dear Tom
Forgive me for having taken so long to acknowledge &
1
The Eliot left me with an impression of enviable looseness &
ease. You know what I mean by looseness - something supple &
well hung. I couldn't help feeling that you were doing your best
to be nice about it. Your lateral slaughter - Shaw, Bennett & the
Galere, did my heart good, my 'petit coeur de neige', and it
almost achieved liquefaction with the fesses turned to the com
2
something better than that - phrase voltage. The God Almighty -
Marion de Lorme was strong & shining and delighted me alto
3
64
thankyouforyourletterandT. S. E. Myteethhavebeenafflict ing me and some have to come out and some have to be filled and I am feeling very sorry for myself.
monroom cap-&-gownness. The phrase-bombs are there too,
gether. AltogetherIenvyyouanessaythathassomuchunityof
3 February 1931, McGreevy
atmosphere & tension & sincerity, and your long arms that
fetched so much colour. My Proust seems very grey & disgust
ingly juvenile - pompous almost - angry at the best. Tant pis.
As for the critics - I don't know. I don't think I care very much. I
feel dissociated from my Proust - as though it did not belong to
me, ready of course to get any credit thats going but - genuinely,
I think - more interested than irritated at the prospect of the
nose-pickers' disgust. I may be altogether wrong. What you quoted
of R. W. 's criticism reduces, it seems to me, to almost unquali
fied approval. Perhaps the fatuous enthusiasms are more pain
4
alone and we had two entirely delightful hours looking at a lot of pictures we had not seen and talking. He wanted a definition of cruelty, declaring that you could work back from cruelty to original sin. No doubt. But I don't think it is possible to define cruelty, because somehow or other it would have to be separated from all the concomitant pointers in order to be apprehended. Can one imagine a pure act of cruelty? The old question!
Leon wrote for Joyce's Gazetteer which I had stolen and a list of the rivers used by Peron & myself in our fragment of translation. I think Joyce & Soupault are going to work on it together. Poor Soupault! 6
Do you mean you would come home if you got those trans lations? 7 I expect to leave here about end of March & stay away a month. I am still on Hamburg -
ful than anything. LastSaturdayIwentwithPelorsontoseeJackYeats. Hewas
5
Love ever Sam
ALS; I leaf, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/16. 1 McGreevy,ThomasStearnsEliot.
65
3 February 1931, McGreevy
2 In his monograph, McGreevy establishes a context for Eliot's work in American, British, and Continental literary movements. British novelist and critic Enoch Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) is described as "a fivepenny English master" in the course of discussion of American vulgarity (Thomas Steams Eliot, 3). McGreevy dismisses George Bernard Shaw, whose satire and indignation he judges to lack universality: "Did a soldier ever read Bernard Shaw with pleasure before an attack? " (17). McGreevy dismisses Tristan Corbiere as a poet and as an influence on Eliot (26).
"Galere" (crew); "petit coeur de neige" (little heart of snow); "fesses" (buttocks).
3 SBreferstoapassageinMcGreevy'sThomasSteamsEliot:"Onecanimaginehow outraged Victor Hugo and Rossetti would be if they knew that forty years after they died there would be writers of genius who found the Lord God a greater source of inspiration than Marion de Lorme or Jenny" (37). Marion de Lonne (1829) by Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is a play about a seventeenth-century French courtesan of that name (c. 1613-1650). "Jenny" may refer to the poem of that name by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (ne Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti 1828-1882).
4 Spurred by a request from Richard Aldington, Rebecca West (1892-1983) men tioned McGreevy's Thomas Steams Eliot in her column in the Daily Telegraph; she com pared McGreevy to St. Augustine, saying that he "makes every sentence with the imprint of his personality, and a very delightful personality it is . . . This book is crammed full of profitable arguments" ("New Books," 23 January 1931: 15). While McGreevy appreciated her fiiendly intention, he had no admiration for West (McGreevy to Prentice, Sunday [25 January 1931], UoR, MS 2444 CW 41/2).
"Tant pis" (too bad).
5 JackYeatshadhis"athome"dayonSaturdays.
6 "Joyce's Gazetteer" may refer to an atlas owned by James Joyce or to one of the books by Irish geographer Patrick Weston Joyce (1827-1914): Irish Names of Places (1913), Atlas and Cyclopedia of Ireland (1900), Philips' Atlas and Geography of Ireland (1883).
Paul Leon was working with Philippe Soupault, Joyce, and others to continue the translation of "Anna Livia Plurabelle" begun by SB with Alfred Peron; see SB to Soupault, 5 July 1930 [for 5 August 1930], n. 1.
7 McGreevy sought commissions for translation from the London publisher Victor Gollancz (1893-1967) and from Charles Prentice, Chatto and Windus, to whom he had proposed to translate one of two monographs by Louis Bertrand (1866-1941): Philippe II a ! 'Escoria! (1929) or Philippe II contre Antonio Perez (1929) (McGreevy to Prentice, Monday [1 December 1930], UoR, MS 2444 CW 41/2; Prentice to McGreevy, 6 February 1931, TCD, MS 8092/29). As McGreevy explained to Prentice after the proposal was turned down: "For me it was only a question of being assured of sufficient money (for work that I should not be ashamed to put my name to) to enable me to go home for a couple of months or three and translate and work on my own at the same time" (Saturday [7 February 1931], UoR, MS 2444 CW 41/2).
Richard Aldington sent money to McGreevy, who, so assisted, chose to go to Florence rather than to stay in Paris (Aldington to Brigit Patmore, 9 February 1931, TxU).
66
24 February 1931, McGreevy
CHAR LES PRENTICE, CHATTO AND WINDUS LONDON
16/2/31 39 TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN.
Dear Mr Prentice
Thank you for your letter. I am glad to know that the date of
publication is fixed. Yes - ofcourse March 5th suits me perfectly.
1
anxious that the Proust should not prove a washout. I hope sometime to send you something more genuine & direct.
How did the Eliot go? 3 I read it & liked it. Very sincerely yours
Sam Beckett
ALS; 1 leaf. 2 sides; letterhead: <coMMoN RooM. > A ins "39"' TRINITY coLLEGE, D u e LIN ; date stamped received 18-2-31; UoR, MS 2444 CW 24/9.
1 Prenticewroteon12February1931:"Wearepublishing'Proust'onMarch5th;I hope this will be O. K. Your presentation copies will arrive a few days before that date" (UoR, MS 2444 CW Ietterbook 31/576).
2 Prentice assured SB in his reply: "Your Proust,I think, will do very well; Proust himself has not a great many readers, but many people have asked me most curiously about your book, and the subscription sales in the country are promising" (18 February 1931, UoR, MS 2444 CW letterbook 31/647).
3 Inthesameletter,Prenticewrote:"TheEliotisdoingverywell. Idonotmeanthat it is a best-seller; the sales, however, are developing very steadily, and, being in a series, the essay will have a good run to look foIWard to. "
THOMAS McGREEVY FLORENCE
24/2/31 39 TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN.
67
I did not expect it would be ready so soon.
After your kindness and the trouble you have taken I am
2
24 February 1931, McGreevy
My dear Tom
What kind of pieces are you going to master la-bas. I wonder
1
wont even squelch if stood on. I had a cable from American Bookman asking for a copy - after that bastard Pinker choking me off. I sent it along - without any enthusiasm. 3
This vitaccia is terne beyond all belief. Thursday, Friday &
Sat. we gave 3 plays at the Peacock - La Quema, Souriante Mme.
Beudet & Le Kid (Corneille & Bergson). They might have gone
worse. The inevitable vulgarisation leaves one exhausted & dis
gusted. We had a nice Cartesian Infanta in the Kid, inarticulate &
stupefied, crossing the stage to Ravel's Pavane. Trench was
4
when I hope to go away to Hamburg. That will be about 20th March. Does that mean I will miss you on your way through
5
brats. Cela me fait chier, wear a gown & say 'Yes sir' 'no sir'. When I've posted this I'll go & have a Turkish bath & stupefy my
7
At the R. D. S. yesterday afternoon the music was so tepid that I
was conscious of my neck. Impossible to hear any music here.
Yesterday they played one of Beethoven's last string quartets, a
8
why you are off Italy.
AnyhowyourEliotismakingsomenoise. IknowthatProust
2
delighted.
I scramble through lectures & chafe for the end of term
Dublin? Il ne manquait que cela.
To-night I have to go & eat with the Provost & his hostile
6
nerves in sweaty duration. My person is developing dirty habits.
Mendels[s]ohn Quintette & a Schubert Quintette. I feel that Beethoven's Quartets are a waste of time. His pigheaded refusal to make the best of a rather pettyfogging [for pettifogging] con vention annoys me. He needed a piano or an orchestra. And why do they go on playing that bloody Mendels[s]ohn! Verbalism & not very competent - Leventhal's conversation(. ]9 The Schubert had plenty of nobility and one understood the need of relating
68
his chamber music to his song settings. I don't know any chamber music that works so skilfully. A waste in conception - you know that lamentable pebble in the pond effect - but rigid economy of application. Alas! Why can't I tell you what I feel without getting on a platform.
I went to a doctor because my bitch of a heart was keeping me awake. He smothered my sense of importance with a con temptuous 'Smoke less'. So I try to smoke less.
Ruddy is always polite but drifting to a conveniently remote accessibility. Pelorson is a mystery. Charming sometimes & dreadfully rich in hopeful gestures. He has shown me a lot of interesting verse. I have written nothing since leaving Paris. I am reading 'Journal Intime de Jules Renard' . . . Odd things. 10
Forgive this futile and not even melancholy letter. In 20 years I may be fit to have friends.
If you look up the Esposito say I often think of them (actually true, though rather of myself evolving before them. ) I don't think you would have anything to say to Mario, but am sure you would like Bianca - & the mother. Remember me to the
Aldingtons if you think they would care for that. 11 I'll sent [sic] you a Proust as soon as I get one. I think it is due for March 5.
12
ALS; 3 leaves, 6 sides; letterhead: <cOM MoN RooM> A ins "39"TRINITY coLLEGE, DUBLIN ; TCD, MS 10402/17.
1 McGreevyhaddecidedtojoinRichardAldingtoninFlorenceforadrivingtourin Italy (Aldington to Brigit Patmore, 13 February 1931, TxU); Aldington encouraged McGreevy to choose their itinerary, which included Tuscany, and even plans to go as far south as Brindisi (Aldington to Charles Prentice, 5 March 1931 and 6 March 1931; UoR, MS 2444 CW 48/6). Prentice, who had backed the trip, hoped it would allow McGreevy to work on his novel (12 February 1931, ICSo, Aldington collection 68/6/1). James Joyce wrote to Harriet Weaver on 11 March 1931: "McGreevy has also left Paris. Some person or persons gave him an annuity of 300 £ a year to do original work, and
69
24 February 1931, McGreevy
Won't you keep me au courant. Love ever
Sam
24 February 1931, McGreevy
he has gone to Ireland via Italy" Uoyce, Letters of James Joyce, I, 303). "La-bas" (down there).
2 Besides the review by Rebecca West, McGreevy's Thomas Stearns Eliot had been announced by Chatto and Windus in an advertisement that mentioned it as "a short but pointed and distinguished study of a writer who has for some years been regarded by intelligent people as of paramount influence in modern letters" (Times Literary Supplement 22 January 1931: 54); it had been reviewed by H. F. in "T. S. Eliot," Time and Tide (12. 617 February 1931] 165).
3 SewardCollins(1899-1952),EditorofTheBookman:AReviewofBooksandLife(New York, 1895 - March 1933), cabled SB on 17 February 1931: "cou LD I s EE co PY you R FORTHCOMING STUDY MARCEL PROUST FOR POSSIBLE PUBLICATION IN AMERICAN BOOKMAN ADDRESS THREE EIGHTY SIX FOURTH AVENUE NEw Yo RK" (CtY. YCAL MSS 12, Series I. 2/42). SB did not hear from The Bookman until August 1933 (when it had become The American Review): "When it came we had rather an embarrassment ofriches, so far as articles on Proust were concerned. Mr. Collins liked it, however, and hoped to use it, but now feels that he cannot afford the space" (Dorothea Brande [1893-1948}, Associate Editor of The American Review, to SB, 7 August 1933, CtY, YCAL, MSS 12, Series I, 2/42).
Pinker had not pursued publication in America.
4 "Vitaccia" (It. , miserable life, wretched existence); "terne" (dull, colorless).
SB wrote "<Catie]> Peacock. "
The Modern Languages Society production of a French play at the Peacock Theatre
was an annual event at Trinity College Dublin; Georges Pelorson was in charge of the program of three plays. A comedy in Spanish, La Quema (1922), by the brothers Serafin (1871-1938) and Joaquin Alvarez Quintero (1873-1944), was directed by Walter Starkie (1894-1976), Professor of Spanish and Italian at Trinity College Dublin. SB suggested La Souriante Mme. Beudet (1921; The Smiling Mrs. Beudet), by Denys Amie! (ne Guillaume Roche. 1884-1977) and Andre Obey (1892-1975). Le Kid, a burlesque ofLe Cid (1637; The Cid) by Pierre Corneille (1606-1684), was devised by Pelorson with advice from SB and influenced by Henri Bergson (for discussion: Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 125-128; Dougald McMillan and Martha Fehsenfeld, Beckett in the Theatre: The Author as Practical Playwright and Director, From "Waiting for Godot" to "Krapp's Last Tape" ! London: John Calder; New York: Riverrun Press, 1988] 17-23).
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), Pavane pour une infante dejimte, for piano (1889; Pavane for a Dead Princess). SB generally refers to this piece as the "Infanta. "
Wilbraham Fitzjohn Trench (1873-1939), Professor of English at Trinity College Dublin.
5 McGreevyplannedtopassthroughDublinonhiswaytoTarbert,Co. Kerry,inthe spring. "II ne manquait que cela. " (That's the last straw. )
6 EdwardJohnGwynn(1868-1941). aneminentscholarofOldIrish,wasProvostof Trinity College Dublin (1927-1937).
"Cela me fait chier" (It really gets me down, literally, makes me shit).
7 At this time, Trinity College Dublin did not have bathing facilities; the Turkish
bath on Lincoln Place and another on Leinster Street were the two nearest to TCD.
8 The Royal Dublin Society's chamber music concert on 23 February 1931 was played by the Unity String Quartet. with the addition of a second viola and cello. The
70
program included the String Quartet in E-flat major, op. 127 by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827); an unspecified Mendelssohn String Quintet (either no. 1 in A major, op. 18, or no. 2 in B-flat major, op. 87); the String Quintet in C, D 956 by Franz Schubert (1797-1828); Souvenir de Florence, String Sextet in D major, op. 70 by Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893); and the String Quartet in D major, op. 33 by Italian-born Dublin composer, Michele Esposito (1855-1929).
9 AbrahamJacobLeventhal•(knownasCon,1896-1979).
10 SBreadfromthefour-volume,posthumouslypublishedLeJournal,1887-1910of French writer Jules Renard (1864-1910) (Paris, F. Bemouard, 1927). See SB's notes taken from this edition in Pilling, ed. , Beckett's Dream Notebook, 30-34 (BIF, UoR, MS 5000).
11 The family of Michele Esposito included his wife Natalia (nee Klebnikoff, 1857-1944), their daughters Bianca Esposito (1879-1961), Vera Dockrell (nee Esposito, 1883-1967). and Nina Porcelli (nee Esposito, 1890-1970), and son, Mario Esposito (1887-1975) (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 84; J. Bowyer Bell, "Waiting for Mario: The Espositos, Joyce, and Beckett," Eire-Ireland 30. 2 [1995] 7-26; Michael M. Gorman. "Mario Esposito (1887-1975) and the Study of the Latin Literature of Medieval Ireland" in Mario Esposito, Studies in Hiberno-Latin Literature, ed. Michael M. Gorman. Variorum Collected Studies Series [Aldershot, UK: AshgateJVariorum, 2006] 300-309). SB took private Italian classes with Bianca Esposito at a school of languages and music at 21 Ely Place, Dublin; she "nurtured his love for Dante" (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 67-68, 630). SB had visited Italy in the late spring through the summer of 1927 to prepare for his final examinations in Italian and had stayed some time in Florence where the Espositos then lived (NhD: Lawrence Harvey, Interviews with SB. 92; Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 83-84).
12 "Aucourant"(uptodate).
THOMAS McGREEVY FLORENCE
11/3/31 39 T. C. D. [Dublin]
My dear Tom
A thousand thanks for all you say about my Proust. You
would have had your copy before now were it not for what Charlus would call an unhappy 'enchainement de circonstan ces'. My parcel was sent to Foxrock & I only got it a couple of days ago. And I have been paralysed with a most atrocious cold that shackled me to the fire. The wind for 3 days was terrifying, Siberian vitriol, and I got so nervous listening to it hoisting itself
71
11 March 1931, McGreevy
11 March 1931, McGreevy
to the one note behind my bedroom that I got ready to retreat to
the anthracite bosom of my family. Then it dropped and I felt as
1
After reading your appreciation of that essay I know that it is
worth more than I thought. I read the book through quickly and
really wondered what I was talking about. It seemed like pale grey
sandpaper, stab stab stab without any enchantment. It's too
abstract because my head comes breaking every now & then
through the epidermis for a breath of merely verbal enthusiasm.
It has the plausibility of a pattern, a kind of flat syllogistic drift,
like the fan of the long division sum in 'Portrait of the Artist': at its
best a distorted steam-rolled equivalent of some aspect or con
2
you, because I have the good-fortune to have your affection. I
mean you see your intuition as a formula. That is the only stim
ulus that I can find for your pleasure. As a merely critical exten
sion, what could be more blafard, gritty like the Civic Guard's
anus. 3 No sinewy membrane between it & its official motive - the
only motive that the most easy going public will give me any
credit for - Proust. I feel it tied somehow on to Proust, on to his
tail board, with odds & ends of words, like bundles of grass(,] jack
in the boxing under a kite. Not that I care. I don't want to be a
professor (it[']s almost a pleasure to contemplate the mess of this
job). And what the hell do I care for the sneers of the Faguets & the
Lansons & the Gwynns & the Brunetieres and all the Sorbonagres
when you write pleased with even the mutilated statement of
an identification & a participation effected a summer's day of
fathoms deeper than the little cormorant plunge of voracious
4
though I had had a tooth out after long fumigations.
fusionofaspectsofmyself. Thatiswhatyousee&whatpleases
curiosity. Iwon'tforgetyourletter. Ireaditontherailings,just as the sun took it into its head to bare its bottom over censored Dublin. - Douceurs. 5
72
11 March 1931, McGreevy
Seumas O'Sullivan asked me to review your Eliot for his
next number - after the one that is just coming out. I would
like to. I may? He sent me Eliot's translation of Anabase for
review. I don't like Anabase - I think it[']s bad Claude! , with
abominable colour. The translation is very uneven. Good when
6
I'll come back to him. But I can't talk about Rimbaud, though I
had to try & explain the mystery to my foul Senior Sophisters. I
told them about the eye suicide - pour des visions - you remem
7
'Noire bise, averse glapissante Fleuve noir et maisons closes'.
So I repeated. Titter. I, in my innocence, couldn't understand, and
wondered could 'maisons closes' have tickled their repressions.
I told Pelorson who kindly explained that the joke resided in
8
Pelorson s'eloigne, toujours tres pris, tres melancolique, mal
aux yeux, au coeur, aux bronches, hallucinations, reves, seuil de
9
Berlin. He had a beautiful phrase: 'le diamant du pessimisme'.
I long to be away and ofcourse can't bear the idea ofgoing & can't understand why Hamburg, where it won't be warm & where I will be probably frightened. That's the latest cardiac
feather. Fear - followed by no genitive.
O'Sullivan said Alan was in Dublin. Pas vu.
3 McGreevyhadalsovisitedCastelfranco,thehometownofGiorgione,beforehis return to Paris (Prentice to McGreevy, 11 November 1930, UoR, MS 2444 CW 130/541).
3 December 1930, Prentice
1
Thank you
cally no changes made.
the entire proceeding. I expected more generous rifts in the paralysis.
I must apologise for the absurdity of
57
1931 24 January By25January
By 18 February 19-21 February
5 March
By 11 March
12 March
25 March 26 March
5April 1 May
By29 May
SB visits Jack B. Yeats with Georges Pelorson.
Sends manuscript ofProust to literary agent
J. R. Pinker who refuses to represent it in the United States, saying there is not enough time before March publication by Chatto and Windus
Sends TMS of Proust requested by The Bookman.
Performance of"Le Kid," parody ofCorneille's
Le Cid written by Georges Pelorson with SB, at the Peacock Theatre, as the French contribution to the annual theatrical event ofthe Modern Languages Society.
Chatto and Windus publishes Proust.
Dublin Magazine asks SB to review McGreevy's Thomas Stearns Eliot and Eliot's translation of St. -John Perse's Anabase.
T. C. D. : A College Miscellany publishes, anonymously, SB's "The Possessed," written in reaction to a critical review of"Le Kid. "
In London en route to Paris.
In Paris for Adrienne Monnier's Joyce evening. Visits Kassel for Easter.
Nouvelle Revue Franfaise publishes French translation of"Anna Livia Plurabelle," reflecting the first draft by SB and Peron that was revised by Joyce and others.
Begins writing the "German Comedy" which will become part ofDream ofFair to Middling Women.
59
CHRONOLOGY 1931
Chronology 1931
29June
30June 6July 8-12July
12-20July
21-27 July 27July 28July August
2 August
8August
By 15August
By 31 August
By 22 September By 8 October
13 November By 27 November 8December
By 20 December
26 December
Leaves Dublin with brother Frank to travel in France.
In Rouen. In Toulon.
In Le Lavandou, where McGreevy has been staying with Aldington.
To Paris via Digne, Grenoble, Annecy, Dijon, and Troyes.
In Paris.
In London.
Meets Prentice, proposes a book on Dostoevsky.
New Review publishes "Return to the Vestry. "
SB travels from London to Dublin; stays in rooms at Trinity College Dublin.
Submits two "Albas" to Dublin Magazine.
Sends story "Walking Out" to Pinker. Sends story
"Sedendo et Quiescendo" to Prentice.
Pinker returns "Walking Out. " SB sends it to McGreevy. Prentice returns "Sedendo et Quiescendo" with his personal reactions.
Dublin Magazine accepts poem "Alba" ("the sheet poem"). Dublin Magazine rejects "Yoke of Liberty" ("lips of her desire").
SB sends "Yoke of Liberty" to Everyman. Translates Rene Crevel's "Negresse du Bordel" and plans to do more translations for Nancy Cunard's Negro, Anthology Made by Nancy Cunard, 1931-1933.
Publication of The European Caravan.
Sends "Enueg 1" to Dublin Magazine.
MA from Trinity College Dublin conferred.
Dublin Magazine returns "Enueg. " SB sends it to McGreevy.
Leaves for Germany.
60
THOMAS McGREEVY PARIS
25/1/31 39 Trinity College [Dublin]
My dear Tom
I am very sorry to hear that you are laid up again: at the
Corneille, n'est-ce pas? Write soon and say that you are up again & well. - Does no one but Thomas come and see you? I heard about Sophie J. and that her sister had gone over to Paris; I
1
exasperation - I retyped the Proust and posted it to Pinker. He
says that he might have been able to place it in America ifhe had
received it a month ago, but that it is too late to do anything now,
since C. & W. are publishing it in March. A short cold note without
2
scepticism can't find the necessary ascriptions for beauty & light &
honour. I had a very calm letter from Lucia, advising me to accept
the world and go to parties. 3 I also received the 'Henry Music' and
4
that Pelorson is here. I see something ofhim, and nothing of anybody else (not even Ruddy) except a fortnightly collapse
5
think S. O'S. en profite, from what I am told.
I am looking forward to reading your Eliot. In a fit ofenergy -
any sign ofbonne volonte.
Rue de Grenelle sounds all very terrible & complicated and my
then a letter from Henry from London when I wrote to thank him. Term starts next Thursday, and I will have less work, now
upon the disquieted bosom of my family. Wilful seclusion is the natural measure ofprotection and it is only an inadequate compromise. Yesterday afternoon P. [elorson] & I went round to Jack Yeats, but he was not receiving so we went for a long walk
61
25 January 1931, McGreevy
6
beautiful and nervous & melancholy & windy, with that livid
Dublin evening light on the shallows. To[-]day I am alone until 1
or 2 to-morrow morning, phrase-hunting in St Augustine and
7
through Ringsend and out towards the Pigeon house. Very
ekeingoutthelastofmycoal,assoupi. Thethoughtofteaching again paralyses me. I think I will go to Hamburg as soon as I get my Easter cheque, by boat & stay there & waste my substance for a month and perhaps hope for the courage to break away. Frank is rather down on his luck, aware of a kind of suspended futility, & permanent, absolutely incapable of rejection or acceptance & talks about growing old in the shadow of a compromise.
Have you read Malraux: 'Les Conquerants' and 'La Voie Royale'. I had a peer at the opening of the latter, & it looked
8
You don't say if there is any chance of your coming to
Ireland - I mean for me. You know I have a spare bed and could
put you up fairly comfortably. My skip is discreet and attached to
9
end. I liked Miss Travers-Smith's back-cloth. 10
You know I can't write at all. The simplest sentence is a
torture. I wish we could meet & talk - before I become inartic ulate or eloquently suave. God bless and look after yourself. I suppose The Workhouse Ward is off. 11 Have you seen Alan since Harry Clarke's death? 12
Much love Yours ever
Sam.
ALS; 2 leaves, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/15.
1 McGreevystayedattheHotelCorneille,5RueCorneille,acrossfromtheTheatre de l'Odeon. He had been ill with flu (Charles Prentice to McGreevy, 15 January 1931, TCD. MS 8092/23). "N'est-ce pas? " (isn't that right? ).
62
promising. Pelorson has much admiration for 'Les Conquerants'.
me and Fry never comes near the place.
I saw L. R[. ]'s Critic. Rate and positively lamentable at the
Jean Thomas.
Sophie Jacobs (nee Solomons, 1887-1972) studied opera in France and sang with the Beecham and Quinlan opera companies before her marriage to Bethel Jacobs (1881-1955) (Bethel Solomons, One Doctor in His Time [London: C. Johnson, 1956] 20, 67). SophieJacobs's personal circumstances at this time are not known. Her sister was the Irish painter Estella Solomons (1882-1968), who was known by her maiden name although married toJames Starkey (known as Seumas O'Sullivan).
"En profite" (is making the most ofthe opportunity).
2 McGreevy's Thomas Steams ffiiot was published by Chatto and Windus on 22 January 1931 (Charles Prentice to Richard Aldington, 23 January 1931, ICSo, Aldington 68/6/1). In his letter offering to publish Proust, Prentice had indicated that SB would retain "the U. S. A. and translation rights" (15 September 1930, UoR, MS 2444 CW letterbook 129/858). McGreevy may have suggested that SB send a copy of Proust to his literary agent, James Ralph Pinker, to place it in the United States.
"Bonne volonte" (goodwill).
3 TheJoycefamily;LuciaJoyce.
4 SB'spoem"FromtheOnlyPoettoaShiningWhore:forHenryCrowdertoSing" was set to music by Henry Crowder (Henry-Music, 12-14); the copy dedicated to SB by Henry Crowder is at Ohio State University. SB's letter to Henry Crowder has not been found.
5 Pelorson had returned to his duties as Lecteur at Trinity College Dublin after Christmas holidays in France.
6 SBandPelorsonwalkedalongtheareaknownasRingsend,extendingeastinto Dublin Bay, from the canal at its junction with the River Liffey. A mile and a quarter from Ringsend, on the south wall of Dublin Bay, was Pidgeon House (also spelled Pigeon House), named afterJohn Pidgeon (n. d. ) who was once caretaker ofthe building (Bruce Bidwell and Linda Heffer, TheJoycean Way [Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981[ 59, 139; Eamonn MacThomais, Me Jewel and Darlin' Dublin [Dublin: O'Brien Press, 1974] 97).
7 SB'sphrase-huntingintheConfessionsofSt. Augustine,BishopofHippo(354-430), is evident in his notebook for Dream ofPair to Middling Women (BIF, UoR, MS 1227/1-3). In Beckett's Dream Notebook, John Pilling indicates that SB read from the edition of Confessions translated by E. B. Pusey in the Everyman's Library (London: Dent, 1907); although there are some references in SB's notebook to a Latin text, the edition is not known (Pilling, ed. , Beckett's Dream Notebook [Reading: Beckett International Foundation, 1999] 11-30). SB's notes onAugustine's life and work can be found in TCD, MS 10968; see Everett Frost and Jane Maxwell, "TCD, MS 10968: Augustine of Hippo and Porphyry on Plotinus," Notes Diverse Holo, Special issue SBT/A 16 (2006) 91-93.
"Assoupi" (drowsy).
8 Les Conquerants (1928; The Conquerors) and La Voie royale (1930; The Royal Way) by French writer Andre Malraux (1901-1976).
9 SB'sskip(collegeservant)was]. Power(SBtoA. J. Leventhal,6August1953,TxU; TCD, MS 3717d-e [also TCD MUN/V/75/62]). As a Fellow ofTrinity College Dublin, Matthew Joseph Fry had a room in 39 Trinity College where he could give tutorials, but he would have had no need ofit as accommodation, since he was married and had a home in Dublin Uohn Luce, 4 August 1993).
63
25 January 1931, McGreevy
25 January 1931, McGreevy
10 Lennox Robinson directed The Critic, or, a Tragedy Rehears'd by Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816); the play opened at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin on 6 January 1931; Robinson adapted the burlesque of eighteenth-century London to contemporary Dublin. Dublin theatre critic Joseph Holloway (1861-1944) called it a "mutilation" Uoseph Holloway. Joseph Holloway's Irish Theatre, I. 1926-1931, ed. Robert Hogan and Michael J. O'Neill ! Dixon, CA: Proscenium Press, 1969] 71).
"Rate" (no good).
Dublin artist and set-designer Dorothy Travers-Smith (known as Dolly, 1901-1977) married Lennox Robinson in London on 8 September 1931.
11 TheWorkhouseWard(1908)byLadyGregorywasonadoublebillwithTheCriticat the Abbey Theatre (6 to 17 January 1931).
12 AlanDuncan.
Harry Clarke died in Caire, Switzerland, on 6 January 1931.
THOMAS McGREEVY PARIS
3/2/31 39 Trinity College [Dublin]
My dear Tom
Forgive me for having taken so long to acknowledge &
1
The Eliot left me with an impression of enviable looseness &
ease. You know what I mean by looseness - something supple &
well hung. I couldn't help feeling that you were doing your best
to be nice about it. Your lateral slaughter - Shaw, Bennett & the
Galere, did my heart good, my 'petit coeur de neige', and it
almost achieved liquefaction with the fesses turned to the com
2
something better than that - phrase voltage. The God Almighty -
Marion de Lorme was strong & shining and delighted me alto
3
64
thankyouforyourletterandT. S. E. Myteethhavebeenafflict ing me and some have to come out and some have to be filled and I am feeling very sorry for myself.
monroom cap-&-gownness. The phrase-bombs are there too,
gether. AltogetherIenvyyouanessaythathassomuchunityof
3 February 1931, McGreevy
atmosphere & tension & sincerity, and your long arms that
fetched so much colour. My Proust seems very grey & disgust
ingly juvenile - pompous almost - angry at the best. Tant pis.
As for the critics - I don't know. I don't think I care very much. I
feel dissociated from my Proust - as though it did not belong to
me, ready of course to get any credit thats going but - genuinely,
I think - more interested than irritated at the prospect of the
nose-pickers' disgust. I may be altogether wrong. What you quoted
of R. W. 's criticism reduces, it seems to me, to almost unquali
fied approval. Perhaps the fatuous enthusiasms are more pain
4
alone and we had two entirely delightful hours looking at a lot of pictures we had not seen and talking. He wanted a definition of cruelty, declaring that you could work back from cruelty to original sin. No doubt. But I don't think it is possible to define cruelty, because somehow or other it would have to be separated from all the concomitant pointers in order to be apprehended. Can one imagine a pure act of cruelty? The old question!
Leon wrote for Joyce's Gazetteer which I had stolen and a list of the rivers used by Peron & myself in our fragment of translation. I think Joyce & Soupault are going to work on it together. Poor Soupault! 6
Do you mean you would come home if you got those trans lations? 7 I expect to leave here about end of March & stay away a month. I am still on Hamburg -
ful than anything. LastSaturdayIwentwithPelorsontoseeJackYeats. Hewas
5
Love ever Sam
ALS; I leaf, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/16. 1 McGreevy,ThomasStearnsEliot.
65
3 February 1931, McGreevy
2 In his monograph, McGreevy establishes a context for Eliot's work in American, British, and Continental literary movements. British novelist and critic Enoch Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) is described as "a fivepenny English master" in the course of discussion of American vulgarity (Thomas Steams Eliot, 3). McGreevy dismisses George Bernard Shaw, whose satire and indignation he judges to lack universality: "Did a soldier ever read Bernard Shaw with pleasure before an attack? " (17). McGreevy dismisses Tristan Corbiere as a poet and as an influence on Eliot (26).
"Galere" (crew); "petit coeur de neige" (little heart of snow); "fesses" (buttocks).
3 SBreferstoapassageinMcGreevy'sThomasSteamsEliot:"Onecanimaginehow outraged Victor Hugo and Rossetti would be if they knew that forty years after they died there would be writers of genius who found the Lord God a greater source of inspiration than Marion de Lorme or Jenny" (37). Marion de Lonne (1829) by Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is a play about a seventeenth-century French courtesan of that name (c. 1613-1650). "Jenny" may refer to the poem of that name by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (ne Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti 1828-1882).
4 Spurred by a request from Richard Aldington, Rebecca West (1892-1983) men tioned McGreevy's Thomas Steams Eliot in her column in the Daily Telegraph; she com pared McGreevy to St. Augustine, saying that he "makes every sentence with the imprint of his personality, and a very delightful personality it is . . . This book is crammed full of profitable arguments" ("New Books," 23 January 1931: 15). While McGreevy appreciated her fiiendly intention, he had no admiration for West (McGreevy to Prentice, Sunday [25 January 1931], UoR, MS 2444 CW 41/2).
"Tant pis" (too bad).
5 JackYeatshadhis"athome"dayonSaturdays.
6 "Joyce's Gazetteer" may refer to an atlas owned by James Joyce or to one of the books by Irish geographer Patrick Weston Joyce (1827-1914): Irish Names of Places (1913), Atlas and Cyclopedia of Ireland (1900), Philips' Atlas and Geography of Ireland (1883).
Paul Leon was working with Philippe Soupault, Joyce, and others to continue the translation of "Anna Livia Plurabelle" begun by SB with Alfred Peron; see SB to Soupault, 5 July 1930 [for 5 August 1930], n. 1.
7 McGreevy sought commissions for translation from the London publisher Victor Gollancz (1893-1967) and from Charles Prentice, Chatto and Windus, to whom he had proposed to translate one of two monographs by Louis Bertrand (1866-1941): Philippe II a ! 'Escoria! (1929) or Philippe II contre Antonio Perez (1929) (McGreevy to Prentice, Monday [1 December 1930], UoR, MS 2444 CW 41/2; Prentice to McGreevy, 6 February 1931, TCD, MS 8092/29). As McGreevy explained to Prentice after the proposal was turned down: "For me it was only a question of being assured of sufficient money (for work that I should not be ashamed to put my name to) to enable me to go home for a couple of months or three and translate and work on my own at the same time" (Saturday [7 February 1931], UoR, MS 2444 CW 41/2).
Richard Aldington sent money to McGreevy, who, so assisted, chose to go to Florence rather than to stay in Paris (Aldington to Brigit Patmore, 9 February 1931, TxU).
66
24 February 1931, McGreevy
CHAR LES PRENTICE, CHATTO AND WINDUS LONDON
16/2/31 39 TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN.
Dear Mr Prentice
Thank you for your letter. I am glad to know that the date of
publication is fixed. Yes - ofcourse March 5th suits me perfectly.
1
anxious that the Proust should not prove a washout. I hope sometime to send you something more genuine & direct.
How did the Eliot go? 3 I read it & liked it. Very sincerely yours
Sam Beckett
ALS; 1 leaf. 2 sides; letterhead: <coMMoN RooM. > A ins "39"' TRINITY coLLEGE, D u e LIN ; date stamped received 18-2-31; UoR, MS 2444 CW 24/9.
1 Prenticewroteon12February1931:"Wearepublishing'Proust'onMarch5th;I hope this will be O. K. Your presentation copies will arrive a few days before that date" (UoR, MS 2444 CW Ietterbook 31/576).
2 Prentice assured SB in his reply: "Your Proust,I think, will do very well; Proust himself has not a great many readers, but many people have asked me most curiously about your book, and the subscription sales in the country are promising" (18 February 1931, UoR, MS 2444 CW letterbook 31/647).
3 Inthesameletter,Prenticewrote:"TheEliotisdoingverywell. Idonotmeanthat it is a best-seller; the sales, however, are developing very steadily, and, being in a series, the essay will have a good run to look foIWard to. "
THOMAS McGREEVY FLORENCE
24/2/31 39 TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN.
67
I did not expect it would be ready so soon.
After your kindness and the trouble you have taken I am
2
24 February 1931, McGreevy
My dear Tom
What kind of pieces are you going to master la-bas. I wonder
1
wont even squelch if stood on. I had a cable from American Bookman asking for a copy - after that bastard Pinker choking me off. I sent it along - without any enthusiasm. 3
This vitaccia is terne beyond all belief. Thursday, Friday &
Sat. we gave 3 plays at the Peacock - La Quema, Souriante Mme.
Beudet & Le Kid (Corneille & Bergson). They might have gone
worse. The inevitable vulgarisation leaves one exhausted & dis
gusted. We had a nice Cartesian Infanta in the Kid, inarticulate &
stupefied, crossing the stage to Ravel's Pavane. Trench was
4
when I hope to go away to Hamburg. That will be about 20th March. Does that mean I will miss you on your way through
5
brats. Cela me fait chier, wear a gown & say 'Yes sir' 'no sir'. When I've posted this I'll go & have a Turkish bath & stupefy my
7
At the R. D. S. yesterday afternoon the music was so tepid that I
was conscious of my neck. Impossible to hear any music here.
Yesterday they played one of Beethoven's last string quartets, a
8
why you are off Italy.
AnyhowyourEliotismakingsomenoise. IknowthatProust
2
delighted.
I scramble through lectures & chafe for the end of term
Dublin? Il ne manquait que cela.
To-night I have to go & eat with the Provost & his hostile
6
nerves in sweaty duration. My person is developing dirty habits.
Mendels[s]ohn Quintette & a Schubert Quintette. I feel that Beethoven's Quartets are a waste of time. His pigheaded refusal to make the best of a rather pettyfogging [for pettifogging] con vention annoys me. He needed a piano or an orchestra. And why do they go on playing that bloody Mendels[s]ohn! Verbalism & not very competent - Leventhal's conversation(. ]9 The Schubert had plenty of nobility and one understood the need of relating
68
his chamber music to his song settings. I don't know any chamber music that works so skilfully. A waste in conception - you know that lamentable pebble in the pond effect - but rigid economy of application. Alas! Why can't I tell you what I feel without getting on a platform.
I went to a doctor because my bitch of a heart was keeping me awake. He smothered my sense of importance with a con temptuous 'Smoke less'. So I try to smoke less.
Ruddy is always polite but drifting to a conveniently remote accessibility. Pelorson is a mystery. Charming sometimes & dreadfully rich in hopeful gestures. He has shown me a lot of interesting verse. I have written nothing since leaving Paris. I am reading 'Journal Intime de Jules Renard' . . . Odd things. 10
Forgive this futile and not even melancholy letter. In 20 years I may be fit to have friends.
If you look up the Esposito say I often think of them (actually true, though rather of myself evolving before them. ) I don't think you would have anything to say to Mario, but am sure you would like Bianca - & the mother. Remember me to the
Aldingtons if you think they would care for that. 11 I'll sent [sic] you a Proust as soon as I get one. I think it is due for March 5.
12
ALS; 3 leaves, 6 sides; letterhead: <cOM MoN RooM> A ins "39"TRINITY coLLEGE, DUBLIN ; TCD, MS 10402/17.
1 McGreevyhaddecidedtojoinRichardAldingtoninFlorenceforadrivingtourin Italy (Aldington to Brigit Patmore, 13 February 1931, TxU); Aldington encouraged McGreevy to choose their itinerary, which included Tuscany, and even plans to go as far south as Brindisi (Aldington to Charles Prentice, 5 March 1931 and 6 March 1931; UoR, MS 2444 CW 48/6). Prentice, who had backed the trip, hoped it would allow McGreevy to work on his novel (12 February 1931, ICSo, Aldington collection 68/6/1). James Joyce wrote to Harriet Weaver on 11 March 1931: "McGreevy has also left Paris. Some person or persons gave him an annuity of 300 £ a year to do original work, and
69
24 February 1931, McGreevy
Won't you keep me au courant. Love ever
Sam
24 February 1931, McGreevy
he has gone to Ireland via Italy" Uoyce, Letters of James Joyce, I, 303). "La-bas" (down there).
2 Besides the review by Rebecca West, McGreevy's Thomas Stearns Eliot had been announced by Chatto and Windus in an advertisement that mentioned it as "a short but pointed and distinguished study of a writer who has for some years been regarded by intelligent people as of paramount influence in modern letters" (Times Literary Supplement 22 January 1931: 54); it had been reviewed by H. F. in "T. S. Eliot," Time and Tide (12. 617 February 1931] 165).
3 SewardCollins(1899-1952),EditorofTheBookman:AReviewofBooksandLife(New York, 1895 - March 1933), cabled SB on 17 February 1931: "cou LD I s EE co PY you R FORTHCOMING STUDY MARCEL PROUST FOR POSSIBLE PUBLICATION IN AMERICAN BOOKMAN ADDRESS THREE EIGHTY SIX FOURTH AVENUE NEw Yo RK" (CtY. YCAL MSS 12, Series I. 2/42). SB did not hear from The Bookman until August 1933 (when it had become The American Review): "When it came we had rather an embarrassment ofriches, so far as articles on Proust were concerned. Mr. Collins liked it, however, and hoped to use it, but now feels that he cannot afford the space" (Dorothea Brande [1893-1948}, Associate Editor of The American Review, to SB, 7 August 1933, CtY, YCAL, MSS 12, Series I, 2/42).
Pinker had not pursued publication in America.
4 "Vitaccia" (It. , miserable life, wretched existence); "terne" (dull, colorless).
SB wrote "<Catie]> Peacock. "
The Modern Languages Society production of a French play at the Peacock Theatre
was an annual event at Trinity College Dublin; Georges Pelorson was in charge of the program of three plays. A comedy in Spanish, La Quema (1922), by the brothers Serafin (1871-1938) and Joaquin Alvarez Quintero (1873-1944), was directed by Walter Starkie (1894-1976), Professor of Spanish and Italian at Trinity College Dublin. SB suggested La Souriante Mme. Beudet (1921; The Smiling Mrs. Beudet), by Denys Amie! (ne Guillaume Roche. 1884-1977) and Andre Obey (1892-1975). Le Kid, a burlesque ofLe Cid (1637; The Cid) by Pierre Corneille (1606-1684), was devised by Pelorson with advice from SB and influenced by Henri Bergson (for discussion: Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 125-128; Dougald McMillan and Martha Fehsenfeld, Beckett in the Theatre: The Author as Practical Playwright and Director, From "Waiting for Godot" to "Krapp's Last Tape" ! London: John Calder; New York: Riverrun Press, 1988] 17-23).
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), Pavane pour une infante dejimte, for piano (1889; Pavane for a Dead Princess). SB generally refers to this piece as the "Infanta. "
Wilbraham Fitzjohn Trench (1873-1939), Professor of English at Trinity College Dublin.
5 McGreevyplannedtopassthroughDublinonhiswaytoTarbert,Co. Kerry,inthe spring. "II ne manquait que cela. " (That's the last straw. )
6 EdwardJohnGwynn(1868-1941). aneminentscholarofOldIrish,wasProvostof Trinity College Dublin (1927-1937).
"Cela me fait chier" (It really gets me down, literally, makes me shit).
7 At this time, Trinity College Dublin did not have bathing facilities; the Turkish
bath on Lincoln Place and another on Leinster Street were the two nearest to TCD.
8 The Royal Dublin Society's chamber music concert on 23 February 1931 was played by the Unity String Quartet. with the addition of a second viola and cello. The
70
program included the String Quartet in E-flat major, op. 127 by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827); an unspecified Mendelssohn String Quintet (either no. 1 in A major, op. 18, or no. 2 in B-flat major, op. 87); the String Quintet in C, D 956 by Franz Schubert (1797-1828); Souvenir de Florence, String Sextet in D major, op. 70 by Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893); and the String Quartet in D major, op. 33 by Italian-born Dublin composer, Michele Esposito (1855-1929).
9 AbrahamJacobLeventhal•(knownasCon,1896-1979).
10 SBreadfromthefour-volume,posthumouslypublishedLeJournal,1887-1910of French writer Jules Renard (1864-1910) (Paris, F. Bemouard, 1927). See SB's notes taken from this edition in Pilling, ed. , Beckett's Dream Notebook, 30-34 (BIF, UoR, MS 5000).
11 The family of Michele Esposito included his wife Natalia (nee Klebnikoff, 1857-1944), their daughters Bianca Esposito (1879-1961), Vera Dockrell (nee Esposito, 1883-1967). and Nina Porcelli (nee Esposito, 1890-1970), and son, Mario Esposito (1887-1975) (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 84; J. Bowyer Bell, "Waiting for Mario: The Espositos, Joyce, and Beckett," Eire-Ireland 30. 2 [1995] 7-26; Michael M. Gorman. "Mario Esposito (1887-1975) and the Study of the Latin Literature of Medieval Ireland" in Mario Esposito, Studies in Hiberno-Latin Literature, ed. Michael M. Gorman. Variorum Collected Studies Series [Aldershot, UK: AshgateJVariorum, 2006] 300-309). SB took private Italian classes with Bianca Esposito at a school of languages and music at 21 Ely Place, Dublin; she "nurtured his love for Dante" (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 67-68, 630). SB had visited Italy in the late spring through the summer of 1927 to prepare for his final examinations in Italian and had stayed some time in Florence where the Espositos then lived (NhD: Lawrence Harvey, Interviews with SB. 92; Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 83-84).
12 "Aucourant"(uptodate).
THOMAS McGREEVY FLORENCE
11/3/31 39 T. C. D. [Dublin]
My dear Tom
A thousand thanks for all you say about my Proust. You
would have had your copy before now were it not for what Charlus would call an unhappy 'enchainement de circonstan ces'. My parcel was sent to Foxrock & I only got it a couple of days ago. And I have been paralysed with a most atrocious cold that shackled me to the fire. The wind for 3 days was terrifying, Siberian vitriol, and I got so nervous listening to it hoisting itself
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11 March 1931, McGreevy
11 March 1931, McGreevy
to the one note behind my bedroom that I got ready to retreat to
the anthracite bosom of my family. Then it dropped and I felt as
1
After reading your appreciation of that essay I know that it is
worth more than I thought. I read the book through quickly and
really wondered what I was talking about. It seemed like pale grey
sandpaper, stab stab stab without any enchantment. It's too
abstract because my head comes breaking every now & then
through the epidermis for a breath of merely verbal enthusiasm.
It has the plausibility of a pattern, a kind of flat syllogistic drift,
like the fan of the long division sum in 'Portrait of the Artist': at its
best a distorted steam-rolled equivalent of some aspect or con
2
you, because I have the good-fortune to have your affection. I
mean you see your intuition as a formula. That is the only stim
ulus that I can find for your pleasure. As a merely critical exten
sion, what could be more blafard, gritty like the Civic Guard's
anus. 3 No sinewy membrane between it & its official motive - the
only motive that the most easy going public will give me any
credit for - Proust. I feel it tied somehow on to Proust, on to his
tail board, with odds & ends of words, like bundles of grass(,] jack
in the boxing under a kite. Not that I care. I don't want to be a
professor (it[']s almost a pleasure to contemplate the mess of this
job). And what the hell do I care for the sneers of the Faguets & the
Lansons & the Gwynns & the Brunetieres and all the Sorbonagres
when you write pleased with even the mutilated statement of
an identification & a participation effected a summer's day of
fathoms deeper than the little cormorant plunge of voracious
4
though I had had a tooth out after long fumigations.
fusionofaspectsofmyself. Thatiswhatyousee&whatpleases
curiosity. Iwon'tforgetyourletter. Ireaditontherailings,just as the sun took it into its head to bare its bottom over censored Dublin. - Douceurs. 5
72
11 March 1931, McGreevy
Seumas O'Sullivan asked me to review your Eliot for his
next number - after the one that is just coming out. I would
like to. I may? He sent me Eliot's translation of Anabase for
review. I don't like Anabase - I think it[']s bad Claude! , with
abominable colour. The translation is very uneven. Good when
6
I'll come back to him. But I can't talk about Rimbaud, though I
had to try & explain the mystery to my foul Senior Sophisters. I
told them about the eye suicide - pour des visions - you remem
7
'Noire bise, averse glapissante Fleuve noir et maisons closes'.
So I repeated. Titter. I, in my innocence, couldn't understand, and
wondered could 'maisons closes' have tickled their repressions.
I told Pelorson who kindly explained that the joke resided in
8
Pelorson s'eloigne, toujours tres pris, tres melancolique, mal
aux yeux, au coeur, aux bronches, hallucinations, reves, seuil de
9
Berlin. He had a beautiful phrase: 'le diamant du pessimisme'.
I long to be away and ofcourse can't bear the idea ofgoing & can't understand why Hamburg, where it won't be warm & where I will be probably frightened. That's the latest cardiac
feather. Fear - followed by no genitive.
O'Sullivan said Alan was in Dublin. Pas vu.
