The
building
is magnificent and the pictures
admirably presented (one line hanging against matt white
throughout), but there is an appalling quantity of rubbish,
worse than unimportant locals.
admirably presented (one line hanging against matt white
throughout), but there is an appalling quantity of rubbish,
worse than unimportant locals.
Samuel Beckett
.
.
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.
Hauptpostamt, Hamburg. Sam
19 September 1936, McGreevy
(9 September [1936], TCD, MS 10402/107). In the same letter SB mentioned that O'Sullivan had proposed "that I should take over the editorship ofthe D. M. , he paying for the printing for 3 years. This entre nous. What I said at length was: Merci. "
"Entre nous" (between ourselves). "Merci. " (Thank you, no. )
4 In his letter of 9 September [1936], SB reported that "Mary Manning Howe interviewed DEV on eve of her departure. I told her to tackle him on the Gallery. She did & he promised to see about it" (TCD, MS 10402/107). Mary Manning Howe had spent the summer in Dublin, and, within her role as a freelance writer, arranged to interview Eamon De Valera, then Taoiseach of the Irish Free State. It was during this time that she later claimed to have had an affair with SB (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 215).
5 JackYeats"alwayspaintedwitharosepinnedtohiseasel,orplacedonthetable beside him" (Hilary Pyle. Jack B. Yeats: A Biography [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970] 133). The first painting, a "close up of a red rose," here called "Tyranny of the Rose," now is known as A Rose (private collection, Pyle, 484).
Yeats's series of paintings "showing a cut rose at various stages of its blooming until it finally withers" includes The Rose Dying (private collection, Pyle 486) and A Dusty Rose (private collection, Pyle 485) (Pyle. Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonne ofthe Oil Paintings, I, 438-442: III, 207, 294).
Cottie Yeats.
6 The"KlassischeWalpurgisnacht"(ClassicalWalpurgisNight)isthefirstsceneof
Faust II, Act 2.
7 M[ario]M. Rossi'sViaggioinIrlanda(Milan:DoxaEditrice,1932)wastranslatedby Joseph Hone in a much abridged version, Pilgrimage in the West (Dublin: Cuala Press, 1933); Rossi, a Professor of Italian at the University of Edinburgh, collaborated with
Hone on two other books (see 5 January 1933, n. 6).
In Viaggio in Irlanda, Rossi addresses a four-page apostrophe to Lady Gregory:
"Sara necessario, Lady Gregory, che qui parli di Voi? Non ho parlato di Voi finche ho parlato dell'Irlanda - e dovunque ho scritto ii nome sacro della poesia? " ("Is it necessary, Lady Gregory, that I should speak of you here? Have I not spoken of you since I spoke of Ireland - and wherever I have written the sacred name of poetry? " (Viaggio, 182-185; Pilgrimage, 46-50). Lady Gregory died on 22 May 1931, the same day that Rossi sent his book to his Italian publisher: "the book which she had encouraged me to write - this book written for her" (Pilgrimage, 3).
Glendalough, Co. Wicklow, the site of seven churches founded by St. Kevin, is called "Un luogo dolce, disteso" ("a gentle open place") (Viaggio, 54; Pilgrimage, 26).
Walter Starkie is described by Rossi as "uomo singolarrnente vivace, umano" (a man of exceptional liveliness and humanity) (Viaggio, 125; excluded from Pilgrimage).
Rossi enumerates Gogarty's roles as "chirurgo, 'causeur', uomo politico, aviatore, poeta" ("surgeon, conversationalist, politician, airman, poet"). He claims that Gogarty "ricorda i grandi italiani de! '400" ("recalls the great Italians of the Quattrocento") (Viaggio, 177; Pilgrimage, 43-44).
Chapter 24 is called "Serenita Protestante" (Protestant Serenity) (Viaggio, 126-128; excluded from Pilgrimage).
Mario Rossi's Saggio sul rimorso (Turin: Fratelli Bocca, 1933) is a study of ethics and emotions.
372
8 Brian Coffey had been in Kerry with his father.
Spinoza et ses contemporains (1923) by French philosopher Leon Brunschvicg
(1869-1944), who studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure and taught at the Sorbonne. SB's spelling of Brunschvicg's name presumably reflects a private joke
with McGreevy.
Benedictus deSpinoza, Ethique, demontree suivant l'ordre geometrique et divisee en cinq
parties, Texte latin soigneusement revu, tr. Ch[arles] Appuhn, Classiques Gamier ( Paris: Gamier fo�res,1908; rpt. 1934 ). "Latin en regard" La( tin on facing page).
Jacques Maritain's Docteur Angelique (1930) is based on the life of Thomas Aquinas, whose brother Raynald tempted him with a prostitute to persuade him to break his vows to the church; but Thomas drove the girl from his room with a log from the fire, burning the sign of the cross on his door with the ember.
Maritain argued that theology should be peripatetic, moving out among the world and among other disciplines, following the example of Aquinas. "Tetragonal peripa tetic" refers to Aquinas's "peripatetic axiom. "
9 Charles Prentice.
10 George Reavey's family home was in Belfast. Having translated Smysl Istorii 1( 923;
The Meaning ofHistory,1936 ) by Nikolai Berdyaev, Reavey was preparing a translation of Ya i Mir Ob'ektov (1934 ; Solitude and Society,1938).
Murphy was being read by the London publisher, Stanley Nott (1887-19 78), co-publisher with Europa Press of Eluard, Thorns of Thunder; Reavey had said he "would have Knott's [for Nott's] verdict by the middle of the month" S( B to McGreevy,9 September 1[ 936], TCD, MS10402/10 7). SB had also sent a typescript of Murphy to Simon and Schuster, New York.
11 The Dublin Passport Office was at16 Upper Merrion Street, but paperwork and validation of identification were carried out at the Cabinteely Barracks Garda Station, on the Old Bray Road, Dublin18, and forwarded to the Passport Office.
12 "Postlagemd,Hauptpostamt" ( General delivery, Main Post Office).
THOMAS McGREEVY TOPPES FIE LD, ESSEX
30/9/36 Le Havre
Here for the day. On to Hamburg this evening. Wish I could
stay where I am. The place is charming & the people . . . French.
There's an old Peter Brueghel at the end of the street, but it
30 September 1936, McGreevy
won't see me. Love.
1
Sam
373
30 September 1936, McGreevy
APCS; 1 leaf, 1 side; "LeHavre. Bassin du Commerce et Place Gambetta"; to Thomas
McGreevyEsq, 15 Cheyne Gardens, London SW 3, Angleterre. forwarded, AH, to The Block Hse, Toppesfield,Essx; pm 30-9-36, LeHavre, 1-10-36, Chelsea; T CD, MS 10402/109.
1 ThenamesofthetwogenerationsofthisfamilyofFlemishpaintersareusually spelled differently: the elder Pieter Bruegel (c. 1525-1569) had two sons, Pieter Brueghel the younger and Jan Brueghel.
At the far end of the Rue de Paris from the Quai was the Musee des Beaux-Arts; it was destroyed in World War II. In the new Musee Malraux there are two paintings now ascribed to Pieter Brueghel the younger: Consultation at the Procurer's (77. 24) and Interior of a Peasant Kitchen (77. 14), but there is no record of one by the elder Pieter Bruegel.
THOMAS McGREEVY TOPPESFIELD, ESSEX
9/10/36 bei Hoppe Schliiterstrasse 44
Hamburg 13
Dear Tom
I collected your card all right at the Poste Restante. The
above, which I have tried to write clearly, is my address now & will be I expect for a fortnight at least. On n'est pas mal, au sein du chauffage central. 11 fait un froid a faire sauter les couilles. Le pain est noir, ! 'horizon aussi. What in the world are you doing among the thatches. Was it then another journey from, like so many? I can't believe you'd go to Tappesfield [for Toppesfield] of your own free will. 1
I got here last Friday, 24 hours late. The town is superb, nothing older than middle 19th century. One exquisite green steeple (truly a guglia), that of the Petrikirche. And the Alster pieces d'eau are masterpieces. 2 I got a lovely vision ofT. C. D. & its terra infirma reclaimed from the land, the Liffey lying calm over Nassau Street, as no doubt once it did, washing the fringes ofLeinster Lawn, Lecky & the Kook ofBells submerged, & Frank
374
9 October 1936, McGreevy going to his lunch in a canoe. 3 That would be the only town
planning- away with the town! Manning Robertson would agree
4
right at the end of Altona's most charming promenade, under the inevitable snivelling lime, in the grip of ivy. "He who then liveth & believeth in me shall never perish. " Then I had a Bauernfriihsti. ick in the Hauptbahnhof. 5
The Gallery here was something of a disappointment, but
may improve.
The building is magnificent and the pictures
admirably presented (one line hanging against matt white
throughout), but there is an appalling quantity of rubbish,
worse than unimportant locals. Meisters BERTRAM & FRANKE
6
Goyens, a Van Uden -Teniers not as good as the one in Dublin,
a so called Brouwer landscape that might conceivably be a pot
boiler, a couple of Everdingens and a characteristic landscape of
that German-Roman that you don't like & whose name I can
never remember. 7 Then roomfuls of Tischbein, Menzel & God
knows who else. There is a lovely Degas Portrait de Femme,
I am sure.
I found Klopstock, buried with his cockpecked wife & son,
don't say much to me either. There are a lot of lovely Van
another hardly up to standard by Lautrec, and a sentimental
Picasso Femme a l'Absinthe. 8 The modern Germans are more
interesting, Leibl, Corinth, Nolde etc. There is a lot of Munch
also, & I found an excellent portrait of a woman by one Jaeckel,
of whom I know nothing. He has nothing else in the Gallery.
Marc's Mandrill is amusing, but I think not so good as the
9
struggled into the language I don't think I'll be sorry to go. I begin to think that Germany's charm is perhaps after all mainly for me a matter of associations. I feel sad enough & often enough
375
Boccioni that Boss Sinclair had in Kassel.
It is nice to be away, but when I have seen the pictures &
9 October 1936, McGreevy
for that to be so. Now that Holland & France have come off the truce, I hope to return that way. 10 Holland in the early spring & Paris in the late, if Europe has not been obliterated before then.
Simon & Schuster turned down Murphy, with the usual kind
11
words, brilliance, 5 % appeal & ruisselant avenir.
Houghton &
Mifflin now have it. Nott has not yet made up his mind. Perhaps
he must get in touch with Mme. Beeton before he can reach a
12
To judge by quantity of spare space that follows it, the circum
cision was uncalled for. I see in the same number a harmless
paragraph on Dilly's book from the com[p]te-gouttes of Norah
13
but hoping soon to 'Take his leave' (! ! ) Richard mit vache is back
14
felt like a desertion. He was tearfully & continuously depressed for weeks before I left. Overwork, neuritis, sex worries, home gloom, etc.
God love thee & write incontinent. I don't seem to have had a proper letter from you for ages.
Ever Sam
Elsheimer is the man.
ALS; 2 leaves, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/110.
1 "Onn'estpasma! ,auseinduchauffagecentral. IIfaitunfroidafairesauter! es couilles. Le pain est noir, ! 'horizon aussi" (Comfortable enough, with the central heating all round one. It is brass monkey weather. The bread is black, so is the horizon). For further description, see Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 217.
376
decision.
My truncated poem is in this number [of] Dublin Magazine.
Hoult.
A letter from the physical jerking Charles, still in London,
"big, red & jovial".
Frank drove me to Waterford. Very sad parting from him. It
9 October 1936, McGreevy McGreevy had the loan of a cottage (Black House) in the tiny village ofToppesfield,
Essex Uack B. Yeats to McGreevy, 30 November 1936,TCD, MS 8105/138).
2 SB arrived in Hamburg on 2 October. For images and detailed information about his stay in Hamburg, consult the website by Roswitha Quadflieg, Fritz-Renzo Heinze, and Clements-Tobias Lange: "Beckett in Hamburg 1936," 11 November 2007, www. beckett-in-hamburg-1936. de/.
Nearly a quarter of Hamburg was destroyed by fire in May 1842, which necessitated massive rebuilding in the mid 19th century. The tower of St. Peter's Church had burned at this time and was reconstructed in Gothic style with a 436-foot tower. "Guglia" (obelisk, hence spire).
The inner and outer Alster lakes are formed by locks on the Alster river; these sheets of water are bounded by tree-lined streets and promenades. "Pieces d'eau" (ponds).
3 SBimaginestheRiverLiffeyoverspreadingitsbankstocoverthelandoccupied by Trinity College Dublin and Nassau Street, with the water lapping the edges of the lawn that extends from Leinster House (the Parliament Building oflreland) to Merrion Square.
The statue of historian William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1838-1903) is on the library green ofTCD. In his wordplay, SB alludes to the Book ofKells, the illuminated manu script of the Gospels, created in Ireland c. AD 800, kept in the TCD Library. Frank Beckett's office was at 6 Clare Street, an extension of Nassau and Leinster Streets.
4 Irish urban planner Manning Robertson (1888-1945) wrote Dun Laoghaire: The History, Scenery and Development of the District (1936) in which he advocated preservation of open spaces.
5 German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803) was buried in the Christiankirche cemetery, at the end of the Palmaille in Ottensen, in the Altona section of Hamburg. Also buried there is his first wife Margareta Miiller (Meta, 1728-1758), their stillborn son, his second wife Joanna Elisabeth Dimpfel von Winthem (1747-1821), and his brother Victor Ludwig Klopstock (1744-1811); the verse, John 11:26, is SB's trans lation (Samuel Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an: Das Hamburg-Kapitel aus den "German Diaries" 2. 0ktober-4. Dezember 1936, transcribed by Erika Tophoven ISchenefeld: Raamin-Press, 2003] 13. For SB's note about the cemetery, see BIF, UoR, MS 4848, and, in Facsimile with a photo, in Roswitha Quadflieg, Beckett was here: Hamburg in Tagebuch, Samuel Becketts von 1936 [Hamburg: Hoffinan und Campe, 2006] 31-32).
"Bauernfriihstiick" (country breakfast); "Hauptbahnhof" (central train station).
6 The Hamburger Kunsthalle was constructed in 1867-1869 in an Italian Renais sance style.
The chief work of Master Bertram von Minden (fl. 1367-c. 1415) is the Altarpiece of St. Peter's (also known as the Grabow Altarpiece or The Creation of the Animals, HK 500). Among works by Master Franke (fl. 1400-1425) in Hamburg is the Altarpiece of the Traders with England (also known as the St. Thomas Altarpiece, HK 490-498).
7 DutchlandscapepainteranddraughtsmanJanvanGoyen.
Peasants Merrymaking (NG! 41) in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland was painted by David Teniers with Flemish painter Lucas van Uden (1595-1672): SB compares this with paintings byTeniers in the Hamburger Kunsthalle: The News (HK 125), Peasants by the Fireside (HK 175), Moonlit Landscape (HK 176), and The Bleachery (HK 337).
377
9 October 1936, McGreevy
Adriaen Brouwer Landscape (HK 339) is now entitled Hilly Landscape with Herd and reattributed as "Anonymous of South Nederland" (c. 1640/1650).
Paintings by Allart van Everdingen {1621-1675) in the collection were Northern Landscape with Wateifall (HK 55), Hilly Landscape (HK 56), Norwegian Fjord (HK 312), Northern Wateifall (HK 313). In his diary entry for 8 October 1936, SB mentions two Everdingens, but the museum cannot confirm which paintings were on display (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso viel an, 14; Dr. Ute Haug, 8 February 2006).
SB recalls the name of Adam Elsheimer as a postscript to this letter.
8 There is a family of painters by this name: Johann Henrich Tischbein {1722-1789), Johann Jacob Tischbein (1725-1791), Johann Friedrich August Tischbein (1750-1812), and Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (1751-1829), who as a friend of Goethe was known as the "Goethe Tischbein" (Goethe in the Roman Campagna, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut and Stadtische Galerie [no. 11571). Of the Tischbein family, SB specifically mentions Johann Jacob and Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso viel an, 20).
Hamburg also had many works by genre painter Adolf Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel (1815-1905).
The painting by French impressionist painter Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas (1834-1917) is now known as Mme. Josephine Gaujelin (formerly known as Portrait ofa Woman. HK 2417). SB refers to the Female Portrait: The Daughter ofthe Village Sergeant (HK 1253) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
The Absinthe Drinker (HK 2353) by Picasso was confiscated by the Nazis, and hung in the 1937 Munich exhibition of "Entartete Kunst" (Degenerate Art); it is now in the Doris Im Obersteg collection, on loan to the Kunstmuseum Basel (Im 1411) (Stephanie Barron, ed. , "Degenerate Art": The Fate ofthe Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany [Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum ofArt, 1991J 168; Charlotte Guzwiller, Registrar, Kunstmuseum Basel, 7 June 2006).
9 Wilhelm Leib! (1844-1900), Lavis Corinth (1858-1925), and Emil Nolde (1867-1956). The 1927 Katalog der neueren Meister of the Hamburger Kunsthalle shows only two works by Norwegian expressionist painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944): Male Portrait (Director Briinings) (HK 2309; confiscated in 1937 and now in a private collec tion) and Woman in Blue (HK 2310).
The only painting by Willy Jaeckel (1888-1944) in the Hamburger Kunsthalle at this time was St Sebastian I (HK 1679). On 19 November, SB recorded that a portrait he had seen on 8 October 1936 had "gone from its place" (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 14, 44).
The Mandrill (HK 1688, confiscated in 1937; since 1964, in the Pinakothek der Modeme in Munich, 13467) by Franz Marc {1880-1916) is compared to The Laugh (once owned by William Sinclair, now MOMA 656. 1959) by Italian painter Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916).
10 It is likely that the truce to which SB refers is the economic shift of 26 September: France (in agreement with Britain and the United States) devalued its currency to reduce barriers to trade, followed by Holland and Switzerland in early October 1936 ("Valuing the Franc," The Times 28 September 1936: 12; "A New Beginning," The Times 28 September 1936: 13; "Fetters to Trade," The Times 6 October 1936: 13).
11 The rejection letter from Simon and Schuster has not been found; "ruisselant avenir" (dazzling future).
378
12 BostonpublishersHoughtonMifflin.
Stanley Nott had been considering Murphy (see 19 September 1936, n. 10). SB's facetious reference is to Isabella Mary Beeton (nee Mayson, 1836-1865), whose Mrs. Beeton's Book of Hauselwld Management (1861) was the influential cookbook for over one hundred years.
13 "Cascando,"DublinMagazine3-4. Thecutinthepoem:19September1936,n. 3.
Norah Hoult's review ofThe Fires ofBeltane by Geraldine Cummins called the novel "a detailed and unsentimental story with a touch of genuine poetic imagination" ("New Fiction," Dublin Magazine 11. 4 [October-December 1936[ 96).
"Compte-gouttes" (literally, drop-by-drop).
14 CharlesPrentice.
Richard Aldington and his companion Brigit Patmore had returned to London from Austria; also at about this time, Aldington had begun an affair with Netta Patmore (1911-1977), Brigit's daughter-in law (Charles Doyle, Richard Aldington: A Biography [Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989] 176). SB quotes from Prentice's letter which is not extant.
"Mit" (Ger. , with), "vache" (Fr. slang, bitch).
IAN PARSONS
C HATTO AND WINDUS, LONDON
7/11/36 Hamburg 13
Schhiterstrasse 44 bei Hoppe
Germany
My dear Parsons
Will you be so kind as to have three More Pricks Than Kicks
and three Prousts sent to me at above address. I enclose cheque
1
TLS; 1 leaf, 1 side; date stamped received 9-11-36; UoR, MS 2444 CW 59/9.
1 SBhadpromisedacopyofhisProusttoGunterAlbrecht•(1916-1941),anappren tice in the bookshop of Kurt Saucke (1895-1970) in Hamburg (Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an, 33, 26).
379
7 November 1936, Parsons
for one pound, and trust my arithmetic is correct. With best wishes.
Yours very sincerely,
sf
(Samuel Beckett)
13 November 1936, Reavey
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
13/11/36
Schh. iterstrasse 44 bei Hoppe Hamburg 13
Dear George
Thank you for letter with Greenslet's enclosed.
Let me say at once that I do not see how the book can be
cut without being disorganised. Especially if the beginning is
cut (& God knows the first half is plain sailing enough) the later
part will lose such resonance as it has. I can't imagine what they
want me to take out. I refuse to touch the section entitled Amor
Intellectualis quo M. se ipsum amat. And I refuse also to touch
2
1
thegameofchess. TheHoroscopechapterisalsoessential. ButI am anxious for the book to be published and therefore cannot afford to reply with a blank refusal to cut anything. Will you therefore communicate to Mr Greenslet my extreme aversion to removing one third of my work, proceeding from my extreme inability to understand how this can be done and leave a remain der. But add that ifthey would indicate precisely what they have in mind, and the passages that cause them pain, I should be willing to suppress such passages as are not essential to the whole and adjust such others as seem to them a confusion of the issue. Be astonished, firm, & up to a point politely flexible, all at once, if you can. Do they not understand that if the book is slightly obscure, it is so because it is a compression, and that to compress it further can only result in making it more obscure? The wild & unreal dialogues cannot, it seems to be [for me], be removed without darkening & dulling the whole thing. They are the comic expression of what elsewhere is expressed in elegy,
380
namely if you like the hermetism of the spirit. Is it here that
they find the "skyrockets"? There is no time and no space in
such a book for mere relief. The relief has also to do work and reinforce that from which it relieves. And of course the narrative is hard to follow, & of course deliberately so. Am I then Berdaev [for Berdyaev]? That I should adorn with historical amnions & placentae a non-historical uterus? And sink grapples in a womb ceaselessly pregnated & never delivered? And crowd the last chapter with oyster kisses & Murillo brats? But this is all dans le vide, & must remain so, until I know in detail what it is that upsets them. 3
Perhaps if Nott were to express willingness in event of USA
collaboration to publish the book as it stands, or totters, and
furthermore to give out as his opinion that cuts are not desir
4
I am also very anxious to obtain permission to use enclosed
photograph, without subscript, as frontispiece. I came across it
first in a Daily Sketch months ago, & found it again here in an
Illustrierte. I have somewhere the date of issue of D. S. in ques
5
I shall be here a little time still, & until I can let you have another address, write me here.
Amicalement6 s/ Sam
TLS; 1 leaf, 1 side; T env to George Reavey Esq, European Literary Bureau, 30 Red Lion Square, London W. C. 1, ENGLAND; pm 13-11-36, Hamburg; TxU. Previous publication: Bair, Samuel Beckett, 243; rpt. Beckett, Disjecta, 103.
1 The letter from Ferris Greenslet (1875-1959), Editor of Houghton Mifflin, with regard to Murphy, has not been found.
381
13 November 1936, Reavey
able, the Mifflin Zerstorungswut might be pacified.
tion. IpresumeIcannotuseitwithoutpermission,&amnot sure how I should set about getting permission. Anyway keep it it [sic] carefully.
13 November 1936, Reavey
2 In Murphy: "Amor Intellectualis quo M. se ipsum amat" (Intellectual Love with which M. loves himself) (ch. 6, 107-113); the game of chess (ch. 11, 242-246); the Horoscope chapter (ch. 3, 26-41).
3 ReaveyhadtranslatedtheworkofNikolaiBerdyaev.
Although there are "oyster kisses" between Miss Counihan and Wylie (Murphy, 117), there are none in the last chapter. The secular paintings of Spanish painter Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1617-1682) were composed almost entirely of scenes of young children.
"Dans le vide" (guesswork).
4 SB makes this suggestion sinceStanley Nott was unwilling to undertake publica tion of Murphy alone.
"Zerstorungswut" (destructive mania).
5 Thecaptionfortheimageis"Buthe'sdoneit! Mate! "Itappearedwithfourother photos of apes playing chess: "Chess is a Shouting Match the Way these Two Play It," Daily Sketch [London] 11 July 1936: 10. The reproduction in a German Il! ustrierte has not been located. "Illustrierte" (glossy magazine).
6 "Amicalement"(Allthebest).
MARY MANN ING HOWE CAMBRI DGE, MASS A CHUS ETTS
14/11/36
Hamburg
Dear Mary Congratulations.
1
Praised be the day before evening. Or not at all.
Send your poem. I know. It has the colour of lead and the texture of worn plush, and is rich in place-names. And Mons Venerillae? 2 Now you must be very careful, what you write, think, say, wish and fear. The appendix pain has gone, and will not return. The first communion glow steals over you from time to time. And impertinence you pity rather than pardon.
Reavey wrote enclosing a letter from Greensletandhindrance. I am exhorted to ablate 33.
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.
Hauptpostamt, Hamburg. Sam
19 September 1936, McGreevy
(9 September [1936], TCD, MS 10402/107). In the same letter SB mentioned that O'Sullivan had proposed "that I should take over the editorship ofthe D. M. , he paying for the printing for 3 years. This entre nous. What I said at length was: Merci. "
"Entre nous" (between ourselves). "Merci. " (Thank you, no. )
4 In his letter of 9 September [1936], SB reported that "Mary Manning Howe interviewed DEV on eve of her departure. I told her to tackle him on the Gallery. She did & he promised to see about it" (TCD, MS 10402/107). Mary Manning Howe had spent the summer in Dublin, and, within her role as a freelance writer, arranged to interview Eamon De Valera, then Taoiseach of the Irish Free State. It was during this time that she later claimed to have had an affair with SB (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 215).
5 JackYeats"alwayspaintedwitharosepinnedtohiseasel,orplacedonthetable beside him" (Hilary Pyle. Jack B. Yeats: A Biography [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970] 133). The first painting, a "close up of a red rose," here called "Tyranny of the Rose," now is known as A Rose (private collection, Pyle, 484).
Yeats's series of paintings "showing a cut rose at various stages of its blooming until it finally withers" includes The Rose Dying (private collection, Pyle 486) and A Dusty Rose (private collection, Pyle 485) (Pyle. Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonne ofthe Oil Paintings, I, 438-442: III, 207, 294).
Cottie Yeats.
6 The"KlassischeWalpurgisnacht"(ClassicalWalpurgisNight)isthefirstsceneof
Faust II, Act 2.
7 M[ario]M. Rossi'sViaggioinIrlanda(Milan:DoxaEditrice,1932)wastranslatedby Joseph Hone in a much abridged version, Pilgrimage in the West (Dublin: Cuala Press, 1933); Rossi, a Professor of Italian at the University of Edinburgh, collaborated with
Hone on two other books (see 5 January 1933, n. 6).
In Viaggio in Irlanda, Rossi addresses a four-page apostrophe to Lady Gregory:
"Sara necessario, Lady Gregory, che qui parli di Voi? Non ho parlato di Voi finche ho parlato dell'Irlanda - e dovunque ho scritto ii nome sacro della poesia? " ("Is it necessary, Lady Gregory, that I should speak of you here? Have I not spoken of you since I spoke of Ireland - and wherever I have written the sacred name of poetry? " (Viaggio, 182-185; Pilgrimage, 46-50). Lady Gregory died on 22 May 1931, the same day that Rossi sent his book to his Italian publisher: "the book which she had encouraged me to write - this book written for her" (Pilgrimage, 3).
Glendalough, Co. Wicklow, the site of seven churches founded by St. Kevin, is called "Un luogo dolce, disteso" ("a gentle open place") (Viaggio, 54; Pilgrimage, 26).
Walter Starkie is described by Rossi as "uomo singolarrnente vivace, umano" (a man of exceptional liveliness and humanity) (Viaggio, 125; excluded from Pilgrimage).
Rossi enumerates Gogarty's roles as "chirurgo, 'causeur', uomo politico, aviatore, poeta" ("surgeon, conversationalist, politician, airman, poet"). He claims that Gogarty "ricorda i grandi italiani de! '400" ("recalls the great Italians of the Quattrocento") (Viaggio, 177; Pilgrimage, 43-44).
Chapter 24 is called "Serenita Protestante" (Protestant Serenity) (Viaggio, 126-128; excluded from Pilgrimage).
Mario Rossi's Saggio sul rimorso (Turin: Fratelli Bocca, 1933) is a study of ethics and emotions.
372
8 Brian Coffey had been in Kerry with his father.
Spinoza et ses contemporains (1923) by French philosopher Leon Brunschvicg
(1869-1944), who studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure and taught at the Sorbonne. SB's spelling of Brunschvicg's name presumably reflects a private joke
with McGreevy.
Benedictus deSpinoza, Ethique, demontree suivant l'ordre geometrique et divisee en cinq
parties, Texte latin soigneusement revu, tr. Ch[arles] Appuhn, Classiques Gamier ( Paris: Gamier fo�res,1908; rpt. 1934 ). "Latin en regard" La( tin on facing page).
Jacques Maritain's Docteur Angelique (1930) is based on the life of Thomas Aquinas, whose brother Raynald tempted him with a prostitute to persuade him to break his vows to the church; but Thomas drove the girl from his room with a log from the fire, burning the sign of the cross on his door with the ember.
Maritain argued that theology should be peripatetic, moving out among the world and among other disciplines, following the example of Aquinas. "Tetragonal peripa tetic" refers to Aquinas's "peripatetic axiom. "
9 Charles Prentice.
10 George Reavey's family home was in Belfast. Having translated Smysl Istorii 1( 923;
The Meaning ofHistory,1936 ) by Nikolai Berdyaev, Reavey was preparing a translation of Ya i Mir Ob'ektov (1934 ; Solitude and Society,1938).
Murphy was being read by the London publisher, Stanley Nott (1887-19 78), co-publisher with Europa Press of Eluard, Thorns of Thunder; Reavey had said he "would have Knott's [for Nott's] verdict by the middle of the month" S( B to McGreevy,9 September 1[ 936], TCD, MS10402/10 7). SB had also sent a typescript of Murphy to Simon and Schuster, New York.
11 The Dublin Passport Office was at16 Upper Merrion Street, but paperwork and validation of identification were carried out at the Cabinteely Barracks Garda Station, on the Old Bray Road, Dublin18, and forwarded to the Passport Office.
12 "Postlagemd,Hauptpostamt" ( General delivery, Main Post Office).
THOMAS McGREEVY TOPPES FIE LD, ESSEX
30/9/36 Le Havre
Here for the day. On to Hamburg this evening. Wish I could
stay where I am. The place is charming & the people . . . French.
There's an old Peter Brueghel at the end of the street, but it
30 September 1936, McGreevy
won't see me. Love.
1
Sam
373
30 September 1936, McGreevy
APCS; 1 leaf, 1 side; "LeHavre. Bassin du Commerce et Place Gambetta"; to Thomas
McGreevyEsq, 15 Cheyne Gardens, London SW 3, Angleterre. forwarded, AH, to The Block Hse, Toppesfield,Essx; pm 30-9-36, LeHavre, 1-10-36, Chelsea; T CD, MS 10402/109.
1 ThenamesofthetwogenerationsofthisfamilyofFlemishpaintersareusually spelled differently: the elder Pieter Bruegel (c. 1525-1569) had two sons, Pieter Brueghel the younger and Jan Brueghel.
At the far end of the Rue de Paris from the Quai was the Musee des Beaux-Arts; it was destroyed in World War II. In the new Musee Malraux there are two paintings now ascribed to Pieter Brueghel the younger: Consultation at the Procurer's (77. 24) and Interior of a Peasant Kitchen (77. 14), but there is no record of one by the elder Pieter Bruegel.
THOMAS McGREEVY TOPPESFIELD, ESSEX
9/10/36 bei Hoppe Schliiterstrasse 44
Hamburg 13
Dear Tom
I collected your card all right at the Poste Restante. The
above, which I have tried to write clearly, is my address now & will be I expect for a fortnight at least. On n'est pas mal, au sein du chauffage central. 11 fait un froid a faire sauter les couilles. Le pain est noir, ! 'horizon aussi. What in the world are you doing among the thatches. Was it then another journey from, like so many? I can't believe you'd go to Tappesfield [for Toppesfield] of your own free will. 1
I got here last Friday, 24 hours late. The town is superb, nothing older than middle 19th century. One exquisite green steeple (truly a guglia), that of the Petrikirche. And the Alster pieces d'eau are masterpieces. 2 I got a lovely vision ofT. C. D. & its terra infirma reclaimed from the land, the Liffey lying calm over Nassau Street, as no doubt once it did, washing the fringes ofLeinster Lawn, Lecky & the Kook ofBells submerged, & Frank
374
9 October 1936, McGreevy going to his lunch in a canoe. 3 That would be the only town
planning- away with the town! Manning Robertson would agree
4
right at the end of Altona's most charming promenade, under the inevitable snivelling lime, in the grip of ivy. "He who then liveth & believeth in me shall never perish. " Then I had a Bauernfriihsti. ick in the Hauptbahnhof. 5
The Gallery here was something of a disappointment, but
may improve.
The building is magnificent and the pictures
admirably presented (one line hanging against matt white
throughout), but there is an appalling quantity of rubbish,
worse than unimportant locals. Meisters BERTRAM & FRANKE
6
Goyens, a Van Uden -Teniers not as good as the one in Dublin,
a so called Brouwer landscape that might conceivably be a pot
boiler, a couple of Everdingens and a characteristic landscape of
that German-Roman that you don't like & whose name I can
never remember. 7 Then roomfuls of Tischbein, Menzel & God
knows who else. There is a lovely Degas Portrait de Femme,
I am sure.
I found Klopstock, buried with his cockpecked wife & son,
don't say much to me either. There are a lot of lovely Van
another hardly up to standard by Lautrec, and a sentimental
Picasso Femme a l'Absinthe. 8 The modern Germans are more
interesting, Leibl, Corinth, Nolde etc. There is a lot of Munch
also, & I found an excellent portrait of a woman by one Jaeckel,
of whom I know nothing. He has nothing else in the Gallery.
Marc's Mandrill is amusing, but I think not so good as the
9
struggled into the language I don't think I'll be sorry to go. I begin to think that Germany's charm is perhaps after all mainly for me a matter of associations. I feel sad enough & often enough
375
Boccioni that Boss Sinclair had in Kassel.
It is nice to be away, but when I have seen the pictures &
9 October 1936, McGreevy
for that to be so. Now that Holland & France have come off the truce, I hope to return that way. 10 Holland in the early spring & Paris in the late, if Europe has not been obliterated before then.
Simon & Schuster turned down Murphy, with the usual kind
11
words, brilliance, 5 % appeal & ruisselant avenir.
Houghton &
Mifflin now have it. Nott has not yet made up his mind. Perhaps
he must get in touch with Mme. Beeton before he can reach a
12
To judge by quantity of spare space that follows it, the circum
cision was uncalled for. I see in the same number a harmless
paragraph on Dilly's book from the com[p]te-gouttes of Norah
13
but hoping soon to 'Take his leave' (! ! ) Richard mit vache is back
14
felt like a desertion. He was tearfully & continuously depressed for weeks before I left. Overwork, neuritis, sex worries, home gloom, etc.
God love thee & write incontinent. I don't seem to have had a proper letter from you for ages.
Ever Sam
Elsheimer is the man.
ALS; 2 leaves, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/110.
1 "Onn'estpasma! ,auseinduchauffagecentral. IIfaitunfroidafairesauter! es couilles. Le pain est noir, ! 'horizon aussi" (Comfortable enough, with the central heating all round one. It is brass monkey weather. The bread is black, so is the horizon). For further description, see Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 217.
376
decision.
My truncated poem is in this number [of] Dublin Magazine.
Hoult.
A letter from the physical jerking Charles, still in London,
"big, red & jovial".
Frank drove me to Waterford. Very sad parting from him. It
9 October 1936, McGreevy McGreevy had the loan of a cottage (Black House) in the tiny village ofToppesfield,
Essex Uack B. Yeats to McGreevy, 30 November 1936,TCD, MS 8105/138).
2 SB arrived in Hamburg on 2 October. For images and detailed information about his stay in Hamburg, consult the website by Roswitha Quadflieg, Fritz-Renzo Heinze, and Clements-Tobias Lange: "Beckett in Hamburg 1936," 11 November 2007, www. beckett-in-hamburg-1936. de/.
Nearly a quarter of Hamburg was destroyed by fire in May 1842, which necessitated massive rebuilding in the mid 19th century. The tower of St. Peter's Church had burned at this time and was reconstructed in Gothic style with a 436-foot tower. "Guglia" (obelisk, hence spire).
The inner and outer Alster lakes are formed by locks on the Alster river; these sheets of water are bounded by tree-lined streets and promenades. "Pieces d'eau" (ponds).
3 SBimaginestheRiverLiffeyoverspreadingitsbankstocoverthelandoccupied by Trinity College Dublin and Nassau Street, with the water lapping the edges of the lawn that extends from Leinster House (the Parliament Building oflreland) to Merrion Square.
The statue of historian William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1838-1903) is on the library green ofTCD. In his wordplay, SB alludes to the Book ofKells, the illuminated manu script of the Gospels, created in Ireland c. AD 800, kept in the TCD Library. Frank Beckett's office was at 6 Clare Street, an extension of Nassau and Leinster Streets.
4 Irish urban planner Manning Robertson (1888-1945) wrote Dun Laoghaire: The History, Scenery and Development of the District (1936) in which he advocated preservation of open spaces.
5 German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803) was buried in the Christiankirche cemetery, at the end of the Palmaille in Ottensen, in the Altona section of Hamburg. Also buried there is his first wife Margareta Miiller (Meta, 1728-1758), their stillborn son, his second wife Joanna Elisabeth Dimpfel von Winthem (1747-1821), and his brother Victor Ludwig Klopstock (1744-1811); the verse, John 11:26, is SB's trans lation (Samuel Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an: Das Hamburg-Kapitel aus den "German Diaries" 2. 0ktober-4. Dezember 1936, transcribed by Erika Tophoven ISchenefeld: Raamin-Press, 2003] 13. For SB's note about the cemetery, see BIF, UoR, MS 4848, and, in Facsimile with a photo, in Roswitha Quadflieg, Beckett was here: Hamburg in Tagebuch, Samuel Becketts von 1936 [Hamburg: Hoffinan und Campe, 2006] 31-32).
"Bauernfriihstiick" (country breakfast); "Hauptbahnhof" (central train station).
6 The Hamburger Kunsthalle was constructed in 1867-1869 in an Italian Renais sance style.
The chief work of Master Bertram von Minden (fl. 1367-c. 1415) is the Altarpiece of St. Peter's (also known as the Grabow Altarpiece or The Creation of the Animals, HK 500). Among works by Master Franke (fl. 1400-1425) in Hamburg is the Altarpiece of the Traders with England (also known as the St. Thomas Altarpiece, HK 490-498).
7 DutchlandscapepainteranddraughtsmanJanvanGoyen.
Peasants Merrymaking (NG! 41) in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland was painted by David Teniers with Flemish painter Lucas van Uden (1595-1672): SB compares this with paintings byTeniers in the Hamburger Kunsthalle: The News (HK 125), Peasants by the Fireside (HK 175), Moonlit Landscape (HK 176), and The Bleachery (HK 337).
377
9 October 1936, McGreevy
Adriaen Brouwer Landscape (HK 339) is now entitled Hilly Landscape with Herd and reattributed as "Anonymous of South Nederland" (c. 1640/1650).
Paintings by Allart van Everdingen {1621-1675) in the collection were Northern Landscape with Wateifall (HK 55), Hilly Landscape (HK 56), Norwegian Fjord (HK 312), Northern Wateifall (HK 313). In his diary entry for 8 October 1936, SB mentions two Everdingens, but the museum cannot confirm which paintings were on display (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso viel an, 14; Dr. Ute Haug, 8 February 2006).
SB recalls the name of Adam Elsheimer as a postscript to this letter.
8 There is a family of painters by this name: Johann Henrich Tischbein {1722-1789), Johann Jacob Tischbein (1725-1791), Johann Friedrich August Tischbein (1750-1812), and Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (1751-1829), who as a friend of Goethe was known as the "Goethe Tischbein" (Goethe in the Roman Campagna, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut and Stadtische Galerie [no. 11571). Of the Tischbein family, SB specifically mentions Johann Jacob and Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso viel an, 20).
Hamburg also had many works by genre painter Adolf Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel (1815-1905).
The painting by French impressionist painter Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas (1834-1917) is now known as Mme. Josephine Gaujelin (formerly known as Portrait ofa Woman. HK 2417). SB refers to the Female Portrait: The Daughter ofthe Village Sergeant (HK 1253) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
The Absinthe Drinker (HK 2353) by Picasso was confiscated by the Nazis, and hung in the 1937 Munich exhibition of "Entartete Kunst" (Degenerate Art); it is now in the Doris Im Obersteg collection, on loan to the Kunstmuseum Basel (Im 1411) (Stephanie Barron, ed. , "Degenerate Art": The Fate ofthe Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany [Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum ofArt, 1991J 168; Charlotte Guzwiller, Registrar, Kunstmuseum Basel, 7 June 2006).
9 Wilhelm Leib! (1844-1900), Lavis Corinth (1858-1925), and Emil Nolde (1867-1956). The 1927 Katalog der neueren Meister of the Hamburger Kunsthalle shows only two works by Norwegian expressionist painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944): Male Portrait (Director Briinings) (HK 2309; confiscated in 1937 and now in a private collec tion) and Woman in Blue (HK 2310).
The only painting by Willy Jaeckel (1888-1944) in the Hamburger Kunsthalle at this time was St Sebastian I (HK 1679). On 19 November, SB recorded that a portrait he had seen on 8 October 1936 had "gone from its place" (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 14, 44).
The Mandrill (HK 1688, confiscated in 1937; since 1964, in the Pinakothek der Modeme in Munich, 13467) by Franz Marc {1880-1916) is compared to The Laugh (once owned by William Sinclair, now MOMA 656. 1959) by Italian painter Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916).
10 It is likely that the truce to which SB refers is the economic shift of 26 September: France (in agreement with Britain and the United States) devalued its currency to reduce barriers to trade, followed by Holland and Switzerland in early October 1936 ("Valuing the Franc," The Times 28 September 1936: 12; "A New Beginning," The Times 28 September 1936: 13; "Fetters to Trade," The Times 6 October 1936: 13).
11 The rejection letter from Simon and Schuster has not been found; "ruisselant avenir" (dazzling future).
378
12 BostonpublishersHoughtonMifflin.
Stanley Nott had been considering Murphy (see 19 September 1936, n. 10). SB's facetious reference is to Isabella Mary Beeton (nee Mayson, 1836-1865), whose Mrs. Beeton's Book of Hauselwld Management (1861) was the influential cookbook for over one hundred years.
13 "Cascando,"DublinMagazine3-4. Thecutinthepoem:19September1936,n. 3.
Norah Hoult's review ofThe Fires ofBeltane by Geraldine Cummins called the novel "a detailed and unsentimental story with a touch of genuine poetic imagination" ("New Fiction," Dublin Magazine 11. 4 [October-December 1936[ 96).
"Compte-gouttes" (literally, drop-by-drop).
14 CharlesPrentice.
Richard Aldington and his companion Brigit Patmore had returned to London from Austria; also at about this time, Aldington had begun an affair with Netta Patmore (1911-1977), Brigit's daughter-in law (Charles Doyle, Richard Aldington: A Biography [Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989] 176). SB quotes from Prentice's letter which is not extant.
"Mit" (Ger. , with), "vache" (Fr. slang, bitch).
IAN PARSONS
C HATTO AND WINDUS, LONDON
7/11/36 Hamburg 13
Schhiterstrasse 44 bei Hoppe
Germany
My dear Parsons
Will you be so kind as to have three More Pricks Than Kicks
and three Prousts sent to me at above address. I enclose cheque
1
TLS; 1 leaf, 1 side; date stamped received 9-11-36; UoR, MS 2444 CW 59/9.
1 SBhadpromisedacopyofhisProusttoGunterAlbrecht•(1916-1941),anappren tice in the bookshop of Kurt Saucke (1895-1970) in Hamburg (Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an, 33, 26).
379
7 November 1936, Parsons
for one pound, and trust my arithmetic is correct. With best wishes.
Yours very sincerely,
sf
(Samuel Beckett)
13 November 1936, Reavey
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
13/11/36
Schh. iterstrasse 44 bei Hoppe Hamburg 13
Dear George
Thank you for letter with Greenslet's enclosed.
Let me say at once that I do not see how the book can be
cut without being disorganised. Especially if the beginning is
cut (& God knows the first half is plain sailing enough) the later
part will lose such resonance as it has. I can't imagine what they
want me to take out. I refuse to touch the section entitled Amor
Intellectualis quo M. se ipsum amat. And I refuse also to touch
2
1
thegameofchess. TheHoroscopechapterisalsoessential. ButI am anxious for the book to be published and therefore cannot afford to reply with a blank refusal to cut anything. Will you therefore communicate to Mr Greenslet my extreme aversion to removing one third of my work, proceeding from my extreme inability to understand how this can be done and leave a remain der. But add that ifthey would indicate precisely what they have in mind, and the passages that cause them pain, I should be willing to suppress such passages as are not essential to the whole and adjust such others as seem to them a confusion of the issue. Be astonished, firm, & up to a point politely flexible, all at once, if you can. Do they not understand that if the book is slightly obscure, it is so because it is a compression, and that to compress it further can only result in making it more obscure? The wild & unreal dialogues cannot, it seems to be [for me], be removed without darkening & dulling the whole thing. They are the comic expression of what elsewhere is expressed in elegy,
380
namely if you like the hermetism of the spirit. Is it here that
they find the "skyrockets"? There is no time and no space in
such a book for mere relief. The relief has also to do work and reinforce that from which it relieves. And of course the narrative is hard to follow, & of course deliberately so. Am I then Berdaev [for Berdyaev]? That I should adorn with historical amnions & placentae a non-historical uterus? And sink grapples in a womb ceaselessly pregnated & never delivered? And crowd the last chapter with oyster kisses & Murillo brats? But this is all dans le vide, & must remain so, until I know in detail what it is that upsets them. 3
Perhaps if Nott were to express willingness in event of USA
collaboration to publish the book as it stands, or totters, and
furthermore to give out as his opinion that cuts are not desir
4
I am also very anxious to obtain permission to use enclosed
photograph, without subscript, as frontispiece. I came across it
first in a Daily Sketch months ago, & found it again here in an
Illustrierte. I have somewhere the date of issue of D. S. in ques
5
I shall be here a little time still, & until I can let you have another address, write me here.
Amicalement6 s/ Sam
TLS; 1 leaf, 1 side; T env to George Reavey Esq, European Literary Bureau, 30 Red Lion Square, London W. C. 1, ENGLAND; pm 13-11-36, Hamburg; TxU. Previous publication: Bair, Samuel Beckett, 243; rpt. Beckett, Disjecta, 103.
1 The letter from Ferris Greenslet (1875-1959), Editor of Houghton Mifflin, with regard to Murphy, has not been found.
381
13 November 1936, Reavey
able, the Mifflin Zerstorungswut might be pacified.
tion. IpresumeIcannotuseitwithoutpermission,&amnot sure how I should set about getting permission. Anyway keep it it [sic] carefully.
13 November 1936, Reavey
2 In Murphy: "Amor Intellectualis quo M. se ipsum amat" (Intellectual Love with which M. loves himself) (ch. 6, 107-113); the game of chess (ch. 11, 242-246); the Horoscope chapter (ch. 3, 26-41).
3 ReaveyhadtranslatedtheworkofNikolaiBerdyaev.
Although there are "oyster kisses" between Miss Counihan and Wylie (Murphy, 117), there are none in the last chapter. The secular paintings of Spanish painter Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1617-1682) were composed almost entirely of scenes of young children.
"Dans le vide" (guesswork).
4 SB makes this suggestion sinceStanley Nott was unwilling to undertake publica tion of Murphy alone.
"Zerstorungswut" (destructive mania).
5 Thecaptionfortheimageis"Buthe'sdoneit! Mate! "Itappearedwithfourother photos of apes playing chess: "Chess is a Shouting Match the Way these Two Play It," Daily Sketch [London] 11 July 1936: 10. The reproduction in a German Il! ustrierte has not been located. "Illustrierte" (glossy magazine).
6 "Amicalement"(Allthebest).
MARY MANN ING HOWE CAMBRI DGE, MASS A CHUS ETTS
14/11/36
Hamburg
Dear Mary Congratulations.
1
Praised be the day before evening. Or not at all.
Send your poem. I know. It has the colour of lead and the texture of worn plush, and is rich in place-names. And Mons Venerillae? 2 Now you must be very careful, what you write, think, say, wish and fear. The appendix pain has gone, and will not return. The first communion glow steals over you from time to time. And impertinence you pity rather than pardon.
Reavey wrote enclosing a letter from Greensletandhindrance. I am exhorted to ablate 33.
