No More Learning

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that you will always be welcome in 6 rue des Favorites (formerly Impasse des Favorites, not far from the still existing Impasse de L'Enfant Jesus) should your Schicksal at any time allow you so much license. 5
I have begun a Primer of higher French syntax. It takes the form of Xenian. Here is one
Ci-git qui y echappa tant
Qu'il n'en echappe que maintenant.
Porte-toi bien7 Sam
ALS; 1 leaf. 2 sides; TxU.
1 SB refers to Ussher's essay "The Age of Shadows," in Nineteenth Century and After: 12 May 1938, n. 1.
2 "Curetage" (curettage).
3 MayBeckettmovedtoGreystonesinSeptember. HerviewincludedtheRedford cemetery, where William Beckett was buried. "Cote de misere" (Misery Coast).
4 CissieSinclairandherfamily.
5 SB'sapartmentonRuedesFavoriteswasofftheRuedeVaugirard,alongwhich was the Impasse de l'EnfantJesus. "Schicksal" (fate).
6 SB's "Primer of higher French syntax" is for Ussher's amusement. Xenien (1796) was a collection of satirical epigrams, written by Goethe and Schiller. Modeled on the epigrams of Martial, "each epigram is a classical distich, composed of hexameter and
648
father is "at rest".
I have seen nobody except the Sinclairs and shall continue
4
6
28 December 1938, Ussher
pentameter" (Henry Garland and Mary Garland, The Oxford Companion to Gennan Literature ! Oxford: Oxford University Press, 198611006).
SB's example becomes a part of his story "Premier Amour" (AMS, TxU, begun 28 October1946, completed12 November1946): "Ci-git qui y echappa tant/ Qu'il n'en echappe que maintenant" ("Hereunder lies the above who up below/ So hourly died that hesurvivedtillnow")(PremierAmour! Paris:LesEditionsdeMinuit,1970110;tr. bySamuel Beckett, "First Love" in First Love and Other Shorts ! New York: Grove Press, 1974112).
7 "Porte-toibien"(Lookafteryourself).
649
1939 January 27 January
28 February Early March
1 April
By 18 April
By 6June
14June
15June By 7July August 24August
1 September
CHRONOLOGY 1939
SBreturnstoParisviaLondon.
Asks Stanley Hayter to engrave a stone from the Liffey, a gift forJamesJoyce's 57th birthday.
Writing another "Petit Sot" poem in French, which he will send with other French poems to George Reavey when finished.
Ill with flu for two weeks. Writes to Joyce from 12 Square Port Royal, 5 March; possibly staying with Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil.
End of Spanish Civil War.
May Beckett sells Cooldrinagh with plan to build a smaller house nearby. First mention of Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil to Thomas McGreevy. Meets Alfred Peron every week to work on French translation of Murphy.
Sends a four-line poem to Blanaid Salkeld, following her request for a contribution to the Dublin Poets and Artists series of Gayfield Press.
Asks Reavey to return his only copy of "Petit Sot"; asks again on 16June.
Visits Brian Coffey in Dampierre.
Reavey returns "Petit Sot. "
SB in Dublin.
The Treaty of Non-Aggression is signed by Germany and the USSR.
Germany invades Poland.
651
Chronology 1939
3 September
4 September
By 26 September By 6 December
France as well as Britain, Australia, and New Zealand declare war on Germany. Ireland remains neutral.
SB returns to France.
Applies to serve France.
Expects to be called to active service as a vol­ unteer, but only receives acknowledgment of his willingness to serve. Has translated all but four chapters of Murphy into French.
652
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
28/2/39
dear George
6 Rue des Favorites [Paris) 15me
1
I am doing a second Petit Sot & shall send them, when it is
2
Hope you have good news ofPerquisitions. 3
Nothing doing here as far as I can see that couldn't be done
Thanks for letter & Bulletin.
finished, with the shorter poems.
4
Saw the Buckland(-)Wrights one evening chez eux. 5
as well in Beggar's Bush or the 7 Dials.
6
How is Gwynedd? When does she expect to go south? Give
7
Sam
ALS; 1 leaf, 1 side; TxU.
1 Reavey sent SB the most recent issue of London Bulletin in which was published SB's translation ofAndre Breton's essay "Wolfgang Paalen" (London Bulletin 10 [February 1939] 16-17).
2 SB'sfirstpoementitled"PetitSot"isincludedinaseriesoftwentybriefunpub­ lished poems in TMS (Putnam); for further details see Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 270-271. Regarding the short poems in French, see [after 24 October 19381, n. 4.
Sartre gave the nouvelle to Paulhan. But no news ofit yet.
her my love.
Yours ever
Le Petit Sot
je suis le petit sot
ii faut
etre grand pour etre malin
653
28 February 1939, Reavey
et se tenir bien
et faire comme eux et devenir heureux
SB may refer to an untitled and unpublished 24-line poem in French that begins "Jes joues rouges"; it includes a reference to "Petit Sot" (BIF, UoR, MS 2912, line 18).
3 Reavey,QuixoticPerquisitions.
4 Beggar'sBushisanoldsectionofDublin,aswellasthenameofapubthathas been located there for approximately 200 years, at 115 Haddington Road, Ballsbridge. The SevenDials, London WC2, an area adjacent to Covent Garden and Soho, where seven streets radiate from a central Doric Pillar which was originally topped by a clock with seven faces (Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert, eds. , The London Encyclopaedia
[London: Papermac, Macmillan, 1987] 779).
5 ThroughGeorgeReavey,SBhadmettheNew-Zealand-bornengraverandprintmaker John Buckland-Wright (1897-1954), who had illustrated Brian Coffey's Third Person as well as Reavey's QJ. tixotic Perquisitions in theEuropa Poets series. Buckland-Wright joined Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17 in Paris in 1933 and was appointed itsDirector in 1936.
"Chez eux" (at their home), the home of John and Mary Buckland-Wright (nee Anderson, 1907-1976).
6 Theauthorofthe"nouvelle"(story)inquestionisnotclear.
SB would not refer to Murphy in this way, and it is not apparent that he himself had written any new French fiction. SB mentions to Reavey that he is "halfway through a translation ofLove and Lethe" (after 24 October 1938), but no evidence has been found that SB had given this story to Sartre.
Jean Paulhan (1884-1968) was editor ofLa Nouvelle Revue Fran�aise from 1925 to 1940, and from 1946 to 1968.
7 When Gwynedd Reavey passed through Paris on her way to see the Geer van Veldes in Cagnes-sur-Mer, SB met her at St. Lazare station with John Buckland-Wright; on 5 March 1939, SB wrote to Reavey: "I was glad to see Gwynedd on her way through and was sorry she was not in better form. I had a note from her from Cagnes, where she seems to be getting rapidly back to her old form" (TxU).
Here SB spells "Gwynedd" correctly.
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
April 11! ! ! 1939
6 Rue des Favorites Paris 15me
DearTom
I am sony that we seem to have lost touch with one another &
1
ceasedtocorrespond. Ifeelthepoorerforit,thoughthatisnot
654
18 April 1939, McGreevy
what prompts me to write to you again now. I do not think there is any reason for an estrangement, certainly I do not know of any. I do not even feel that there is any question of an estrange­ ment. But I am insensitive to many things, and I may have done something to alienate you without my knowing what it is. IfI have I ask your forgiveness.
I know that on my side there is indolence & despondency & the stupid pride that curls up, and that these are things with which it is difficult for grown-up people to have patience. I know also that you have enough troubles without that of calling on your reserves of indulgence. But if our friendship means as much to you as it always has done to me, even when I may have appeared to neglect it, you will agree with me that it would be a great pity for perhaps a small thing to interrupt it.
So let us clear it up, if you will, whatever it is. Yours affectionately
Sam
ALS; 1 leaf. 1 side; TCD, MS 10402/167.
1 ThegapinSB'scorrespondencewithMcGreevymayhavebeenaslongaseight months; the previous extant letter to McGreevy was dated 14 August I 9381.
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
April 18! ! ! 1939 6 Rue des Favorites Paris 15me
dear Tom
I was very glad to hear from you again. I am sorry I gave you
that impression in London, & that it has remained so long 655
18 April 1939, McGreevy
uncorrected. 1 I did not feel at all that way where you were con­ cerned. But I have had a lot of things in the last year, good and bad, and I am not sorry that is over. I was 33 this week & wonder if the second half of the bottle will be any better than the first half. In the sense only I suppose that one has got used to the taste.
Lately I have not been well. [. . . ] I shall not be sorry I think this year to get to Ireland & the sea for a month or a month & a half. If there is a war, as I fear there must be soon, I shall place myself at the disposition of this country. 2
News from home is good. Mother has sold Cooldrinagh and
has bought a field nearby where she is going to build herself a
small bungalow. It is on the other side of the road and has a very
beautiful view, uninterrupted, across fields to the mountains. It
will hardly be ready before Xmas, if so soon. In the meantime
she is living in a little shanty on the harbour at Greystones, to
which she seems to have become very attached, chiefly I think
because she can see Redford cemetery from the sitting-room
window, on the slopes of Bray Head across the water. She is of
course lonely, but sees Frank & Jean fairly often. They are both
well and the infant flourishing apparently. Already when I saw
him last he was bothering about the possibility of war and
3
time before, being laid up just then. But he had been looking more & more poorly. I hardly ever seen [for see] the Duncans. 4
Brian has disappeared with Bridget to the tame wilds of Dampierre in the Vallee de Chevreuse and the pleasures of the
5
wondering what he would do.
You heard of course about Nick. I had not seen him for some
company of Mr McCalmon [for McAlmon], and never manifests. I see the Joyces now & then. I go every week to Ivry to visit Lucia, who I think gets slowly worse. She sees nobody but her father & myself. Helen also has been ill with a "nervous break­ down" for almost the past two months and shows no signs of
656
[sic] left their flat and are in the Hotel d'Iena for a few days while
the flat they have taken in Passy is being made ready. They
are as well as can be expected. He is worried about the
non-appearance of Finnegans Wake. Hubsch [for Huebsch] in
7
which I think you have already seen some. There are two very
long ones that do not belong at all to the series, being quite
straightforward descriptive poems (in French) ofepisodes in the
life of a child. I do not know what they are worth. The few people
8
I have a queer lot of pictures here now. A German surrealist
called Paalen gave me some kind of "automatic" affair that
amuses me, and I have started paying for a picture by a Polish
9
I lunch every Tuesday with Peron, and am very glad to have him. 10
There is a French girl also whom I am fond of, dispassion­
11
knowing how long it may last.
And there are a few of my odds & ends. Maybe the wine is
New York seems to be doing the dirty.
I have no work to show beyond a few poems in French, of
18 April 1939, McGreevy 6
pullingoutofit. Giorgioishavingabadtime. Theparentshalf
I have shown them to liked them, but they are friends.
JewcalledAdlerthatIlikeverymuch. Theflatcontinuestobe very satisfactory. Is there no chance of you coming to stay with me for a while?
The hand will not be over­ bid. As we both know that it will come to an end there is no
ately, and who is very good to me.
not so bad as I feared.
Remember me to Hester. Is she cross with me? 12 Write again soon.
Affectionately Sam
I liked the Antonello very much.
13
657
18 April 1939, McGreevy
ALS; 4 leaves, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/168.
1 McGreevy'slettertoSBhasnotbeenfound.
2 SBplannedtovisithismotherinIrelandattheendofJuly1939;hewouldleave Ireland for France on 4 September 1939, the day after France and England declared war against Germany (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 273).
3 SBrefersto"NewPlace"inFoxrock. WilliamBeckettisburiedinRedfordceme­ tery near Greystones. Frank and Jean Beckett and their daughter Caroline lived in Killiney, 8 miles north of Greystones.
4 NickBalachef,whomSBhadmetthroughAlanandBelindaDuncan.
5 BrianandBridgetCoffeyhadmovedtothevillageofDampierreintheValleede Chevreuse, where Robert McA! mon lived.
6 LuciaJoycewasinamaisondesanteintheParissuburboflvry. AsPaulLeonwrote to Harriet Weaver on 2 April 1939: "Mr. Joyce continues his visits on Sundays [. . . ] Mr. Becket[t] has also been visiting her weekly but these are the only two persons who see her at all" Uoyce and Leon, The James Jayce - Paul Leon Papers, 76). For Helen Joyce's illness and its effect on her family, see this letter as well as Joyce, Letters of]ames Joyce, III, 438, 465; Guggenheim, Out ofThis Century: Confessions ofanArtAddict, 207-208.
7 James and Nora Joyce moved from 7 Rue Edmond Valentin to 34 Rue des Vignes on 15 April (see Ellmann,JamesJoyce, 721). The Hotel d'Iena, 28 Avenue d'Iena, Paris 16. Finnegans Wake was not published until 4 May 1939 although its projected publica­ tion date had been Joyce's birthday, 2 February 1939. Benjamin Huebsch was Joyce's editor at Viking Press, New York. Joyce wrote to Mary Colum (nee Mary Catherine
Gunning Maguire, 1887-1957) on 29 March 1939:
There is no use now in going into the matter of the American publication of my book. So far it has been a hopeless bungle. As for the date every week we hear something different. The book, printed and bound, has been lying on my table for the past two months but the sheets for Mr. Huebsch's limited edition have not yet left England. Uoyce, Letters ofjames Joyce, III, 438)
8 TheseriesoftwentyshortpoemsisknownonlyinTMS(privatecollection);the two longer poems may be "Jes joues rouges" and/or one or two from those published as "Poemes 38-39" (see 28 February 1939, n. 2; Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 270).
9 Austrian-born artist Wolfgang Paalen (1905-1959), whose work had been exhibited at Guggenheim Jeune (15 February to 11 March 1939), had given SB one of his "fumage" paintings (oil, candle burns and soot on canvas) (for an example: Paalen's Fumage in William S. Rubin, Dada, Surrealism, and their Heritage [New York: Museum of Modem Art, 1968] 140, no. 207).
The Janke! Adler painting purchased by SB is untitled (private collection). 1O AlfredPeron.
11 SuzanneDeschevaux-Dumesnil'(1900-1989),laterSB'swife.
12 HesterDowden.
13 McGreevy may have enclosed a reproduction of a painting by Antonello da Messina.
658
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
June 6th 1939 dear Tom
6 Rue des Favorites Paris 15me
simultaneously.
I gave the papers to Joyce. He was pleased with the Tristan
6June 1939, McGreevy
Thanks for your letter and card, which arrived
1
quotation. Shaw doesn't change front very skilfully. 2
3
4
I am sorry Harrington Road has become so uncomfortable for you. You talked once of going to stay with the waiter in the
5
cast on the 29! ! ! on Finnegans Wake.
Can a citizen of Eire accept a Knighthood? It would indeed
be a pity if Bodkin was able to plead immunity. O'Sullivan was over here (the RHA) a short time ago and said he thought Charlemont House would so[o]n be vacant again. 7
Blanaid Salkeld wrote to me for a poem for a series ofbroad­
sheets of Dublin poets that she is bringing out, illustrated - "not
exactly illustrated" - by Cecil.
I sent her one of 4 lines, the only
8
Remember me to Junger [for Junyer]. I hope you have succeeded in recovering all the stuff you left in Paris.
[. . . ]
IhavelosttouchaltogetherwithGeoffrey. ButifIwasin the kind oftrouble that he deals in I would go to him and, I know, be helped as before. He may think I stay in London on my ways through & don't look him up, which has never been the case.
joint he was starting.
I saw Peron to-day. He is doing a quarter ofan hour's broad­
6
one I had, which will leave plenty ofroom for Cecil.
659
6 June 1939, McGreevy
I should like very much to get to Geneva to see the Prado
pictures but I fear it is impossible. I have not heard how long the
Exhibition is to last. I suppose Franco is howling for that along
9
has done everything from medicine in Trinity & College of Surgeons to driving a lorry in Yorkshire and finished nothing. He is at present - or was last Xmas - running with some woman well known in Dublin whose name I forget a miniature gallery in Nassau Street called I think New Pictures. I met him years ago in the Mannings' house, where he was lodging. 10 I liked him for his caring for things so little cared for in Dublin & for his ineffec­ tualness. He was interested also in morbid psychology, of which he was - & I think still is - a victim. So shallow called to shallow. The Euston Road group sounds friendly. 11 But all groups are horrible.
Massine & Co. are here at the new Trocadero. I did not know he had done the 7! ! ! Symphony. Cocteau is reported to be making
12
like that.
I have lost all touch also with Coffey. He is said to be at
Dampierre, close to McCalmon [for McAlmon], with M� Coffey. At home they seem well. Mother[']s new cottage was begun
last week. I shall go over towards the end ofJuly.
How is Hester? Remember me to her. And to Dilly.
Love ever Sam
Did you see Aldington's bad tempered review ofFinnegan? Some Yankee paper. He was scandalised by the morose delectation! ! ! 14
660
with the rest.
Longford is a long melancholy hank ofamiable misery who
a ballet ofBritannicus. With Harpo Marx as Junie I suppose.
I drowse through the days & do nothing. I try now & then to get started, but it comes to nothing. Ifit is to be like that, let it be
13
6June 1939, McGreevy
ALS; 3 leaves, 3 sides; PS written in upper left margin of side 1, perpendicularly to the text; TCD, MS 10402/169.
1 McGreevy's letter and card have not been found.
2 McGreevymayhavesentSBLondonpaperswithreviewsofFinnegansWake. SB's reference to the Tristan quotation, possibly supplied by McGreevy, or mentioned in a review, has not been identified.
George Bernard Shaw wrote a letter to the Editor of Picture Post on 3 June 1939 responding to the suggestion in an article on 13 May 1939 by English critic Geoffrey Grigson (1905-1985) that he had been so disgusted by lflysses that he had burned his copy: "'I did not bum it; and I was not disgusted"' Uoyce, Letters ofJames Joyce, III, 444-445).
3 CatalanpainterJoanJunyer.
4 GeoffreyThompson.
5 McGreevy'salternativelodgingshavenotbeenidentified.
6 On16June1939,JoycetoldtheFrenchhistorianandcriticLouisGillet(1876-1943) that the broadcast would be on 22 June; in a letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver on 19 June 1939, Joyce indicated that Alfred Peron would give a short broadcast on Finnegans Wake in the following week on Paris PIT (Louis Gillet, Oaybook for James Joyce, tr. Georges Markow-Totevy [New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1958] 21; Joyce, Letters ofJames Joyce, III, 447). No listing has been found of the broadcast that would confirm either the date given by Joyce or that given by SB. According to correspondence from Paul Leon and James Joyce to Monroe Saw and Co. , London. "Samuel Beckett would be willing to do the broadcast for the B. B. C. " Uoyce and Leon, TheJamesJoyce-Paul Leon Papers, 137).
7 Thomas Bodkin, former Director of The National Gallery of Ireland and from 1935 to 1952 Barber Professor of Fine Arts and Director of the Barber Institute at the University of Birmingham. Queen Mary (Mary of Teck, 1867-1953, consort of George V [1865-1936]) opened the Barber Institute of Fine Arts on 26 July 1939; however, Bodkin was not knighted (Alan Denson, comp. . Thomas Bodkin: A Bio-Bibliographical Survey with a Bibliographical Survey ofHis Family [Dublin: The Bodkin Trustees, 1966] 7).
Sean O'Sullivan, a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy, had been in Paris, as SB wrote to Reavey on 5 March 1939: "Sean O'Sullivan, the Irish Sargent, has taken Adler's studio for 2 months" (TxU). SB refers to American portrait painter John Singer Sargent {1856-1925).
Charlemont House was the site of the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art.
8 Blanaid and Cecil Salkeld had initiated Dublin Poets and Artists, a series of twenty-five broadsheets, published by their Gayfield Press from 1941 to 1943; each published a poem (or occasionally two) by a Dublin writer with an illustration by a Dublin artist, and most were hand-printed by Blanaid Salkeld. Beckett's poem has not been found in any of the extant broadsheets, the largest collection of which is in the New York Public Library Rare Books Department (numbers 2-7. 9-10, 21, 25).
SB mentions the poem he sent to Blanaid Salkeld in his letter to Mary Manning Howe of 6 June 1939: "I sent her one of 4 lines, being the second of the two tom from my palpitating sensorium by years of adversity, the first (of five lines) having disappeared" (TxU). SB's poem "Dieppe" was written first in French in 1937 (later translated into English
661
6 June 1939, McGreevy
by SB and published in The Irish Times 9June 1945: 2; Federman and Fletcher, Samuel Beckett: His Works and His Critics, 75). SB may refer to "they come" as the five-line poem that had disappeared; this was written in English (see SB to Thomas McGreevy, 27January 1938).
9 WithagreementofbothLoyalistsandRepublicans,masterworksfromSpanish collections, including from the Prado Museum in Madrid, were removed to Geneva in February 1939 and housed for safekeeping in the Palace of the League of Nations until the end of the Spanish Civil War. A selection of them was exhibited at the Musee d'Art et d'Histoire in Geneva from 1July to 31 August 1939, prior to their return to Franco's regime in Spain ([Howard Devree], "News and Comments: Spain's Art Treasures at Geneva," Magazine of Art 32. 7 Uuly 1939] 425-426; Thomas McGreevy, "Spanish Masterpieces: A Selection Based on the Exhibition of Paintings from the Prado at Geneva," The Studio 18 [September 1939] 90-107).
General Francisco Franco (1892-1975).
1O John Manning Longford (known asJack, 1911-1944) studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin; in 1939 he joined Deirdre McDonagh (nee Moira Pilkington, 1897-1970) in running the Contemporary Picture Galleries, then at 5 South Leinster Street, which she had founded in 1938 (S. B. Kennedy, 8 March 2006). Art critic Stephen Rynne observed:
Longford was a fine connoisseur and a picture vendor - head and should­ ers above all his kind in Ireland at that time. No one did more for con­ temporary art or showed a better appreciation of good Irish artists than gentle Longford. The old man Uack B. Yeats] and the young Longford were warm friends; there was something of a father and son affinity between them. ("Tea withJack B. Yeats 1940," Eire-Ireland 7. 2 [1972] 106)
11 The School of Drawing and Painting, 314/316 Euston Road, was founded by William Coldstream (1908-1987) in 1937; he, Claude Rogers (1907-1979), and Victor Pasmore (1908-1998), with about thirty others, were known as the Euston Road School. The School was active from 1937 to 1941.
12 The Palais du Trocadero had been demolished to be replaced by the Palais de Chaillot, erected for the Exposition Internationale of 1937. Leonide Massine's newly reconstituted Ballets de Monte-Carlo announced two programs at the Theatre de Chaillot from 5 to 8 June 1939: Lac des Cygnes, L'Etrange Farandole, and Tricorne; Les Elfes, Petrouchka, and Noble Vision (Le Temps, 6June 1939: 5 and 6; Le Temps, 7June 1939: 5).
Seventh Symphony was Massine's symphonic ballet based on Beethoven's Seventh Symphony in A major. op. 92; it premiered in Monte Carlo on 5 May 1938. Massine describes its evolution in My Life in Ballet, ed. Phyllis Hartnoll and Robert Rubens (London: Macmillan St. Martin's Press, 1968) 206-207.
Cocteau did not create a ballet of Racine's play Britannicus (1669). He had created roles for his companion, actor Jean Marais (1913-1998), who directed, designed, and acted in a production of the play in 1941. In Britannicus, Junie is to marry Britannicus, but his half-brother Nero objects; SB imagines Harpo Marx (ne Adolph Arthur Marx, 1888-1964) in this female role.
13 HesterDowden,GeraldineCummins.
14 RichardAldingtonwroteofFinnegansWake:
662
The problem of what Mr. Joyce has to say in Finnegans Wake may be left to those who have time and energy to waste. . . This heavy compost
14 June {1939}, Ussher
is frequently infected with that lecherous suggestiveness of which Mr. Joyce is a master, which was defended in lflysses as germane to the characters, but which here seems to have no purpose more interesting than the author's morose delectations. ("JamesJoyce," The Atlantic 163 Uune 1939), unpaginated supplement: "The Bookshelf' [17, 19, 21])
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
14/6/39 6 Rue des Favorites Paris 15me
dear George
WillyoupleasesendmebackmyPetitSot. Ihavenoother
copy[. ]
Ever
Sam
APCS; 1 leaf, 1 side; Vlaminck, "Paysage en Beauce"; to GeorgeReaveyEsq, 7 Great Ormond Street, London W. C. 1; pm 15-[6]-39,Paris;TxU.
1 See 28 February 1939 and n. 2 to that letter, in which SB indicates that he is writing another "Petit Sot," which he intended to send to Reavey with his shorter poems in French.
ARLAND US SHER
[? DUBLIN OR CAPPAGH, CO. WATERFORD]
June 141! ! [1939) 6 Rue des Favorites Paris 15me
dear Arland
If you want a big name I think Piazzetta or Tiepolo are the
most likely, & the latter better than the former, though the picture seems rather too maniere & doubtfully drawn to be of
663
1
14 June {1939}, Ussher
any possible chance by either. The rhythm is Tiepolesque, the
format also, the bearded gent above the Maries like a bad copy
of a Tiepolo motif (cf. The Almighty in the Dublin Litany of
the Virgin for the real thing. There are as few Tiepolos without
the beard as Wouwermanns [for Wouwermans] without the white
horse. ), and the stooping John in the foreground, here as far as I
can judge hardly a success, is the kind of difficulty that gave him
none. The Maries are very curious, the right hand of the topmost
seems very good, and the lowest I seem to have seen somewhere
in a Cranach, which however ifit were so would not invalidate the
Tiepolo suggestion, who worked so long in Wiirzburg. Another
possible line obviously would be the Spanish - Neapolitan, but the
work seems to be neither sufficiently devout nor sufficiently
dramatic to satisfy that mixture in any of its dosages. As a deco­
rative statement of weights & tensions it seems to me to lack only
technique & bravura to pair up with the easel recreations of
1
betterqualifiedthanIam. Canyounotobtainalessnebulous reproduction?
Thank you for your essay. When the period represents an end point of meditation your rather dogmatic tone is no doubt
3
given philosophy a good paper, clean, honest & obliging, now
who will take it up? The State.
4
I was glad to meet Jacqueline and hope another time to have again the pleasure. Thank you for your bounteous hospitality which I was unable to reverberate. 5
I have been reading H6lderlin. It is a depressing thought that perhaps Hyperion was necessary to the Freie Rythmen &
664
Gianbattista [for Giambattista] Tiepolo & Sons.
Ifyou like I shall send it to Tom McGreevy, who is very much
2
the right one. You feel a law, you lay it down. Theology has
Nachstens mehr.
the terrific fragments of the Spatzeit. I obtained someone's agreement last night in a dream that he (Holderlin) must have been for a long time homosexual.
14June {1939}, Ussher
6
7
Looking at the right hand again it is horribly Rembrandtesque.
8
ALS; 2 leaves, 2 sides; TxU. Dating: Brian Coffey's letter to Robert MacAlmon on 20 June 1939: n. 7 below, and 16 June 1939.
1 AtanauctionUssherhadpurchasedapaintingofthecrucifixionfor£5;laterit was sold in an auction at Cappagh for £12. His daughter Henrietta Ussher Staples recalled that it was approximately 24 in. x 30 in. and quite brown, in "terrible condition"; it has not been further identified.
SB refers to the Italian painter and draftsman Giovanni Battista Piazzetta. He com­ pares Ussher's picture to Giovanni Battista (also known as Giambattista) Tiepolo·s An Allegory ofthe Incarnation (also called Litany ofthe Virgin, NG! 353) which depicts God with a full beard (National Gallery of Ireland: Catalogue of the Oil Pictures in the General Collection [1932], 127; for an image, see National Gallery ofIreland: fllustrated Summary Catalogue of Paintings [1981], 162).
Dutch painter Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668) frequently included a white horse in his pictures.
SB is reminded of an unnamed painting by Lucas Cranach; Cranach worked in Wittenberg (not Wiirzburg) from 1505 to 1550, and both his sons, Hans and Lucas II, were born there.
2 McGreevy's specialty was Italian art; he wrote for the London art journal The Studio at this time.
3 ItisnotknownwhichessayUssherhadsenttoSB. During1939,Ussherfrequently published essays in The New English Weekly and the New Age: his essay "Works and Faith" (14. 23 [16 March 1939] 346-347) discussed philosophy and the Catholic Church; Kant was his starting point for the essay "New Metaphysic and Old Spook" (15. 5 [18 May 1939] 80-81).
4 "Nachstensmehr"(Moresoon).
5 Ussher had met Jacqueline de la Chatre (n. d. ) in France. She was a friend of both Ussher and Georges Bleu (b. 1914); on Ussher's behalf, Bleu had attempted to
665
Didyouknowthatthespiderhad2penes. Andthatthereis plenty of room for both if he does not prefer to prolong his pleasure. And they talk still of evolution.
yrs ever Sam
But T. was one of the great eclectics.
14 June {1939}, Ussher
visit SB at the H6pital Broussais, only to find that SB had already been released (Georges Bleu to Arland Ussher, 9 February 1938, TCD, MSS 9031/134). SB wrote to Mary Manning Howe about Ussher's hospitality to him: Arland "stood me more food & refreshment in one week than during the whole previous course of our acquaintance" (6 June 1939, TxU).
6 SB had purchased the collected works of the German poet Johann Christian Friedrich Hi:ilderlin (1770-1843) on 24 December 1937, according to the date in SB's edition (BIF, UoR: Friedrich Hi:ilderlin, Siimtliche Werke [Leipzig: lnsel-Verlag, (1926))). This edition includes H6lderlin's two-volume novel Hyperion oder Der Eremit in Griechenland (Hyperion, or the Hermit in Greece, 425-586), his translations of Antigone (876-916), and those few poems that were published during his lifetime. SB here refers to two groups of poems: Freie Rhythmen (Free Rhythms, 202-241) and Gedicht der Spiitzeit (Last Poems, 1002-1009). SB's poem "Dieppe" was based on a portion ofHi:ilderlin's "Der Spaziergang" ("The Walk," 1005-1006), from Gedicht der Spiitzeit (see Harvey, Samuel Beckett, 218).
7 SB's "information" about the spider is repeated by Brian Coffey in a letter to Robert McAlmon: "Beckett was here on Thursday and had to communicate that when the spider went aloving it filled up two penes with juice and then set off to be ready for instant action, followed by immediate getaway. Otherwise the future of writing was in new technical methods" (20 June 1939; CtY: MSS Survey Za McAlmon).
8 Tiepolo.
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
16/6/39
dear George
Thanks for 200 fr.
Let me have P. S. back when you can.
1
Paris
11 me tarde de le mettre en morceaux.
Had a walk yesterday with Brian round about Dampierre &
2
APCS; 1 leaf, 1 side; ink smudged; "Langeais - La Maison de Rabelais"; to George Reavey, 7 Great Ormond Street, LONDON. W. C. 1; pm 16-6-39, Paris; TxU.
666
Lemay. And learned that sin was a form of non being. Sam
26 September 1939, George and Gwynedd Reavey
1 SBreferstohispoem,orpoems,"PetitSot,"senttoReaveyafter28February1939; SB indicates that he had received the manuscript of "Petit Sot" in his letter to Reavey written before 7 July 1939 (TxU).
"II me tarde de le mettre en morceaux" (I can't wait to tear it to pieces).
2 Brian Coffey reported their conversation to Robert McAlmon (see 14 June 1939, n. 7).
GEORGE AND GWYNEDD REAVEY LONDON
26/9/39 6 Rue des Favorites Paris 15
dear George & Gwynedd
I saw Eva Tone yesterday evening and gave her your message
as well as I could remember it. She seemed to be au courant. She
had been in Calvados with friends (including the wife of the
Doctor with Italian name), hoping to stay there during the alter­
1
Hague back to rejoin Lisl at Cagnes, where they both are at
present. Apparently things did not turn out in Holland as he
had hoped, & the Colonial patron did the dirty. Adler is also still
at Cagnes, apparently, but I don't think he can remain there
2
with a brand new car & drinking Pernod. She is staying with
some Mrs ? Berg at Meudon, and is driving to Megeve to fix up
about her children before returning to England. She seemed to
think she would be shortly back in France.