And do you
remember
the picture of a man sitting under a fuchsia hedge, reading, with his back turned to the sea & the thunder clouds?
Samuel Beckett
waterford countyrnuseum.
org).
The relief figure in the arcades on the west gable represents an ecclesiastic blessing a kneeling warrior, armed with a long spear; this reminds SB of a line from a poem, "Plans," written by Georges Pelorson: "portant la fatigue comme une lance grave" (Bearing weariness like a serious spear) (transition 21 [March 1932] 182-183).
12 T. S. Eliot,Dante(London:FaberandFaber,1929).
Giovanni Boccaccio, La Vita di Dante (c. 1348 - 1373).
Although Florentine artist Taddeo Gaddi (1290-1366), a pupil of Giotto, created
many of the frescos in Santa Croce in Florence, Leonardo Bruni (1369-1444) does not
532
name him as the artist in his La vita di Dante (c. 1436): "La effigie sua propria si vede nella chiesa di Santa Croce, quasi a mezzo della chiesa, dalla mano sinistra andando verso ! 'altar maggiore, ed e ritratta al naturale ottimamente per dipintore perfetto de! tempo suo. " ("His portrait may be seen in Santa Croce, near the centre of the church, on the left hand as you approach the high altar, a most faithful painting by an excellent artist of that time") (Leonardo Bruni, Le vite di Dante e del Petrarca, ed. Antonio Lanza [Rome: Archivio Guido Izzi. 1987] 45; James Robinson Smith, tr. The Earliest Lives of Dante: Translated from the Italian of Giovanni Boccacdo and Leonardo Bruni Aretino. Yale Studies in English [New York: Holt, 1901; rpt. New York: Russell and Russell. 1968] 90).
A fifteenth-century copy of the lost fresco portrait of Dante can be found in the Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence, Banco Rari 215, Ms. Palantino 320/ f. II recto (Bernhard Degenhart and Annegrit Schmitt, Corpus der Italienischen Zeichnungen, 1300-1450 [Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1968], II, 282-284, n. 186, and IV, 205c; Frank Jewett Mather. Jr. , The Portraits of Dante: Compared with the Measurements of his Skull and Reclassified [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1921] frontispiece, 11-18).
4 August 1937, Reavey
13 CharlesPrentice.
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
Aug 4! ! ! 1937 dear George
0 Doubleday Doran
Less OXY than moron
You've a mind like a whore on A trip to Bundoran1
6 Clare St Dublin
The Johnson thing has gone away to be dyed. I mean the idea of it. For nothing had been degraded to paper. I have been too tired.
Hope you enjoyed every moment of your trip. And that I shall see you both soon. Denis very pleased with his advance copy. 2 Herewith a last flicker. Place it if you can. Seldom in a woman. Never in a man. 3
533
4 August 1937, Reavey
Love to Gwynedd4 Ever
Sam-
ALS: 1 leaf, 1 side: no enclosure is extant; TxU.
1 MurphywastobesenttoDoubledayDoran(see14April1937,n. 2;27July1937). Bundoran, a seaside resort in Co. Donegal.
This verse appears, with variations, in SB's letter to Mary Manning Howe after 10 December 1937; it is cited as from a letter of 6 August 1937 in Bair, Samuel Beckett, 262 with variations from the text as written; the verse as found in Bair is reprinted in Eoin O'Brien, The Beckett Country, 308.
2 GeorgeandGwyneddReaveyhadbeenontheirhoneymoon.
Denis Devlin's collection of poetry Intercessions was published on 15 October by Reavey's Europa Press.
3 Althoughaverseisattheheadoftheletter,itisprobablethatthe"lastflicker" refers to another piece of writing, possibly "Whiting," which was enclosed (there is a slight rust mark from a paper clip at the upper right margin of the letter).
Beckett plays upon, among other things, a popular verse of the time:
Patience is a virtue Possess it if you can Found seldom in a woman Never in a man.
4 SBhabituallywritesGwyneddReavey'snameas"Gwynned. "Thismispellingof her name will be silently corrected throughout. When SB correctly spells her name, this is noted.
CISSIE SINCLAIR
SOUTHAMPTON, EN ROUTE TO SOUTH AFRICA
14! 1! [August 1937] Gresham Hotel Dublin
dearest Cissie
[. . . ]
I was glad to get your letter this morning. I wanted you to think of me sometimes when you had a drink. How else would I render it likely? Have many.
534
At least I am escaped from Cooldrinagh, the Liebespaar &
Molly. All the presents pouring in, a gong this morning so
terrible, the impediments of detached domesticities, the circle
closing round. How much freer & liebesfiihiger (wenn es darauf
1
I saw Ilse again but she was "korperlich nicht ganz auf der Hohe". We all know what that means. So we conversed, yes really conversed. Hans had rung up inviting her to dine. She declined. Motze [for Motz) had been out. 2 It is something very close to disgust, nausea, & of course she feels it. Soon it will be over.
I can't work. I have not made a pretence of working for a month. Given up even the preoccupied look & the de quoi
3
I had a letter from Tom by the same post as yours. He is
writing about Jack Yeats, inspired apparently by some Constable
exhibition & a chance remark ofmine about the Watteauishness
ofwhat he has been doing lately. Every Thursday there seems to
4
14 {August 1937), Cissie Sinclair
[an]kommt! ), furnished lodgings & no possessions. To be welded together with gongs and tea-trolleys, the bars against the sky, how hopeless. Is that what "home" means for all women, solid furniture & not to be overlooked, or is there another sense of home in some of them, or are there some who don't want a home, who have had enough of that?
ecrire. IflgotthejobinCapeTownIdon'tthinkI'dholditfor a fortnight. It would be a degradation if the terms of reference had not shrivelled up. I always see the physical crisis just round the corner. It would solve perhaps the worst ofwhat remains to be solved, clarify the problem anyway, which I suppose is the best solution we can hope for.
be something to prevent me going in to see him. I suppose I don't want to see him. Watteau put in busts and urns, I suppose to suggest the inorganism of the organic - all his people are mineral in the end, without possibility of being added to or taken from, pure inorganic juxtapositions - but Jack Yeats
535
14 {August 1937}, Cissie Sinclair
does not even need to do that. The way he puts down a man's head & a woman's head side by side, or face to face, is terrifying, two irreducible singlenesses & the impassable immensity between. I suppose that is what gives the stillness to his pictures, as though the convention were suddenly sus pended, the convention & performance of love & hate, joy & pain, giving & being given, taking & being taken. A kind of petrified insight into one's ultimate hard irreducible inorganic singleness. All handled with the dispassionate acceptance that is beyond tragedy. I always feel Watteau to be a tragic genius. i. e. there is pity in him for the world as he sees it. But I find no pity, i. e. no tragedy in Yeats. Not even sympathy. Simply perception & dispassion. Even personally he is rather inhuman, or haven't you felt it?
Perhaps the literary value of this letter & so if the worst comes to the worst (don't misunderstand me) its marketable interest would be promoted by a few lines of verse. You may find them trivial & unpleasant; there seemed no point to me in beautifying them, or making them less direct in the fashionable manner. They came just as they are here.
WHITING
Offer it up plank it down
Golgotha was only the potegg
cancer angina it is all one to us
cough up your T. B. don't be stingy
no trifle is too trifling not even a thrombus anything venereal is especially welcome
that old toga virilis in the mothballs
don't be sentimental you won't be wanting it again send it along we'll put it in the pot with the rest with your love requited & unrequited
536
the things taken too late the things taken too soon the spirit aching bullock's scrotum
you won't cure it ifyou can't endure it
it is you it equals you any fool has to pity you
so parcel up the whole issue & send it along
the whole misery diagnosed undiagnosed misdiagnosed get your friends to do the same we'll make use of it
we'll make sense ofit we'll put it in the pot with the rest it all boils down to blood oflamb5
[. . . ]
ALS; 4 leaves, 8 sides; letterhead; Sinclair. Dating: SB's letter to Thomas McGreevy, 14 August 1937, encloses TMS of the same poem (with two minor variants); WHITTNG was published as "Ooftish" (see n. 6 below). SB's letter to McGreevy refers to the poem in similar words: "The enclosed you will probably find merely disagree ably trivial" and "I see no point in making it less direct or fiddling about with it. It came straight the way it is. "
1 SB'scousinMollyRoewasvisitingCooldrinaghwherepreparationswerebeing made for Frank Beckett's marriage; a reception and viewing of gifts took place at Cooldrinagh on 23 August, and the wedding on 25 August.
"Liebespaar" (lovers). "Liebesfahiger (wenn es darauf [an]kommt! ") (more capable of loving [when it matters]).
SB expands in this vein to Thomas McGreevy, 23 August 1937:
Watching the presents come along has been painful. The awful unconscious social [c]ynicism that knows that what the relationship comes down to in the end is Gongs & tea-trolleys, that without them there is no "together". Till it seems almost a law of marriage that the human personal element should be smothered out ofexistence from the word go, reduced to a mere occasion for goodhousekeeping&homechat. Theeggcupinthepieofdomesticsolidity. How much freer one would be to develop the spiritual thing, or even the physical thing, or to keep them alive, or to bring them together into one, that wd. be neither cordial fucking nor fucking cordiality, in the meanest of bed sitting rooms, where at least one owned nothing, i. e. was owned by nothing, than among the gongs & tea-trolleys, booming & trundling you out of
537
14 {August 1937}, Cissie Sinclair
Love ever Write often dein Sam6
14 {August 1937}, Cissie Sinclair
a relation into a condition. Or is it that when you grow up you stop talking about relationships - the bare unmitigated undeserved spiritual & physical commerce between 2 human beings & thank God if you can achieve the egg cup in the pie? Quoi qu'il en soit, it is horrible to see how society takes over at the least hint of a fresh social node of growth. Neither of them wants all this hullabaloo with presents & a reception, they would both have really pre ferred to do without the presents if they could have been spared the fuss. & yet they submit to it. (TCD, MS 10402/133)
"Quoi qu'il en soit" (whatever may be the case).
2 Ilse Starcke (n. d. ) was the sister of Heiner Starcke; Heiner had been unofficially engaged to Peggy Sinclair when Peggy died of tuberculosis in the Starcke family apartment in Bad Wildungen in 1933 (24 July 1996, Morris Sinclair). Heiner and Ilse were visiting Dublin.
"K6rperlich nicht ganz auf der H6he" (physically not up to it).
Austrian-born Jewish physicist Hans Motz (1909-1987) earned a Master of Science in 1935 from Trinity College Dublin.
3 "Dequoiecrire"(thewherewithaltowrite).
4 In a letter to McGreevy, a fragment [before 23 July 1937], SB wrote: "JBY gets Watteauer & Watteauer. The latest is entitled Boucicault & Bianconi, separated by a waterfall, in a glade by moonlight" (In Memory of Boudcault and Bianconi; Pyle 498; NG! 4206; TCD MS 10402/129). In his study Jack B. Yeats, McGreevy took up this state ment by SB:
A few months ago Samuel Beckett wrote me that he had been looking at some recent works by Jack Yeats. "He grows Watteauer and Watteauer. " [. . . ] the association held its own in my mind and when I had got over the surprise of having to co-relate the actual images which the works of the two painters had left in my memory, I found myself establishing points of similarity, not in their techniques but in their human approach. (MacGreevy,Jack B. Yeats, 14-15)
Thursday was Jack Yeats's "at-home" evening.
5 SB'spoem"Whiting"wasalsoenclosedin14August1937toMcGreevy,withonly slight variations: line 1 in this letter reads "Offer" whereas when enclosed to McGreevy it reads "offer"; line 10 in this letter reads "requited & unrequited," whereas, when enclosed to McGreevy it reads "requited and unrequited. " The changes in the poem sent to McGreevy were retained in the poem when published as "Ooftish" in transition 27 (April-May 1938) 33.
6 "Dein"(your).
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
14! ! ! August 37
538
Foxrock [Co. Dublin]
14 August 1937, McGreevy
Dear Tom
I used to pretend to be working at something, going about
with the preoccupied look & de quoi ecrire, but I really don't any more. I had the Johnson thing fairly clear in my mind, but with
1
Frank came out ofthe home this day week and bathing him,
driving him about, dressing him & so on has filled some of my
time. He is almost quite well again & will not, as he feared he
might, have to postpone his wedding on 25th inst. The honey
moon stands also, motoring in Scotland. I think they are think
ing also of crossing to the Hebrides. Which reminds me I must
give him the Dr's Western Isles. He seems very happy & serene
2
Cissie & family left Wednesday morning. I drove them to the
boat. I had a letter this morning from Southampton, all having
gone well. In about another month I shall realize they are gone.
The last 3 mornings I have been in the Gallery. They have a
big ugly new Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, the Finding of
Cyrus, very bad Rubens indeed, whereas the Elijah invoking
fire (do you remember it? ) seems to me fairly good Rubens.
Furlong seems to have a passion for the considered enormities
3
The Paris Bordone Portrait is really superb, nearly as good as the
lovely one in Munich - more reticent - but I don't understand
how they saddle him with the St. George. The big Oliverio has
disappeared. The 2 big Moretto Saints were looking marvellous
4
539
notthinkingaboutitithasgoneobscureagain. Perhapsitgets clearer elsewhere.
about it all. Your Leonardo came & he was very pleased.
oftheSettecento. ThebigPeruginoisbackagain,overcleaned.
also. I think he must have looked hard at the Durer Apostles. How I wish we could have a few hours together in the newly hung Italian rooms. You would get a shock & here & there the pleasure of something for the first time. Of course the Dutch
14 August 1937, McGreevy
pictures are to all intents & purposes lost to the Gallery. 5 But that wd. not trouble you the way it does me.
There always seems something on Thursday to prevent me
6
pathy & antipathy, meeting & parting, joy & sorrow.
I am so glad it went well with Geoffrey. He owes me I don't know how many letters. I had a card from George & Gwynedd
from Florence.
540
fromgoingtoseeJBY. WhatIfeelhegetssowell,dispassion ately, not tragically like Watteau, is the heterogeneity ofnature & the human denizens, the unalterable alienness of the 2 phe nomena, the 2 solitudes, or the solitude & the loneliness, the lone liness in solitude, the impassable immensity between the solitude that cannot quicken to loneliness & the loneliness that cannot lapse into solitude. There is nothing of the kind in Constable, the landscape shelters or threatens or serves or destroys, his nature is really infected with "spirit", ultimately as humanised & romantic as Turner's was & Claude's was not & Cezanne's was not. 7 God knows it doesn't take much sensitiveness to feel that in Ireland, a nature almost as inhumanly inorganic as a stage set. And perhaps that is the final quale of Jack Yeats's painting, a sense of the ultimate inorganism of everything. Watteau stressed it with busts & urns, his people are mineral in the end. A painting of pure inorganic juxtapositions, where nothing can be taken or given & there is no possibility of change or exchange. I find something terrifying for example in the way Yeats puts down a man's head & a woman's head side by side, or face to face, the awful acceptance of 2 entities that will never mingle.
And do you remember the picture of a man sitting under a fuchsia hedge, reading, with his back turned to the sea & the thunder clouds? 8 One does not realize how still his pictures are till one looks at others, almost petrified, a sudden suspension of the performance, of the convention of sym
14 August 1937, McGreevy
Are they back yet? 9
I see little of Brian & nothing of Denis. I ran into Brian one day on his way to meet the assistant state prosecutor of Washington. Yes, he send [for sent] me the poem you mention. I liked it all but the Elizabethan beginning, appallingly "Ye olde". He said it was a transcription from Florio's Montaigne. I urged him to change it. I want to see Denis to arrange about the reviews of his poems. I raised the wind & sent George the price of 3 copies. Nothing so far. 10
The enclosed you will probably find merely disagreeably
11
trivial.
with it. It came straight the way it is.
I see no point in making it less direct or fiddling about
God love thee. Write again soon.
Can you not cut out the Swiss trip & come over. Ever
Sam
If you see Charles give him my love & tell him I'm writing-12
ALS; 3 leaves, 5 sides; TMS enclosure of"Whiting," 1 leaf, 1 side (see n. 11, below); TCD, MS 10402/131. Although ruled out by internal evidence, this enclosure is placed with TCD, MS 10402/113.
1 "Dequoiecrire"(thewherewithaltowrite).
2 FrankBecketthadinjuredhishand;hisweddingwasplannedfor25August1937. Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775).
Paul Valery, Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vind, tr. Thomas McGreevy
(London: J. Rodker, 1929).
3 Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609-1664), Shepherdess Finding the Infant Cyrus (NG! 994). Elijah Invoking, by Prayer, the Sacred Fire from Heaven (NG! 357) was attributed to Castiglione in the 1932 catalogue of the National Gallery of Ireland, but later was given to Giacinto Diano (1731-1804); it was identified from 1956 as The Dedication ofthe Temple atJerusalem (National Gallery ofIreland: Catalogue ofthe Oil Pictures in the General Collection [1932] 18; Dr. Marie Bourke, Keeper, National Gallery oflreland, 16 October 1998).
4 Perugino'sPieta(NG! 942)hadbeencleanedandrestoredinVienna(see17July [1936], n. 6).
541
14 August 1937, McGreevy
SB compares Portrait ofa Man (NG! 779) by Paris Bordone (1500-1571) to his Portrait of a Man in Munich (Alte Pinakothek 512). St. George and the Dragon (NG! 779) is attributed to Bordone by the National Gallery ofIreland.
The Virgin and Child Enthroned between Angels (NG! 480) is the larger of the two paintings in the National Gallery ofIreland by Venetian painter Alessandro Oliverio (fl. 1532-1544), it appears under his name in National Gallery of Ireland: Catalogue of the Oil Pictures in the General Collection (1932), but thereafter is entitled Madonna and Child, Enthroned between Angels and given to the Venetian School (National Gallery of Ireland: Catalogue of Pictures of the Italian Schools [Dublin: Stationery Office, (1956)] 75-76).
Saint Bartholomew (NG! 80) and Saint John the Evangelist (NG! 78) were attributed to Alessandro Bonvicino Moretto (ne c. 1498-1554) in National Gallery ofIreland: Catalogue of the Oil Pictures in the General Collection (1932); however, these paintings were later reattributed to II Talpino (ne Enea Salmeggia, c. 1565-1626), School of Bergamo. SB invokes Albrecht Diirer's St. John and St. Peter and St. Paul and St. Mark in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich (545 and 540).
5 Prior to Furlong's rehanging of the collection, the Dutch paintings had been hung along one wall and the Italian along another in the large hall in the gallery; afterwards, the Italian pictures were shown with greater space, and the Dutch pictures were moved from a suite of well-lit rooms to a section of the basement (Curran, "The National Gallery Revisited," 66).
6 JBYisJackB. Yeats.
7 SBreferstoJohnConstable. JosephTumer{l775-1851),ClaudeLorrain,andPaul Cezanne.
8 A Storm/ Gallshion (Pyle 477, private collection; see Pyle. Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonne ofthe Oil Paintings, I, 432).
9 GeoffreyThompson.
George and Gwynedd Reavey were on their honeymoon on the Continent.
10 Inhisletterof7July[1937]toMcGreevy,SBmentionedthatheoftensawBrian Coffey in the library: "I take him out for a drink or a cup of coffee & he educates me"
{TCD, MS 10402/128).
Denis Devlin.
The Assistant State Prosecutor ofWashington has not been identified, nor has the
poem that Coffey had written that was based on Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Montaigne Done into English, tr. John Florio, 3 vols. {1693). Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
{1533-1592); John Florio (1553-1625).
Denis Devlin's collection ofpoems Intercessions: SB to McGreevy, 4 August 1937, n. 6
and n. 7.
11 SB's poem "Whiting" was enclosed but is not reprinted here as it was also enclosed with 14 [August 1937] to Cissie Sinclair (see n. 5 ofthat letter for the two slight variations between the enclosed texts).
SB told Lawrence Harvey that the poem was stimulated by a sermon given by Canon Henry C. Dobbs, All Saints' Church, Blackrock, which also argues for its composition in August 1937 when SB was in Dublin (Harvey. Samuel Beckett, 156).
12 McGreevyplannedtoleaveon21AugusttotravelwithHesterDowdenbycarto Vienna; SB wrote to him on 25 August 1937: "Sat. evening I thought ofyou setting out
542
19 August {1937}, McGreevy
on your journey & wished a different journey for you -A short one, into the west from where you were" (TCD, MS 10402/134).
Charles Prentice. Placement ofpostscript: on three lines to right ofclosing and signature.
THOMAS McGREEVY EN ROUTE TO MUNICH
19th Aug. [1937] Foxrock [Co. Dublin]
Dear Tom
The modem pictures are divided between the Neue
Staatsgalerie (Konigsplatz, opposite the Glyptothek) & the
1
former would hardly repay you a visit, being altogether 19th
century German, though there are excellent Bocklin's, Hans v.
Marees, Leibl's, Triibner's and Schuch's, especially of the last
named[,] 3 wonderful still-lifes - Apples, Peonies & Asparagus. 2
But the Deutsches Museum is well worth a visit for the Van Gogh
Self-Portrait, the Cezannes & Lautrecs. Also there are Renoirs,
3
When you enter the Courtyard of the Museum you tum to the
left for the library. The pictures, very provisionally hung[,] are on
the second floor. To get to the French pictures you walk straight
through from the entrance door as far as you can go. They begin
on the back wall with I think the Van Goghs. Then you recede
back through them towards the entrance door again. Then I
think ifyou are wise you go out, though elsewhere there are (or
were, before the latest purge) Munch's [for Munch's], Marc's,
Kokoschka's, two good Lehmbruck's, Barlach's, & Hodler's includ
ing the famous & I think very bad Lebensmiide, really a sentimen
4
be preferred to a morning in the Alte Pinakothek.
Library of the Deutsches Museum on the Museumsinsel. The
Courbets, I think a Matisse still life, & 4 rather dull Maillols.
talversionofDiirer'sApostles. Soaltogetherwellworthaquick look round, though it is au <liable, but not for a moment I think to
5
543
19 August {1937}, Mccreery
I had a card from Percy Ussher from Budapest, the Peasant Brueghel Altes Ehepaar. 6 I think he is now in Vienna. I hope the trip rests you. I fear you will be on the strain with Hester & bored with all the driving.
It is a great relief to me that you liked the poem. I had an
afternoon with Brian yesterday. & he liked it too. All I knew was
that it did not violate my gout as it went down. Of course I can't
7
8
ALS; 1 leaf, 2 sides; TCD, MS 10402/106. Dating: Thomas McGreevy went with Hester Dowden to Vienna: Charles Prentice to McGreevy, 24 August 1937 (TCD, MS 8092/110), and Prentice to McGreevy, 3 September 1937, addressed to Brussels acknowledging McGreevy's letter from Vienna and the news that Hester made the journey without tiring (TCD, MS 8092/111).
1 The configuration of museums in Munich: SB to Thomas McGreevy, 7 March 1937, n. 2.
ThecollectionthatSBdescribesintheLibraryoftheDeutschesMuseumonMuseum Island was a temporary display since the Deutsches Museum primarily held exhibits of science and technology (see 25 March 1937, n. 7 and n. 8).
2 SB'susageherevaries,sometimesshowingapainter'spictureswithanapostro phe (Leibl's), sometimes without (Cezannes).
Of paintings in the Neue Staatsgalerie by Swiss-German painter Arnold Bocklin (1827-1901), Hans von Man�es. Wilhelm Leib! . German painter Wilhelm Triibner (1851-1917). and Viennese painter Carl Schuch (1846-1903), SB specifically mentions Schuch's Still Life with Apples, Wine Glass, and PewterJug (8563), Peonies (8599), and Still Life with Asparagus (8907).
3 SB'snotesonthepaintingsthatinterestedhimintheLibraryoftheDeutsches Museum (at that time provisionally hung on the second floor) are in his travel diary (BIF, UoR, GD 5/f. 93, 95).
The Cezannes, particularly The Railway Cutting, as well as Van Gogh's self-portrait and his other paintings in the collection: 25 March 1937, n. 7.
Of the paintings by French artists Renoir, Jean-Desire-Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), and Henri Matisse (1869-1954) in the collection, SB specifically mentions Matisse's Still Life with Geranium (8669) (BIF, UoR, GD 5/f. 93).
In his diary, SB mentions Youth (B. 53), Flora (B. 154), Bust ofMadame Maurice Denis (B. 54), and Auguste Renoir (B. 59) by Aristide Maillol, and Portrait of Georges de Villechenon (8667) and In the Loge (8666) by Toulouse-Lautrec (BIF, UoR, GD 5/f. 95).
544
ventilate it anywhere, except perhaps in Transition. No more now. Shall write you again to Vienna.
Gute Reise & Viel Vergniigen. Love to Hester. Ever
Sam
30 August 1937, Manning Howe
4 Inhisdiary,SBmentionsMunch'sPeasantwithHorse(9037,removedas"entartet" in 1937; now, private collection) and Young Woman on the Veranda (9267; now in private collection); he notes Marc's Deer in the Reeds (9598) and Red Deer II (8923, removed as "entartet" in 1937; returned to the collection in 1940 and "ordered to be kept under 'lock and key"') (Annegret Hoberg and Isabelle Jansen, Franz Marc: The Complete Works, I, The Oil Paintings [London: Philip Wilson, 2004] 213; BIF, UoR, GD 5/f. 93).
Paintings by Kokoschka mentioned by SB in his diary were Venice (9328) and Landscape in the Dolomites (8985; now Leopold Museum, Vienna, no. 624). SB mentions two sculptures by Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1881-1919): Female Torso (B 87) and Large Kneeling Woman (on loan from Frau Lehmbruck) (Barron, ed. , "Degenerate Art": The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, 114, 292).
In his diary, SB refers to an unidentified sculpture of a shepherd, one of many by Ernst Barlach, and Barlach's sculpture The Death (B 155) (BIF, UoR, GD 5/f. 93; Carl Dietrich Carls, Ernst Barlach [New York; Frederick A. Praeger, 1969] 81. 212).
Of paintings by Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918), SB writes in his diary particularly about Die Lebensmiiden (9446) which he compares to Diirer's Apostles (see 25 March 1937, n. 9).
5 "Au<liable"(milesout).
6 ArlandUssher,whowasinBudapest,sentSBacardofAnOldCouple(nowPeasants with a Pitcher, Galerie Alter Meister, Budapest, 559); it was originally thought to be by Pieter Bruegel (here called not "the elder," but "the Peasant" to distinguish him from his sons), whose name is inscribed on the painting ("Petrvs Brvegel F. "), but it is now attributed to "a Flemish or German Master, second half of the 16th century" (Ildik6 Ember, Zsuzsa Urbach, and Annamaria Gosztola, Old Masters' Gallery: Summary Catalogue, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, II, Early Nether! andish, Dutch and Flemish Paintings [Budapest: Szepmiiveszeti Muzeum, 2000] 69).
7 SBshowedBrianCoffeythepoemthencalled"Whiting. " "Gout" (taste).
8 "GuteReise&vie! Vergniigen"(Haveagoodtripandmuchfun).
MARY MANNING HOWE BUFFALO, NEW YORK
30! ! ! Aug. 1937
Dear Mary
Cooldrinagh, Foxrock,
Co. Dublin
500 thanks for your note. And photographs. You look petil
lante. And Susan beyond good & evil.
1
545
30 August 1937, Manning Howe
No I have heard nothing from Doubledeal Doran. Reavey has been treacle mooning all over the Mediterranean with his new Welsch vase. 2 Supremely happy. They are all supremely happy. Can it be the free coition, do you think?
It gave me great pleasure to hear that I had a German girl. Do you think you could get me her name & address? Their conduct of the fore-period is unique.
I have no news at all likely to interest you. Percy is in
Vienna. McGreevy in Buda Pest. The Sinclairs on their way to
South Africa. Leventhal not seen (by me) for months. (He has
been made editor of Hermathena! ). Jack Yeats do [for ditto]. 3 I do
nothing, with as little shame as satisfaction. It is the state that
suits me best. I write the odd poem when it is there, that is the
only thing worth doing. There is an ecstasy of accidia - willless
4
in a grey tumult of idees obscures. There is an end to the temptation of light, its polite searchings & consolations. It is good for children & insects. There is an end of making up one['Js mind, like a pound of tea, an end of patting the butter of con sciousness into opinions. The real consciousness is the chaos, a grey commotion of mind, with no premises or conclusions or problems or solutions or cases or judgments. I lie for days on the floor, or in the woods, accompanied & unaccompanied, in a coenaesthesia of mind, a fullness of mental self-aesthesia that is entirely useless. The monad without the conflict, lightless & darkless. I used to pretend to work, I do so no longer. I used to dig about in the mental sand for the lugworms of likes & dislikes, I do so no longer. The lugworms of understanding.
Do not envy me, do not pity me.
I saw the Gilmores twice. Was at a party there one night. Arrived with Sean O'Sullivan, full of whiskey. All the usual, general bathe in pool towards morning. Then went one
546
afternoon alone and drove them into town. The Reddins were invited to the party but Kenneth wouldn't go & wouldn't let Norahgo. 5
The Gilmores are on the right track. After a bit one wouldn't mind the filth & discomfort. One would want less & less. That is the right direction.
The relief figure in the arcades on the west gable represents an ecclesiastic blessing a kneeling warrior, armed with a long spear; this reminds SB of a line from a poem, "Plans," written by Georges Pelorson: "portant la fatigue comme une lance grave" (Bearing weariness like a serious spear) (transition 21 [March 1932] 182-183).
12 T. S. Eliot,Dante(London:FaberandFaber,1929).
Giovanni Boccaccio, La Vita di Dante (c. 1348 - 1373).
Although Florentine artist Taddeo Gaddi (1290-1366), a pupil of Giotto, created
many of the frescos in Santa Croce in Florence, Leonardo Bruni (1369-1444) does not
532
name him as the artist in his La vita di Dante (c. 1436): "La effigie sua propria si vede nella chiesa di Santa Croce, quasi a mezzo della chiesa, dalla mano sinistra andando verso ! 'altar maggiore, ed e ritratta al naturale ottimamente per dipintore perfetto de! tempo suo. " ("His portrait may be seen in Santa Croce, near the centre of the church, on the left hand as you approach the high altar, a most faithful painting by an excellent artist of that time") (Leonardo Bruni, Le vite di Dante e del Petrarca, ed. Antonio Lanza [Rome: Archivio Guido Izzi. 1987] 45; James Robinson Smith, tr. The Earliest Lives of Dante: Translated from the Italian of Giovanni Boccacdo and Leonardo Bruni Aretino. Yale Studies in English [New York: Holt, 1901; rpt. New York: Russell and Russell. 1968] 90).
A fifteenth-century copy of the lost fresco portrait of Dante can be found in the Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence, Banco Rari 215, Ms. Palantino 320/ f. II recto (Bernhard Degenhart and Annegrit Schmitt, Corpus der Italienischen Zeichnungen, 1300-1450 [Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1968], II, 282-284, n. 186, and IV, 205c; Frank Jewett Mather. Jr. , The Portraits of Dante: Compared with the Measurements of his Skull and Reclassified [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1921] frontispiece, 11-18).
4 August 1937, Reavey
13 CharlesPrentice.
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
Aug 4! ! ! 1937 dear George
0 Doubleday Doran
Less OXY than moron
You've a mind like a whore on A trip to Bundoran1
6 Clare St Dublin
The Johnson thing has gone away to be dyed. I mean the idea of it. For nothing had been degraded to paper. I have been too tired.
Hope you enjoyed every moment of your trip. And that I shall see you both soon. Denis very pleased with his advance copy. 2 Herewith a last flicker. Place it if you can. Seldom in a woman. Never in a man. 3
533
4 August 1937, Reavey
Love to Gwynedd4 Ever
Sam-
ALS: 1 leaf, 1 side: no enclosure is extant; TxU.
1 MurphywastobesenttoDoubledayDoran(see14April1937,n. 2;27July1937). Bundoran, a seaside resort in Co. Donegal.
This verse appears, with variations, in SB's letter to Mary Manning Howe after 10 December 1937; it is cited as from a letter of 6 August 1937 in Bair, Samuel Beckett, 262 with variations from the text as written; the verse as found in Bair is reprinted in Eoin O'Brien, The Beckett Country, 308.
2 GeorgeandGwyneddReaveyhadbeenontheirhoneymoon.
Denis Devlin's collection of poetry Intercessions was published on 15 October by Reavey's Europa Press.
3 Althoughaverseisattheheadoftheletter,itisprobablethatthe"lastflicker" refers to another piece of writing, possibly "Whiting," which was enclosed (there is a slight rust mark from a paper clip at the upper right margin of the letter).
Beckett plays upon, among other things, a popular verse of the time:
Patience is a virtue Possess it if you can Found seldom in a woman Never in a man.
4 SBhabituallywritesGwyneddReavey'snameas"Gwynned. "Thismispellingof her name will be silently corrected throughout. When SB correctly spells her name, this is noted.
CISSIE SINCLAIR
SOUTHAMPTON, EN ROUTE TO SOUTH AFRICA
14! 1! [August 1937] Gresham Hotel Dublin
dearest Cissie
[. . . ]
I was glad to get your letter this morning. I wanted you to think of me sometimes when you had a drink. How else would I render it likely? Have many.
534
At least I am escaped from Cooldrinagh, the Liebespaar &
Molly. All the presents pouring in, a gong this morning so
terrible, the impediments of detached domesticities, the circle
closing round. How much freer & liebesfiihiger (wenn es darauf
1
I saw Ilse again but she was "korperlich nicht ganz auf der Hohe". We all know what that means. So we conversed, yes really conversed. Hans had rung up inviting her to dine. She declined. Motze [for Motz) had been out. 2 It is something very close to disgust, nausea, & of course she feels it. Soon it will be over.
I can't work. I have not made a pretence of working for a month. Given up even the preoccupied look & the de quoi
3
I had a letter from Tom by the same post as yours. He is
writing about Jack Yeats, inspired apparently by some Constable
exhibition & a chance remark ofmine about the Watteauishness
ofwhat he has been doing lately. Every Thursday there seems to
4
14 {August 1937), Cissie Sinclair
[an]kommt! ), furnished lodgings & no possessions. To be welded together with gongs and tea-trolleys, the bars against the sky, how hopeless. Is that what "home" means for all women, solid furniture & not to be overlooked, or is there another sense of home in some of them, or are there some who don't want a home, who have had enough of that?
ecrire. IflgotthejobinCapeTownIdon'tthinkI'dholditfor a fortnight. It would be a degradation if the terms of reference had not shrivelled up. I always see the physical crisis just round the corner. It would solve perhaps the worst ofwhat remains to be solved, clarify the problem anyway, which I suppose is the best solution we can hope for.
be something to prevent me going in to see him. I suppose I don't want to see him. Watteau put in busts and urns, I suppose to suggest the inorganism of the organic - all his people are mineral in the end, without possibility of being added to or taken from, pure inorganic juxtapositions - but Jack Yeats
535
14 {August 1937}, Cissie Sinclair
does not even need to do that. The way he puts down a man's head & a woman's head side by side, or face to face, is terrifying, two irreducible singlenesses & the impassable immensity between. I suppose that is what gives the stillness to his pictures, as though the convention were suddenly sus pended, the convention & performance of love & hate, joy & pain, giving & being given, taking & being taken. A kind of petrified insight into one's ultimate hard irreducible inorganic singleness. All handled with the dispassionate acceptance that is beyond tragedy. I always feel Watteau to be a tragic genius. i. e. there is pity in him for the world as he sees it. But I find no pity, i. e. no tragedy in Yeats. Not even sympathy. Simply perception & dispassion. Even personally he is rather inhuman, or haven't you felt it?
Perhaps the literary value of this letter & so if the worst comes to the worst (don't misunderstand me) its marketable interest would be promoted by a few lines of verse. You may find them trivial & unpleasant; there seemed no point to me in beautifying them, or making them less direct in the fashionable manner. They came just as they are here.
WHITING
Offer it up plank it down
Golgotha was only the potegg
cancer angina it is all one to us
cough up your T. B. don't be stingy
no trifle is too trifling not even a thrombus anything venereal is especially welcome
that old toga virilis in the mothballs
don't be sentimental you won't be wanting it again send it along we'll put it in the pot with the rest with your love requited & unrequited
536
the things taken too late the things taken too soon the spirit aching bullock's scrotum
you won't cure it ifyou can't endure it
it is you it equals you any fool has to pity you
so parcel up the whole issue & send it along
the whole misery diagnosed undiagnosed misdiagnosed get your friends to do the same we'll make use of it
we'll make sense ofit we'll put it in the pot with the rest it all boils down to blood oflamb5
[. . . ]
ALS; 4 leaves, 8 sides; letterhead; Sinclair. Dating: SB's letter to Thomas McGreevy, 14 August 1937, encloses TMS of the same poem (with two minor variants); WHITTNG was published as "Ooftish" (see n. 6 below). SB's letter to McGreevy refers to the poem in similar words: "The enclosed you will probably find merely disagree ably trivial" and "I see no point in making it less direct or fiddling about with it. It came straight the way it is. "
1 SB'scousinMollyRoewasvisitingCooldrinaghwherepreparationswerebeing made for Frank Beckett's marriage; a reception and viewing of gifts took place at Cooldrinagh on 23 August, and the wedding on 25 August.
"Liebespaar" (lovers). "Liebesfahiger (wenn es darauf [an]kommt! ") (more capable of loving [when it matters]).
SB expands in this vein to Thomas McGreevy, 23 August 1937:
Watching the presents come along has been painful. The awful unconscious social [c]ynicism that knows that what the relationship comes down to in the end is Gongs & tea-trolleys, that without them there is no "together". Till it seems almost a law of marriage that the human personal element should be smothered out ofexistence from the word go, reduced to a mere occasion for goodhousekeeping&homechat. Theeggcupinthepieofdomesticsolidity. How much freer one would be to develop the spiritual thing, or even the physical thing, or to keep them alive, or to bring them together into one, that wd. be neither cordial fucking nor fucking cordiality, in the meanest of bed sitting rooms, where at least one owned nothing, i. e. was owned by nothing, than among the gongs & tea-trolleys, booming & trundling you out of
537
14 {August 1937}, Cissie Sinclair
Love ever Write often dein Sam6
14 {August 1937}, Cissie Sinclair
a relation into a condition. Or is it that when you grow up you stop talking about relationships - the bare unmitigated undeserved spiritual & physical commerce between 2 human beings & thank God if you can achieve the egg cup in the pie? Quoi qu'il en soit, it is horrible to see how society takes over at the least hint of a fresh social node of growth. Neither of them wants all this hullabaloo with presents & a reception, they would both have really pre ferred to do without the presents if they could have been spared the fuss. & yet they submit to it. (TCD, MS 10402/133)
"Quoi qu'il en soit" (whatever may be the case).
2 Ilse Starcke (n. d. ) was the sister of Heiner Starcke; Heiner had been unofficially engaged to Peggy Sinclair when Peggy died of tuberculosis in the Starcke family apartment in Bad Wildungen in 1933 (24 July 1996, Morris Sinclair). Heiner and Ilse were visiting Dublin.
"K6rperlich nicht ganz auf der H6he" (physically not up to it).
Austrian-born Jewish physicist Hans Motz (1909-1987) earned a Master of Science in 1935 from Trinity College Dublin.
3 "Dequoiecrire"(thewherewithaltowrite).
4 In a letter to McGreevy, a fragment [before 23 July 1937], SB wrote: "JBY gets Watteauer & Watteauer. The latest is entitled Boucicault & Bianconi, separated by a waterfall, in a glade by moonlight" (In Memory of Boudcault and Bianconi; Pyle 498; NG! 4206; TCD MS 10402/129). In his study Jack B. Yeats, McGreevy took up this state ment by SB:
A few months ago Samuel Beckett wrote me that he had been looking at some recent works by Jack Yeats. "He grows Watteauer and Watteauer. " [. . . ] the association held its own in my mind and when I had got over the surprise of having to co-relate the actual images which the works of the two painters had left in my memory, I found myself establishing points of similarity, not in their techniques but in their human approach. (MacGreevy,Jack B. Yeats, 14-15)
Thursday was Jack Yeats's "at-home" evening.
5 SB'spoem"Whiting"wasalsoenclosedin14August1937toMcGreevy,withonly slight variations: line 1 in this letter reads "Offer" whereas when enclosed to McGreevy it reads "offer"; line 10 in this letter reads "requited & unrequited," whereas, when enclosed to McGreevy it reads "requited and unrequited. " The changes in the poem sent to McGreevy were retained in the poem when published as "Ooftish" in transition 27 (April-May 1938) 33.
6 "Dein"(your).
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
14! ! ! August 37
538
Foxrock [Co. Dublin]
14 August 1937, McGreevy
Dear Tom
I used to pretend to be working at something, going about
with the preoccupied look & de quoi ecrire, but I really don't any more. I had the Johnson thing fairly clear in my mind, but with
1
Frank came out ofthe home this day week and bathing him,
driving him about, dressing him & so on has filled some of my
time. He is almost quite well again & will not, as he feared he
might, have to postpone his wedding on 25th inst. The honey
moon stands also, motoring in Scotland. I think they are think
ing also of crossing to the Hebrides. Which reminds me I must
give him the Dr's Western Isles. He seems very happy & serene
2
Cissie & family left Wednesday morning. I drove them to the
boat. I had a letter this morning from Southampton, all having
gone well. In about another month I shall realize they are gone.
The last 3 mornings I have been in the Gallery. They have a
big ugly new Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, the Finding of
Cyrus, very bad Rubens indeed, whereas the Elijah invoking
fire (do you remember it? ) seems to me fairly good Rubens.
Furlong seems to have a passion for the considered enormities
3
The Paris Bordone Portrait is really superb, nearly as good as the
lovely one in Munich - more reticent - but I don't understand
how they saddle him with the St. George. The big Oliverio has
disappeared. The 2 big Moretto Saints were looking marvellous
4
539
notthinkingaboutitithasgoneobscureagain. Perhapsitgets clearer elsewhere.
about it all. Your Leonardo came & he was very pleased.
oftheSettecento. ThebigPeruginoisbackagain,overcleaned.
also. I think he must have looked hard at the Durer Apostles. How I wish we could have a few hours together in the newly hung Italian rooms. You would get a shock & here & there the pleasure of something for the first time. Of course the Dutch
14 August 1937, McGreevy
pictures are to all intents & purposes lost to the Gallery. 5 But that wd. not trouble you the way it does me.
There always seems something on Thursday to prevent me
6
pathy & antipathy, meeting & parting, joy & sorrow.
I am so glad it went well with Geoffrey. He owes me I don't know how many letters. I had a card from George & Gwynedd
from Florence.
540
fromgoingtoseeJBY. WhatIfeelhegetssowell,dispassion ately, not tragically like Watteau, is the heterogeneity ofnature & the human denizens, the unalterable alienness of the 2 phe nomena, the 2 solitudes, or the solitude & the loneliness, the lone liness in solitude, the impassable immensity between the solitude that cannot quicken to loneliness & the loneliness that cannot lapse into solitude. There is nothing of the kind in Constable, the landscape shelters or threatens or serves or destroys, his nature is really infected with "spirit", ultimately as humanised & romantic as Turner's was & Claude's was not & Cezanne's was not. 7 God knows it doesn't take much sensitiveness to feel that in Ireland, a nature almost as inhumanly inorganic as a stage set. And perhaps that is the final quale of Jack Yeats's painting, a sense of the ultimate inorganism of everything. Watteau stressed it with busts & urns, his people are mineral in the end. A painting of pure inorganic juxtapositions, where nothing can be taken or given & there is no possibility of change or exchange. I find something terrifying for example in the way Yeats puts down a man's head & a woman's head side by side, or face to face, the awful acceptance of 2 entities that will never mingle.
And do you remember the picture of a man sitting under a fuchsia hedge, reading, with his back turned to the sea & the thunder clouds? 8 One does not realize how still his pictures are till one looks at others, almost petrified, a sudden suspension of the performance, of the convention of sym
14 August 1937, McGreevy
Are they back yet? 9
I see little of Brian & nothing of Denis. I ran into Brian one day on his way to meet the assistant state prosecutor of Washington. Yes, he send [for sent] me the poem you mention. I liked it all but the Elizabethan beginning, appallingly "Ye olde". He said it was a transcription from Florio's Montaigne. I urged him to change it. I want to see Denis to arrange about the reviews of his poems. I raised the wind & sent George the price of 3 copies. Nothing so far. 10
The enclosed you will probably find merely disagreeably
11
trivial.
with it. It came straight the way it is.
I see no point in making it less direct or fiddling about
God love thee. Write again soon.
Can you not cut out the Swiss trip & come over. Ever
Sam
If you see Charles give him my love & tell him I'm writing-12
ALS; 3 leaves, 5 sides; TMS enclosure of"Whiting," 1 leaf, 1 side (see n. 11, below); TCD, MS 10402/131. Although ruled out by internal evidence, this enclosure is placed with TCD, MS 10402/113.
1 "Dequoiecrire"(thewherewithaltowrite).
2 FrankBecketthadinjuredhishand;hisweddingwasplannedfor25August1937. Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775).
Paul Valery, Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vind, tr. Thomas McGreevy
(London: J. Rodker, 1929).
3 Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609-1664), Shepherdess Finding the Infant Cyrus (NG! 994). Elijah Invoking, by Prayer, the Sacred Fire from Heaven (NG! 357) was attributed to Castiglione in the 1932 catalogue of the National Gallery of Ireland, but later was given to Giacinto Diano (1731-1804); it was identified from 1956 as The Dedication ofthe Temple atJerusalem (National Gallery ofIreland: Catalogue ofthe Oil Pictures in the General Collection [1932] 18; Dr. Marie Bourke, Keeper, National Gallery oflreland, 16 October 1998).
4 Perugino'sPieta(NG! 942)hadbeencleanedandrestoredinVienna(see17July [1936], n. 6).
541
14 August 1937, McGreevy
SB compares Portrait ofa Man (NG! 779) by Paris Bordone (1500-1571) to his Portrait of a Man in Munich (Alte Pinakothek 512). St. George and the Dragon (NG! 779) is attributed to Bordone by the National Gallery ofIreland.
The Virgin and Child Enthroned between Angels (NG! 480) is the larger of the two paintings in the National Gallery ofIreland by Venetian painter Alessandro Oliverio (fl. 1532-1544), it appears under his name in National Gallery of Ireland: Catalogue of the Oil Pictures in the General Collection (1932), but thereafter is entitled Madonna and Child, Enthroned between Angels and given to the Venetian School (National Gallery of Ireland: Catalogue of Pictures of the Italian Schools [Dublin: Stationery Office, (1956)] 75-76).
Saint Bartholomew (NG! 80) and Saint John the Evangelist (NG! 78) were attributed to Alessandro Bonvicino Moretto (ne c. 1498-1554) in National Gallery ofIreland: Catalogue of the Oil Pictures in the General Collection (1932); however, these paintings were later reattributed to II Talpino (ne Enea Salmeggia, c. 1565-1626), School of Bergamo. SB invokes Albrecht Diirer's St. John and St. Peter and St. Paul and St. Mark in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich (545 and 540).
5 Prior to Furlong's rehanging of the collection, the Dutch paintings had been hung along one wall and the Italian along another in the large hall in the gallery; afterwards, the Italian pictures were shown with greater space, and the Dutch pictures were moved from a suite of well-lit rooms to a section of the basement (Curran, "The National Gallery Revisited," 66).
6 JBYisJackB. Yeats.
7 SBreferstoJohnConstable. JosephTumer{l775-1851),ClaudeLorrain,andPaul Cezanne.
8 A Storm/ Gallshion (Pyle 477, private collection; see Pyle. Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonne ofthe Oil Paintings, I, 432).
9 GeoffreyThompson.
George and Gwynedd Reavey were on their honeymoon on the Continent.
10 Inhisletterof7July[1937]toMcGreevy,SBmentionedthatheoftensawBrian Coffey in the library: "I take him out for a drink or a cup of coffee & he educates me"
{TCD, MS 10402/128).
Denis Devlin.
The Assistant State Prosecutor ofWashington has not been identified, nor has the
poem that Coffey had written that was based on Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Montaigne Done into English, tr. John Florio, 3 vols. {1693). Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
{1533-1592); John Florio (1553-1625).
Denis Devlin's collection ofpoems Intercessions: SB to McGreevy, 4 August 1937, n. 6
and n. 7.
11 SB's poem "Whiting" was enclosed but is not reprinted here as it was also enclosed with 14 [August 1937] to Cissie Sinclair (see n. 5 ofthat letter for the two slight variations between the enclosed texts).
SB told Lawrence Harvey that the poem was stimulated by a sermon given by Canon Henry C. Dobbs, All Saints' Church, Blackrock, which also argues for its composition in August 1937 when SB was in Dublin (Harvey. Samuel Beckett, 156).
12 McGreevyplannedtoleaveon21AugusttotravelwithHesterDowdenbycarto Vienna; SB wrote to him on 25 August 1937: "Sat. evening I thought ofyou setting out
542
19 August {1937}, McGreevy
on your journey & wished a different journey for you -A short one, into the west from where you were" (TCD, MS 10402/134).
Charles Prentice. Placement ofpostscript: on three lines to right ofclosing and signature.
THOMAS McGREEVY EN ROUTE TO MUNICH
19th Aug. [1937] Foxrock [Co. Dublin]
Dear Tom
The modem pictures are divided between the Neue
Staatsgalerie (Konigsplatz, opposite the Glyptothek) & the
1
former would hardly repay you a visit, being altogether 19th
century German, though there are excellent Bocklin's, Hans v.
Marees, Leibl's, Triibner's and Schuch's, especially of the last
named[,] 3 wonderful still-lifes - Apples, Peonies & Asparagus. 2
But the Deutsches Museum is well worth a visit for the Van Gogh
Self-Portrait, the Cezannes & Lautrecs. Also there are Renoirs,
3
When you enter the Courtyard of the Museum you tum to the
left for the library. The pictures, very provisionally hung[,] are on
the second floor. To get to the French pictures you walk straight
through from the entrance door as far as you can go. They begin
on the back wall with I think the Van Goghs. Then you recede
back through them towards the entrance door again. Then I
think ifyou are wise you go out, though elsewhere there are (or
were, before the latest purge) Munch's [for Munch's], Marc's,
Kokoschka's, two good Lehmbruck's, Barlach's, & Hodler's includ
ing the famous & I think very bad Lebensmiide, really a sentimen
4
be preferred to a morning in the Alte Pinakothek.
Library of the Deutsches Museum on the Museumsinsel. The
Courbets, I think a Matisse still life, & 4 rather dull Maillols.
talversionofDiirer'sApostles. Soaltogetherwellworthaquick look round, though it is au <liable, but not for a moment I think to
5
543
19 August {1937}, Mccreery
I had a card from Percy Ussher from Budapest, the Peasant Brueghel Altes Ehepaar. 6 I think he is now in Vienna. I hope the trip rests you. I fear you will be on the strain with Hester & bored with all the driving.
It is a great relief to me that you liked the poem. I had an
afternoon with Brian yesterday. & he liked it too. All I knew was
that it did not violate my gout as it went down. Of course I can't
7
8
ALS; 1 leaf, 2 sides; TCD, MS 10402/106. Dating: Thomas McGreevy went with Hester Dowden to Vienna: Charles Prentice to McGreevy, 24 August 1937 (TCD, MS 8092/110), and Prentice to McGreevy, 3 September 1937, addressed to Brussels acknowledging McGreevy's letter from Vienna and the news that Hester made the journey without tiring (TCD, MS 8092/111).
1 The configuration of museums in Munich: SB to Thomas McGreevy, 7 March 1937, n. 2.
ThecollectionthatSBdescribesintheLibraryoftheDeutschesMuseumonMuseum Island was a temporary display since the Deutsches Museum primarily held exhibits of science and technology (see 25 March 1937, n. 7 and n. 8).
2 SB'susageherevaries,sometimesshowingapainter'spictureswithanapostro phe (Leibl's), sometimes without (Cezannes).
Of paintings in the Neue Staatsgalerie by Swiss-German painter Arnold Bocklin (1827-1901), Hans von Man�es. Wilhelm Leib! . German painter Wilhelm Triibner (1851-1917). and Viennese painter Carl Schuch (1846-1903), SB specifically mentions Schuch's Still Life with Apples, Wine Glass, and PewterJug (8563), Peonies (8599), and Still Life with Asparagus (8907).
3 SB'snotesonthepaintingsthatinterestedhimintheLibraryoftheDeutsches Museum (at that time provisionally hung on the second floor) are in his travel diary (BIF, UoR, GD 5/f. 93, 95).
The Cezannes, particularly The Railway Cutting, as well as Van Gogh's self-portrait and his other paintings in the collection: 25 March 1937, n. 7.
Of the paintings by French artists Renoir, Jean-Desire-Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), and Henri Matisse (1869-1954) in the collection, SB specifically mentions Matisse's Still Life with Geranium (8669) (BIF, UoR, GD 5/f. 93).
In his diary, SB mentions Youth (B. 53), Flora (B. 154), Bust ofMadame Maurice Denis (B. 54), and Auguste Renoir (B. 59) by Aristide Maillol, and Portrait of Georges de Villechenon (8667) and In the Loge (8666) by Toulouse-Lautrec (BIF, UoR, GD 5/f. 95).
544
ventilate it anywhere, except perhaps in Transition. No more now. Shall write you again to Vienna.
Gute Reise & Viel Vergniigen. Love to Hester. Ever
Sam
30 August 1937, Manning Howe
4 Inhisdiary,SBmentionsMunch'sPeasantwithHorse(9037,removedas"entartet" in 1937; now, private collection) and Young Woman on the Veranda (9267; now in private collection); he notes Marc's Deer in the Reeds (9598) and Red Deer II (8923, removed as "entartet" in 1937; returned to the collection in 1940 and "ordered to be kept under 'lock and key"') (Annegret Hoberg and Isabelle Jansen, Franz Marc: The Complete Works, I, The Oil Paintings [London: Philip Wilson, 2004] 213; BIF, UoR, GD 5/f. 93).
Paintings by Kokoschka mentioned by SB in his diary were Venice (9328) and Landscape in the Dolomites (8985; now Leopold Museum, Vienna, no. 624). SB mentions two sculptures by Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1881-1919): Female Torso (B 87) and Large Kneeling Woman (on loan from Frau Lehmbruck) (Barron, ed. , "Degenerate Art": The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, 114, 292).
In his diary, SB refers to an unidentified sculpture of a shepherd, one of many by Ernst Barlach, and Barlach's sculpture The Death (B 155) (BIF, UoR, GD 5/f. 93; Carl Dietrich Carls, Ernst Barlach [New York; Frederick A. Praeger, 1969] 81. 212).
Of paintings by Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918), SB writes in his diary particularly about Die Lebensmiiden (9446) which he compares to Diirer's Apostles (see 25 March 1937, n. 9).
5 "Au<liable"(milesout).
6 ArlandUssher,whowasinBudapest,sentSBacardofAnOldCouple(nowPeasants with a Pitcher, Galerie Alter Meister, Budapest, 559); it was originally thought to be by Pieter Bruegel (here called not "the elder," but "the Peasant" to distinguish him from his sons), whose name is inscribed on the painting ("Petrvs Brvegel F. "), but it is now attributed to "a Flemish or German Master, second half of the 16th century" (Ildik6 Ember, Zsuzsa Urbach, and Annamaria Gosztola, Old Masters' Gallery: Summary Catalogue, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, II, Early Nether! andish, Dutch and Flemish Paintings [Budapest: Szepmiiveszeti Muzeum, 2000] 69).
7 SBshowedBrianCoffeythepoemthencalled"Whiting. " "Gout" (taste).
8 "GuteReise&vie! Vergniigen"(Haveagoodtripandmuchfun).
MARY MANNING HOWE BUFFALO, NEW YORK
30! ! ! Aug. 1937
Dear Mary
Cooldrinagh, Foxrock,
Co. Dublin
500 thanks for your note. And photographs. You look petil
lante. And Susan beyond good & evil.
1
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30 August 1937, Manning Howe
No I have heard nothing from Doubledeal Doran. Reavey has been treacle mooning all over the Mediterranean with his new Welsch vase. 2 Supremely happy. They are all supremely happy. Can it be the free coition, do you think?
It gave me great pleasure to hear that I had a German girl. Do you think you could get me her name & address? Their conduct of the fore-period is unique.
I have no news at all likely to interest you. Percy is in
Vienna. McGreevy in Buda Pest. The Sinclairs on their way to
South Africa. Leventhal not seen (by me) for months. (He has
been made editor of Hermathena! ). Jack Yeats do [for ditto]. 3 I do
nothing, with as little shame as satisfaction. It is the state that
suits me best. I write the odd poem when it is there, that is the
only thing worth doing. There is an ecstasy of accidia - willless
4
in a grey tumult of idees obscures. There is an end to the temptation of light, its polite searchings & consolations. It is good for children & insects. There is an end of making up one['Js mind, like a pound of tea, an end of patting the butter of con sciousness into opinions. The real consciousness is the chaos, a grey commotion of mind, with no premises or conclusions or problems or solutions or cases or judgments. I lie for days on the floor, or in the woods, accompanied & unaccompanied, in a coenaesthesia of mind, a fullness of mental self-aesthesia that is entirely useless. The monad without the conflict, lightless & darkless. I used to pretend to work, I do so no longer. I used to dig about in the mental sand for the lugworms of likes & dislikes, I do so no longer. The lugworms of understanding.
Do not envy me, do not pity me.
I saw the Gilmores twice. Was at a party there one night. Arrived with Sean O'Sullivan, full of whiskey. All the usual, general bathe in pool towards morning. Then went one
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afternoon alone and drove them into town. The Reddins were invited to the party but Kenneth wouldn't go & wouldn't let Norahgo. 5
The Gilmores are on the right track. After a bit one wouldn't mind the filth & discomfort. One would want less & less. That is the right direction.
