D: A College Miscellany, a weekly journal
ofTrinity
College Dublin (D.
Samuel Beckett
That's the latest cardiac
feather. Fear - followed by no genitive.
O'Sullivan said Alan was in Dublin. Pas vu. Stella said that
Cissie was asking for me & wishing to see me. Tonic or balm? 11 God bless now. Keep me in the current. And again - all that
he drops the text altogether. I've been reading nothing but Rimbaud - tired out by Renard. Oh a good name - foxy foxy.
ber. (Poetesde7ans). Guffaw. AstheyguffawedwhenIquoted:
the 'pissante' of 'glapissante'. Oh the bitches & the stallions.
lafolie&theusual. AlwaysaloneexceptwhenheorFrankcomes in. Ruddy s'efface. Had a rather terrible letter from Beaufret from
10
is good.
Sam
73
11 March 1931, McGreevy
Kindest regards to the Aldingtons.
12 ALS; 2 leaves, 7 sides; TCD, MS 10402/18.
1 In Proust's Le Cote de Guennantes M. de Charlus says: "'Etje ne parle pas seulement des evenements accomplis, mais de l'enchainement de circonstances"' ('"And I do not speak only of events that have already occurred, but of the chain of circum stances'"); the narrator comments: "une des expressions favorites de M. de Charlus" (a favourite expression of M. de Charlus's) (Le Cote de Guennantes in A la recherche du temps perdu, II, ed. Jean-Yves Tadie, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade [Paris: Gallimard, 1987-1989] 583; The Guennantes Way, in In Search of Lost Time, III, tr. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, rev. D. J. Enright [New York: Modern Library, 1992-1993] 389).
SB's copies of Proust had been sent to him at his family home rather than to 39 Trinity College, Dublin.
From 6 to 8 March 1931 Dublin experienced easterly winds that changed to north easterly winds on 9 March.
2 SeeJamesJoyce'sAPortraitoftheArtistasaYoungMan,ed. ChesterG. Anderson (New York: Viking Press, 1964) 102-103:
The equation on the page of his scribbler began to spread out a widening tail, eyed and starred like a peacock's; and, when the eyes and stars of its indices had been eliminated, began slowly to fold itself together again . . .
It was his own soul going forth to experience, unfolding itself sin by sin, spreading abroad the balefire of its burning stars and folding back upon itself, fading slowly, quenching its own lights and fires.
3 "Blafard"(wan).
The Civic Guard was formed in August 1922, in preparation for the transfer of political power from the British to the Provisional Irish Government.
4 SB dubs as "Sorbonagres" a group of influential academic figures who were associated with the Ecole Normale Superieure, the University of Paris-Sorbonne, and Trinity College Dublin. The term was coined by Frarn;ois Rabelais (? 1494-71553) in Gargantua et Pantagruel (1532-1533).
Emile Faguet (1847-1916), Professor of French Poetry at the Sorbonne, defended the classical ideal and interpreted literary history with an evolutionary model (Maftres et eleves, celebrites et savants: ! 'Ecole Nonnale Superieure, 1794-1994 [Paris: Archives Nationales, 1994] 158): his five-volume Etudes litteraires (1885-1891) surveyed sixteenth- to early twentieth-century literature.
Gustave Lanson (1857-1934), Professor at the Sorbonne from 1897 to 1900, and Directeur, Ecole Normale Superieure, from 1902 to 1927. Among his writings are Histoire de la litterature fran�aise (1894) and Manuel bibliographique de la litterature fran�aise moderne, depuis 1500jusqu'a nosjours (1909-1912, 4 vols. ).
Edward John Gwynn, Provost of Trinity College Dublin (see 24 February 1931, n. 6).
Ferdinand Brunetiere (1849-1906), Professor of French Literature at the Ecole Normale Superieure from 1886 to 1904, advocated that art should have a moral purpose and that literature was governed by evolution; he edited the Revue des Deux
74
No reply from Bookman.
Mandes from 1893 to 1906, and wrote, among other works, Histoire et litterature {1884-1886), L'Evolution des genres dans l'histoire de la litterature (1890), L'Evolution de la poesie lyrique au dix-neuvieme siecle (1894), Manuel de l'histoire de la litterature fran�aise (1897). and L'Art et la morale (1898).
5 TheNassauStreetboundaryofTrinityCollegeDublinwascalled"therailings. " "Douceurs" (soft sweetness).
6 SBdidnotwriteareviewofMcGreevy'sThomasStearnsEliotforDublinMagazine, nor one ofT. S. Eliot's translation ofAnabase, a poem by St. -John Perse (ne Alexis Saint Leger, 1887-1975) which was published as Anabasis by Faber and Faber in 1930. Nonetheless, SB had closely read Eliot's translation which presents the French and English texts on facing pages.
SB compares the poem to the work ofPaul Claude! (1868-1955), a prominent figure in the French Catholic literary renaissance ofthe early twentieth century.
7 JulesRenard,LeJournal;"renard"(fox).
A Senior Sophister is in the fourth and final year ofstudy for an undergraduate
degree at Trinity College Dublin.
In 1871, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) wrote "Les Poetes de sept ans" ("Seven
Year-Old Poets"); the poem follows Rimbaud's two "Les Lettres du voyant" ("The Letters ofthe Seer") which set forth his program to explore poetic vision through a deliberate derangement ofhis senses. In this poem, the image ofa child who "dans ses yeux fermes voyait des points" (shut his eyes to see spots) leads to what SB calls the "eye suicide," the image ofa child deliberately grinding his fists into his eyes: "Et pour des visions ecrasant son oeil dame" (Squeezing his dazzled eyes to make visions come) (Arthur Rimbaud, Oeuvres completes, ed. Antoine Adam, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade [Paris: Gallimard, 1972) 43-44; Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works, tr. Paul Schmidt [New York: Harper and Row, 1975) 77-78).
8 JulesLaforgue,"XII,"DemiersVers:"Noirebise,averseglapissante/Etfleuvenoir, et maisons closes" (Black wind, downpour yelping, / Black river, and houses closed), (Poesies completes, II, ed. Pascal Pia [Paris: Gallimard, 1979) 215; Poems of]ules Laforgue, tr. Patricia Terry [Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1958) 183).
"Maisons closes" (brothels); "pissante" (pissing); "glapissante" (yelping). The guffaw ing students found "pissante" irresistible.
9 "Pelorson s'eloigne, toujours tres pris, tres melancolique, ma! aux yeux, au coeur, aux bronches. hallucinations. reves. seuil de la folie" (Pelorson is drifting away, always very busy, very melancholic, eye trouble, heart trouble, bronchial trou ble, hallucinations, dreams, edge ofmadness).
10 "S'efface"(keepsoutoftheway).
Jean Beaufret was in Germany studying the work ofMartin Heidegger {1889-1976); the phrase "'le diamant du pessimisme'" (the diamond ofpessimism) appears in a letter from him to SB.
11 SeumasO'Sullivan,speakingofAlanDuncan.
"Pas vu" (not seen).
Estella Solomons was a close friend ofSB's paternal aunt Cissie Beckett Sinclair.
12 McGreevy is in Italy with Richard Aldington and Brigit Patmore (nee Morrison-Scott, 1882-1965), Aldington's companion from 1928 to 1936.
75
11 March 1931, McGreevy
11 March 1931, McGreevy
SB wrote to Charles Prentice on 18 February 1931: "Many thanks for forwarding a promising communication from the editor ofthe American Bookman. I have sent him the Proust" (UoR, MS 2444 CW 24/9).
CHARLES PRENTICE, CHATTO AND WINDUS LONDON
13/3/31 39 Trinity College, Dublin.
Dear Mr Prentice
Glad to hear that Proust has got off with so many of the
Could I have another half dozen? I am enclosing cheque for 13/-. Is 1/- enough for postage?
Very sincerely yours Sam Beckett
ALS; 1 leaf, 1 side; letterhead: <cOMMON ROOM, > A ins "39" TRIN ITY COLLEGE, o u BL, N ; date stamped received 16-3-31; UoR, MS 2444 CW 24/9. In another hand, figures to the left of the signature, related to the cost of six additional copies (see Prentice to SB, 16 March 1931: "The six copies of'Proust' will be sent to you today, and the balance of your cheque returned. I do not know yet how the sum will work out, but you are of course charged at trade terms, i. e. , at 1/4d. instead of 2/- a copy" [UoR, MS 2444 CW letterbook 31/9851).
1 PrenticewrotetoSBon12March1931:"Thebookhasmadeaverydecentstart. It was published last Thursday, and we have already sold 639 copies. When the reviews begin to appear, I hope there will be more exciting news to report" (UoR, MS 2444 CW letterbook 31/948). Rebecca West's review in the Daily Telegraph calls Proust "an excel lent work. for Mr. Beckett is a very brilliant young man," but warns that "his meta physics and his habit ofallusiveness" pose an intellectual challenge (6 March 1931: 18).
2 McGreevy's letter to SB has not been found, but SB's appreciation of his warm comments about Proust is evident in his reply of11 March 1931, above.
3 Prentice mentioned receiving a note from McGreevy about the cover of Proust: "Tom tells me I have done wrong in giving you a brown Dolphin. It should, he says,
76
12
few. Tomwrotemeamostcharmingletteraboutthebook. It is very good ofhim to think that I am worth labelling with a flag. I had not noticed whether the Dolphin was green or brown. 3
Monday[? 30 March to 13 April 1931}, Putnam
have been green; clearly I have been trying to steal you from Ireland. Will you please forgive? " (Prentice to SB, 12 March 1931, UoR, MS 2444 CW letterbook 31/948).
SAMUEL PUTNAM, THE NEW REVIEW PAR I S
Monday[? 30 March to 13 April 1931]
Hotel Corneille Rue Corneille Paris 6e
Dear Putnam
Do you ever come up to town? I'd like very much to see you
before taking myself off, Wednesday afternoon or Thursday evening? Will you drop me a line? 1
Congratulations on your Review. Greavy gave me a copy. It's full ofgood stuff. 2
A bientot n'est-ce pas? 3 Sam Beckett
ALS; 1 leaf, 1 side; NjP. New Review Correspondence of Samuel Putnam, COl11/1/9. Dating: SB anived in Paris on 26 March; Pilling notes that SB went to Kassel for the Easter holiday on 5 April (A Samuel Beckett Chronology, 7); SB details his travel from Paris via Niirnberg to Kassel in April 1931 (BIF, UoR, GD 5/f. 55, 1 March 1937). He may have returned to Paris immediately afterwards, for Wambly Bald (1902-1990) mentions SB in his column "La Vie de Boheme (As Lived on the Left Bank)" on 7 April: "Another Irish poet now among us is Samuel Beckett," which suggests that SB was in Paris at that time and possibly into the following week (Chicago Daily Tribune, European Edition [Paris] 7 April 1931: 4; rpt. in Wambly Bald, On the Left Bank, 1929-1933, ed. Benjamin Franklin, V [Athens: Ohio University Press, 1987] 57). SB returned to Dublin for the Trinity Term that began on 20 April 1931.
1 SB anived in Paris on 26 March 1931, the day of a "Seance consacree a James Joyce" (session devoted to James Joyce) organized by Adrienne Monnier at La Maison des Amis desLivres (see Ellmann,JamesJoyce, 636-637, and Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 129-131). The offices of The New Review (1930-1932) were situated in Fontenay aux-Roses, near Paris.
2 GeorgeReaveyhadgivenSBthefirstissueofTheNewReviewOanuary-February 1931), edited by Putnam. Although the second issue and its contents were announced for March-April 1931, it was published as May-June-July 1931. SB had submitted
77
Monday[? 30 March to 13 April 1931}, Putnam
"Return to the Vestty," but the poem was not published until the third issue, August-September-October 1931 (98-99); there was also a mention of Proust in this issue.
3 "Abientotn'est-cepas? "(Tillsoon. amIright? ).
THOMAS McGREEVY TARBERT, CO. KERRY
29/5/31 Cooldrinagh, Foxrock,
Co. Dublin.
Dear Tom
Very glad to get your letter. Yes I got the box of dolls that
1
me H. C. E. & N. R. F. both autographed. I'm afraid I let too many
days pass before answering to thank him, which I did finally via
Sylvia, rushing in foolishly to say that it was impossible to read
his text without understanding the futility of the translation. I
can't believe that he doesn't see through the translation himself,
its horrible quip atmosphere & vulgarity, necessarily because
you can't translate a motive; I had a Whitsun card from the three
2
God knows when I'll be let out of the room though I feel all right except for a reluctance to sneeze & belch. Poor Ruddy & Pelorson
3
using a phrase out of my book. T. C. D. honoured you with an
ereintement last week. I hear they have done mine this week but
Ihavenotseenit. IamthinkingnowofmyreviewofyourT. S. E. for
4
morning and left them round at the Abbey for L. R. Joyce sent
of them with an address in London.
I have been in bed for the last week with a dry pleurisy, &
have been sharing my work.
Glad to hear that the Aldington is finished & away. Thanks for
SeumasO'S. togetherwiththetranslationofAnabase. Iamwriting the German Comedy in a ragged kind of way, on & off, and would
78
like to show you a page or two when you come up. I'll never believe that the intoxicated dentist was an artist though I don't know anything about him except a few shocking lines here & there. 5
Was ich weiss kann jeder wissen, mein Herz hab['] ich allein! !
Herz! 6 Always the break down & the flabby word & the more than menstrual effusion ofcredulity. IfI could only get you to sleep in Dostoievski's bed somewhere! I'm reading the 'Possedes' in a foul translation. Even so it must be very carelessly & badly written in the Russian, full of cliches & journalese: but the movement, the transitions! 7 No one moves about like Dostoievski. No one ever caught the insanity ofdialogue like he did.
Do you know a decent French life of Marie Stuart? 8 Yes a temperance hotel is like a celibate brothel.
If you arrive after 1 o'clock Monday 8th I could meet
you at station with car. Try and keep an evening for me if
you can.
Love ever
Sam
ALS; I leaf, 4 sides; letterhead; TCD, MS 10402/19. 1 AbbeyTheatre,LennoxRobinson.
2 JamesJoyce, Haveth Childers Everywhere: Fragment. from Work in Progress (Paris: Henry Babou and Jack Kahane, 1930; Paris: Fountain Press, 1930; Criterion Miscellany [London: Faber and Faber, 1931)); it is likely thatJoyce sent the Faber edition which was published on 2 April 1931.
James Joyce, "Anna Livie Plurabelle," tr. Samuel Beckett et al. , La Nouvelle Revue Franraise, 637-646.
SB wrote toJoyce care of Sylvia Beach. At this time, theJoyces and Lucia were at 28B Campden Grove, Kensington WS, London. Whitsun (Whitsunday, the celebration of Pentecost) follows fifty days after Easter; in 1931 it fell on 24 May.
3 SB'sclassesweretaughtbyRudmose-BrownandPelorson.
4 As an epigraph for his book, Richard Aldington: An Englishman, The Dolphin Books (London: Chatto and Windus, 1931), McGreevy quoted SB: "Yesterday is not a milestone
79
29 May 1931, McGreevy
29 May 1931, McGreevy
that has been passed, but a daystone on the beaten track of the years, and irremediably part of us, within us, heavy and dangerous. We are not merely more weary because of yester day, we are other, no longer what we were before the calamity of yesterday" (Proust, 3).
McGreevy's Thomas Steams Eliot received an unfavorable review in T. C.
D: A College Miscellany, a weekly journal ofTrinity College Dublin (D. H. V. , "Reviews" [21 May 1931] 162). SB's Proust was reviewed in the following issue: "His critical integrity and close comprehension of his subject make this essay a valuable piece of penetrating criticism" (W. J. K. M. , "Reviews" [28 May 1931) 177).
"Ereintement" (slating, harsh review).
No review of McGreevy's Thomas Steams Eliot or of Eliot's translation of St. -John Perse's Anabase was published in Dublin Magazine (see 11 March 1931, n. 6).
5 "The German Comedy" may refer to the first of the Belacqua stories. "Sedendo et Quiescendo," as Ruby Cohn suggests, but more probably to its expanded form as part of Dream of Fair to Middling Women (A Beckett Canon, 28; John Pilling, Beckett Before Godot [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 56-57). Belshazzar is a "fat dentist of a chess-player" in Dream ofFair to Middling Women. When he invitesSmeraldina to his table she rebuffs him: when he invites Belacqua to the table, he accepts. This causesSmeraldina to insist that she and Belacqua leave at once (Beckett, Dream ofFair to Middling Women, 89-91).
6 " Ach, was ich weiB kann jeder wissen - meinHerz habe ich allein! ! " (Ah, the knowledge I possess anyone can acquire, but my heart is all my own) Uohann Wolfgang [von] Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, Synoptischer Druck der beiden Fassungen 1774 und 1787, ed. Annika Lorenz undHelmutSchmiedt [Paderbom:Igel Verlag Literatur, 1997] 123;Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows ofYoung Werther, Goethe's Collected Works, XI, ed. DavidE. Wellbery, tr. Victor Lange andJudithRyan [New York:Suhrkamp Publishers, 1988] 52).
7 At this time the only French translation of Dostoevsky's novel was Les Possedes, 2 vols, tr. Victor Derely (Paris:Editions Plon, 1886).
8 There were no contemporary French biographies of MaryStuart, Queen of Scotland (1542-1587).
SEUMAS O'SULLIVAN, DUBLIN MAGAZINE DUBLIN
7/8/31 39T. CD. [Dublin]
Dear Seumas
May I propose these samples ofembarrassed respiration to you
in the first instance and to your magazine in the second instance? 1 Beautiful greetings to Stella and to yourself
s/ Sam Beckett
80
15 August 1931, Prentice
TLS; 1 leaf, 1 side; poems not enclosed; KU, James Starkey collection.
1 SB called the two poems he sent to O'Sullivan "the Albas," as is clear from the letter written by SB to McGreevy, Saturday 112 September 1931]. And, later, SB to McGreevy, Tuesday le. 22 September 1931]: "Seumas O'Sullivan condescends to pub lish the 'sheet' Alba, but he wouldn't touch the other. He didn't like 'give us a wipe' & he didn't like the anthrax" (TCD. MS 10402/13).
The "Alba" that was published included the lines "whose beauty shall be a sheet before me" and "only I and then the sheet / and bulk dead" (Dublin Magazine 6. 4 [October-December 1931] 4). The "second" "Alba" poem, that included the lines "give us a wipe for the love ofJesus" and "shining round the corner like an anthrax," was published later under the new title "Enueg 2" in Samuel Beckett, Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates, Europa Poets 3 (Paris: Europa Press, 1935; Samuel Beckett, Poems 1930-1989 ILondon: Calder Publications, 2002] 16).
2 EstellaSolomons.
CHARLES PRENTICE,CHATTO AND WINDUS LONDON
15/8/31 39 Trinity College Dublin
Dear Prentice
For your more than charming letter gratias tibi. You're right
about my top heavy Sedendo et Quiescendo, though the title's meant to embrace the following section also: They Go Out for the
1
Evening. AndofcourseitstinksofJoyceinspiteofmostearnest endeavours to endow it with my own odours. Unfortunately for myselfthat's the only way I'm interested in writing. The next is a clumsy exercise, ribs false & floating & unbreakable (? ) glass. Believe me I am grateful for your interest & the trouble you have taken and touched by your letter. I meant what I said to you in London. I wasn't showing it to Chatto & Windus. I was showing it to you. 2 When I imagine I have a real 'twice round the pan & pointed at both ends' I'll offend you with its spiral on my
81
15 August 1931, Prentice
soilman's shovel. I'm glad to have the thing back again in the
dentist's chair. I still believe there's something to be done with it.
I have just finished what I might describe as a whore's get
version ofWalking Out, the story I spoke to you ofin London, &
sent it to Pinker who won't be able to place it but will be
annoyed I hope. 3 That old dada is narrowing down at last to an
4
Forgive me for keeping Apocalypse so long.
much on the first reading that I put it aside relying on your indulgence. But the sponge will soon be dry again.
Dublin is bloody. But it's almost a pleasure to be paralysed after the French daymare and the rain is lovely.
Yours ever
Sam Beckett
ALS; 1 leaf, 2 sides; date stamped received 18-8-31; UoR, MS 2444 CW 24/9.
1 "Gratiastibi"(mythankstoyou).
"Sedendo et Quiescendo" (It. , Sitting and Reposing) was published in transition 21 (March 1932) 13-20, with a typo as "Sedendo et Quiesciendo"; it was later reworked in SB's novel, Dream ofFair to Middling Women (64-73). Prentice's letter to SB responding to the story has not been found, but Prentice did write in some detail to McGreevy, and from this letter it is clear that the story as given to Prentice began with "The Smeraldina's Billet Doux" (Dream of Fair to Middling Women, 55-61); this story, with some variants, is also part of More Pricks Than Kicks (! New York: Grove Press, 19721 152-157); all citations are from this edition.
Prentice wrote to McGreevy: "The love letters at the beginning of the story are devastating, as rendingly good as anything I have ever read in this vein. But the Joyce bit that comes next seems to be more suitable for a long work than a short one, & anyhow it's not his own style, & the best parts, though there are some supreme times in them, dribble through one's hands in a way that cannot be wholly inten tional" (3 August 1931, TCD, MS 8092/50). The story that SB calls "They Go Out for the Evening" became the next section ofDream ofFair to Middling Women (74-99).
2 SBmetPrenticeinLondonon28July1931ashetraveledfromFrancetoDublin. As SB explained to McGreevy: "A very pleasant evening with Charles Prentice. His voice slows down your heart and tires your eyes. I brought him round the ? next day though I hadn't meant to. Haven't heard anything since. Proposed a Dostoievski for the sake of something to say more than anything else & knowing bloody well I would (could) never do it. Fortunately the partner refrained from being interested" ([? after
82
apex and then I hope it will develop seven spectral petals.
5
It yielded so
[? after 15 August 1931}, McGreevy
2 August to 8 August 1931], TCD, MS 10402/12). Prentice wrote to McGreevy: "He didn't formally submit the story, but he allowed me personally to see it - yet I fear that the firm won't do it, if it were offered to them" (3 August 1931, TCD. MS 8092/50).
3 "WalkingOut"waspublishedasastoryinMorePricksThanKicks(London:Chatto and Windus, 1934). "Whore's get" (Ir. slang, lowest of the low).
4 "Dada"(colloq. ,hobbyhorse).
The seven spectral petals suggest the women in the amphitheatre of Paradise, who sit at Mary's feet; Rachel with Beatrice, Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, and Ruth are enthroned on the rose, dividing those who believe in the Christ yet to come from those who held their eyes on the Christ already come (Dante, The Divine Comedy, III. Paradiso. tr. John D. Sinclair [London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1946, rev. 1948] Canto XXXII, lines 7-18, 463).
5 Charles Prentice had sent SB his copy of D. H. Lawrence's Apocalypse, edited by Richard Aldington (Florence: G. Orioli, 1931); Lawrence's commentary on the Book of Revelation had been published in this limited edition on 3 June 1931; trade editions did not follow until November 1931 (New York: Knopf) and May 1932 (London: Secker). Prentice replied to SB: "By all means. keep 'Apocalypse' until you have properly finished with it. There is no hurry, but when you have finished with it I shall be glad to have it back again" (18 August 1931, UoR. MS 2444 CW letterbook 133/708).
THOMAS McGREEVY LE CAN ADE L, VAR
[? after 15 August 1931] T. C. D. [Dublin]
Dear Tom
May all things come right somehow and you be happy some
how[. ] 1
No news from outside or inside. Charles Prentice sent my
thing back with a covering letter putting charming and gracious relations before me. He is very nice. Pinker sent back a short story
2
I'm very tired, tired - enough to slip back into the embarrassed
respirations. Herewith. I can't write like Boccaccio and I don't
3
witharejectionslip. Idon'tknowwhetherheisveryniceornot.
wanttowritelikeBoccaccio. I'llstayintownandtakedownthe petites merdes de mon ame. No I never did the T. S. E. Telegraphie
83
{? after 15 August 1931}, McGreevy
4
settle in Ireland with the two youngest children. Boss won't leave
sansether. NothingmoreaboutLeipzig. Cissiemaybecomingto
the sinking ship - because ofthe virgins on board. 5 I was reading 6
yourcabpoem. Wentupinaspasmisagreatphrase. Yes,Night
of the Rabblement is good. Silence Exile and Cunning isn't quite
H. C. E. However I don't feel there's anything wrong anywhere.
He's getting a great name for himself in Dublin by the way. The
cute thing to do now would be to write the Prolegomena ofW. I. P.
Do you feel like collelaborating? And what about making a book
on the title? 7 I have not yet said anything to Ruddy about fucking
the field. He wanted me to apply for a job, oh a very good job, in
Capetown or for a job, oh quite a good job, in Cardiff, where I could
lie with Rikky. Starkie will probably be appointed at Oxford -
he was first man out last time, and then my dear Sam of course
they'll appoint you Professor of Italian Literature juxta Dublin
8
fricatrix on her bicycle, the sabreflat fricatrix, for dear death
pedalling faster and faster, her mouth ajar and her nostrils
dilated. Daddy says come off it for the love of God, come out
and dine, I'll give you a drink, kiss and make friends. God bless
dear Daddy Mummy Frank Bibby and all that I love and make
9
juxta Dublin. That'll be the real pig's back. I'll feel like a
me a good boy for Jesus Christ's sake armen.
So I said some
thing quiet and flat and blank but I won't. No sir. Nothing
would induce me to. Pelorson was glad to hear about Grasset.
He is very mou and I don't see enough of him. Like one of his
10
TL; 1 leaf, 1 side; TCD, MS 10402/25. Dating: follows SB to Charles Prentice 15 August 1931 which indicates that Pinker had returned the story.
84
own policepigeons - mous et lourds sur les toits du monde. Dear Tom forgive and forget this pestilential letter. I feel
hollow.
Beautiful greetings to Richard and Bridget [for Brigit]11
and love ever
[? after 15 August 1931}, McGreevy
1 RichardAldington,withwhomMcGreevywasstayinginLeCanadel,wasunwell, as was McGreevy's mother. Offurther concern to McGreevy was where he would go when Aldington left the south of France; he confided to Prentice that staying with Hester Dowden• (1868-1949) in London would be impossible because the forthcoming marriage of her daughter Dolly Travers-Smith to Lennox Robinson "has been rather a knock out" (29July 1931, UoR, MS 2444 CW 41/2).
2 Prentice'slettertoSBhasnotbeenfoundintheChattoandWindusfiles(UoR), which suggests that it was a personal letter covering the return ofthe stories.
3 SB sent "Walking Out" to McGreevy. Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), Italian author best known for the Decameron (1349-1351).
4 "Petitesmerdesdemoname"(droppingsfrommysoul).
SB did not write the review of McGreevy's Thomas Stearns Eliot, nor of Eliot's trans lation ofAnabase by St. ·John Perse.
SB spins T. S. E. (Eliot's initials) into "Telegraphie sans ether" (literally, telegraphy without ether), playing on "Telegraphie Sans Fil" (wireless), commonly referred to in France as TSF.
5 SBhadbeenthinkingofgoingtoLeipzig(see112September1931I). CissieSinclair considered leaving Germany and returning to Ireland with her two youngest children, Deirdre and Morris (1918-2007); however, her husband, Boss, was unwilling to leave Kassel because their older daughters Annabel Lilian (known as Nancy, 1916-1969), Sara Estella (known as Sally, 1910-1976), and Peggy wanted to remain in Germany where they had boyfriends (Morris Sinclair, 10 August 2004).
6 McGreevy's "cab poem" is "Cron Trath Na nDeithe" (Twilight ofthe Gods); the phrase is from part III: "When the Custom House took fire / Hope slipped off her green petticoat / The Four Courts went up in a spasm / Moses felt for Hope" (MacGreevy, Collected Poems of Thomas MacGreery, 19, 107-122; the translation of the Irish title is supplied by Susan Schreibman with an explanation ofits context, 109).
7 "Night of the Rabblement" plays on the title of an indignant essay by James Joyce about the parochialism of the Irish Literary Theatre, "The Day of the Rabblement" (15 October 1901);Joyce's essay was rejected by St. Stephen's, a magazine published by students ofUniversity College. Joyce protested to the President of the University, and, in the end, the essay was privately printed (F. J. C. Skeffington and James Joyce, Two Essays: A Forgotten Aspect of the University Question, and The Day of the Rabblement [Dublin: Gerrard Brothers, 19011 7-8; rpt. in The Critical Writings of]ames Joyce, ed. Ellsworth Mason and Richard Ellmann ! Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1959] 68-72).
Near the end ofJoyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the character Stephen
Dedalus avows: "I will try to express myselfin some mode oflife or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use - silence, exile, and cunning" (247).
Padraic Colum (1881-1972) reviewed Joyce's Haveth Childers Everywhere ("From a Work in Progress," Dublin Magazine 6. 3 [July-September 1931] 33-37); a review of Stuart Gilbert's study James Joyce's "Ulysses" had appeared in the previous issue of Dublin Magazine (6. 2 [April-June 1931] 64-65). The London wedding ofJames and Nora Joyce received mention in The Irish Times (4 July 1931: 6; 11 July 1931: 6). SB proposes that he and McGreevy write a preface or introduction to Work in Progress, or a book on the (as yet unannounced) title of the novel.
85
[? after 15 August 1931], McGreevy
8 "Fucking the field": SB's grotesque English-literal adaptation of the dead French metaphor "foutre le camp" (get away quickly). Rudmose-Brown encouraged SB to seek academic positions in Cape Town, SouthAfrica, and at the University of Cardiff, Wales. Leopold John Dixon Richardson (known as Reeky, called by SB "Rikky," 1893-1979), who had won highest honors in Classics at Trinity College Dublin; he was lecturer inLatin at the University of Cardiff.
Walter Starkie had been a Visiting Professor at the University of Madrid (1928-1929) and may have been considered for a position at Oxford, but he remained at TCD until 1940, when he became Director of the British Institute in Madrid.
9 TheimageofthesabreflatfricatrixappearsinDreamofFairtoMiddlingWomenas "the hard breastless Greek Slave or huntress" (83); the phrase "his mouth ajar and his nostrils dilated" appears in the opening of this novel (1). The prayer beginning "God bless" is found in Dream of Fair to Middling Women (8); Bibby was SB's nanny (Bridget Bray, n. d. ) (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 35-36, 134-135).
10 SB had written to thank McGreevy for sending on the manuscript of Georges Pelorson's novel "Claudiurnales" to Henri Muller (1902-1980); Muller, a friend of Pelorson, worked directly with Bernard Grasset (1881-1955), the founder and editor of Les Editions Grasset, Paris. SB commented to McGreevy: "Neither do I think Grasset will take it" ([after 2August - before 8August 1931] TCD, MS 10402/12). Pelorson had typed the novel on SB's typewriter, and sent it to McGreevy at SB's insistence; the manuscript was indeed refused (Belmont, Souvenirs d'outre-monde, 415-416).
"Mou" (soft); "mous et lourds sur Jes toits du monde" (soft and heavy on the roofs of the world). Pelorson said he saw a similarity between the walk of an Irish policeman and the strutting of pigeons (interview 2 November 1990).
11 Richard Aldington, Brigit Patmore. SB wrote "<theAldingtons> Richard and Bridget.
feather. Fear - followed by no genitive.
O'Sullivan said Alan was in Dublin. Pas vu. Stella said that
Cissie was asking for me & wishing to see me. Tonic or balm? 11 God bless now. Keep me in the current. And again - all that
he drops the text altogether. I've been reading nothing but Rimbaud - tired out by Renard. Oh a good name - foxy foxy.
ber. (Poetesde7ans). Guffaw. AstheyguffawedwhenIquoted:
the 'pissante' of 'glapissante'. Oh the bitches & the stallions.
lafolie&theusual. AlwaysaloneexceptwhenheorFrankcomes in. Ruddy s'efface. Had a rather terrible letter from Beaufret from
10
is good.
Sam
73
11 March 1931, McGreevy
Kindest regards to the Aldingtons.
12 ALS; 2 leaves, 7 sides; TCD, MS 10402/18.
1 In Proust's Le Cote de Guennantes M. de Charlus says: "'Etje ne parle pas seulement des evenements accomplis, mais de l'enchainement de circonstances"' ('"And I do not speak only of events that have already occurred, but of the chain of circum stances'"); the narrator comments: "une des expressions favorites de M. de Charlus" (a favourite expression of M. de Charlus's) (Le Cote de Guennantes in A la recherche du temps perdu, II, ed. Jean-Yves Tadie, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade [Paris: Gallimard, 1987-1989] 583; The Guennantes Way, in In Search of Lost Time, III, tr. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, rev. D. J. Enright [New York: Modern Library, 1992-1993] 389).
SB's copies of Proust had been sent to him at his family home rather than to 39 Trinity College, Dublin.
From 6 to 8 March 1931 Dublin experienced easterly winds that changed to north easterly winds on 9 March.
2 SeeJamesJoyce'sAPortraitoftheArtistasaYoungMan,ed. ChesterG. Anderson (New York: Viking Press, 1964) 102-103:
The equation on the page of his scribbler began to spread out a widening tail, eyed and starred like a peacock's; and, when the eyes and stars of its indices had been eliminated, began slowly to fold itself together again . . .
It was his own soul going forth to experience, unfolding itself sin by sin, spreading abroad the balefire of its burning stars and folding back upon itself, fading slowly, quenching its own lights and fires.
3 "Blafard"(wan).
The Civic Guard was formed in August 1922, in preparation for the transfer of political power from the British to the Provisional Irish Government.
4 SB dubs as "Sorbonagres" a group of influential academic figures who were associated with the Ecole Normale Superieure, the University of Paris-Sorbonne, and Trinity College Dublin. The term was coined by Frarn;ois Rabelais (? 1494-71553) in Gargantua et Pantagruel (1532-1533).
Emile Faguet (1847-1916), Professor of French Poetry at the Sorbonne, defended the classical ideal and interpreted literary history with an evolutionary model (Maftres et eleves, celebrites et savants: ! 'Ecole Nonnale Superieure, 1794-1994 [Paris: Archives Nationales, 1994] 158): his five-volume Etudes litteraires (1885-1891) surveyed sixteenth- to early twentieth-century literature.
Gustave Lanson (1857-1934), Professor at the Sorbonne from 1897 to 1900, and Directeur, Ecole Normale Superieure, from 1902 to 1927. Among his writings are Histoire de la litterature fran�aise (1894) and Manuel bibliographique de la litterature fran�aise moderne, depuis 1500jusqu'a nosjours (1909-1912, 4 vols. ).
Edward John Gwynn, Provost of Trinity College Dublin (see 24 February 1931, n. 6).
Ferdinand Brunetiere (1849-1906), Professor of French Literature at the Ecole Normale Superieure from 1886 to 1904, advocated that art should have a moral purpose and that literature was governed by evolution; he edited the Revue des Deux
74
No reply from Bookman.
Mandes from 1893 to 1906, and wrote, among other works, Histoire et litterature {1884-1886), L'Evolution des genres dans l'histoire de la litterature (1890), L'Evolution de la poesie lyrique au dix-neuvieme siecle (1894), Manuel de l'histoire de la litterature fran�aise (1897). and L'Art et la morale (1898).
5 TheNassauStreetboundaryofTrinityCollegeDublinwascalled"therailings. " "Douceurs" (soft sweetness).
6 SBdidnotwriteareviewofMcGreevy'sThomasStearnsEliotforDublinMagazine, nor one ofT. S. Eliot's translation ofAnabase, a poem by St. -John Perse (ne Alexis Saint Leger, 1887-1975) which was published as Anabasis by Faber and Faber in 1930. Nonetheless, SB had closely read Eliot's translation which presents the French and English texts on facing pages.
SB compares the poem to the work ofPaul Claude! (1868-1955), a prominent figure in the French Catholic literary renaissance ofthe early twentieth century.
7 JulesRenard,LeJournal;"renard"(fox).
A Senior Sophister is in the fourth and final year ofstudy for an undergraduate
degree at Trinity College Dublin.
In 1871, Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) wrote "Les Poetes de sept ans" ("Seven
Year-Old Poets"); the poem follows Rimbaud's two "Les Lettres du voyant" ("The Letters ofthe Seer") which set forth his program to explore poetic vision through a deliberate derangement ofhis senses. In this poem, the image ofa child who "dans ses yeux fermes voyait des points" (shut his eyes to see spots) leads to what SB calls the "eye suicide," the image ofa child deliberately grinding his fists into his eyes: "Et pour des visions ecrasant son oeil dame" (Squeezing his dazzled eyes to make visions come) (Arthur Rimbaud, Oeuvres completes, ed. Antoine Adam, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade [Paris: Gallimard, 1972) 43-44; Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works, tr. Paul Schmidt [New York: Harper and Row, 1975) 77-78).
8 JulesLaforgue,"XII,"DemiersVers:"Noirebise,averseglapissante/Etfleuvenoir, et maisons closes" (Black wind, downpour yelping, / Black river, and houses closed), (Poesies completes, II, ed. Pascal Pia [Paris: Gallimard, 1979) 215; Poems of]ules Laforgue, tr. Patricia Terry [Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1958) 183).
"Maisons closes" (brothels); "pissante" (pissing); "glapissante" (yelping). The guffaw ing students found "pissante" irresistible.
9 "Pelorson s'eloigne, toujours tres pris, tres melancolique, ma! aux yeux, au coeur, aux bronches. hallucinations. reves. seuil de la folie" (Pelorson is drifting away, always very busy, very melancholic, eye trouble, heart trouble, bronchial trou ble, hallucinations, dreams, edge ofmadness).
10 "S'efface"(keepsoutoftheway).
Jean Beaufret was in Germany studying the work ofMartin Heidegger {1889-1976); the phrase "'le diamant du pessimisme'" (the diamond ofpessimism) appears in a letter from him to SB.
11 SeumasO'Sullivan,speakingofAlanDuncan.
"Pas vu" (not seen).
Estella Solomons was a close friend ofSB's paternal aunt Cissie Beckett Sinclair.
12 McGreevy is in Italy with Richard Aldington and Brigit Patmore (nee Morrison-Scott, 1882-1965), Aldington's companion from 1928 to 1936.
75
11 March 1931, McGreevy
11 March 1931, McGreevy
SB wrote to Charles Prentice on 18 February 1931: "Many thanks for forwarding a promising communication from the editor ofthe American Bookman. I have sent him the Proust" (UoR, MS 2444 CW 24/9).
CHARLES PRENTICE, CHATTO AND WINDUS LONDON
13/3/31 39 Trinity College, Dublin.
Dear Mr Prentice
Glad to hear that Proust has got off with so many of the
Could I have another half dozen? I am enclosing cheque for 13/-. Is 1/- enough for postage?
Very sincerely yours Sam Beckett
ALS; 1 leaf, 1 side; letterhead: <cOMMON ROOM, > A ins "39" TRIN ITY COLLEGE, o u BL, N ; date stamped received 16-3-31; UoR, MS 2444 CW 24/9. In another hand, figures to the left of the signature, related to the cost of six additional copies (see Prentice to SB, 16 March 1931: "The six copies of'Proust' will be sent to you today, and the balance of your cheque returned. I do not know yet how the sum will work out, but you are of course charged at trade terms, i. e. , at 1/4d. instead of 2/- a copy" [UoR, MS 2444 CW letterbook 31/9851).
1 PrenticewrotetoSBon12March1931:"Thebookhasmadeaverydecentstart. It was published last Thursday, and we have already sold 639 copies. When the reviews begin to appear, I hope there will be more exciting news to report" (UoR, MS 2444 CW letterbook 31/948). Rebecca West's review in the Daily Telegraph calls Proust "an excel lent work. for Mr. Beckett is a very brilliant young man," but warns that "his meta physics and his habit ofallusiveness" pose an intellectual challenge (6 March 1931: 18).
2 McGreevy's letter to SB has not been found, but SB's appreciation of his warm comments about Proust is evident in his reply of11 March 1931, above.
3 Prentice mentioned receiving a note from McGreevy about the cover of Proust: "Tom tells me I have done wrong in giving you a brown Dolphin. It should, he says,
76
12
few. Tomwrotemeamostcharmingletteraboutthebook. It is very good ofhim to think that I am worth labelling with a flag. I had not noticed whether the Dolphin was green or brown. 3
Monday[? 30 March to 13 April 1931}, Putnam
have been green; clearly I have been trying to steal you from Ireland. Will you please forgive? " (Prentice to SB, 12 March 1931, UoR, MS 2444 CW letterbook 31/948).
SAMUEL PUTNAM, THE NEW REVIEW PAR I S
Monday[? 30 March to 13 April 1931]
Hotel Corneille Rue Corneille Paris 6e
Dear Putnam
Do you ever come up to town? I'd like very much to see you
before taking myself off, Wednesday afternoon or Thursday evening? Will you drop me a line? 1
Congratulations on your Review. Greavy gave me a copy. It's full ofgood stuff. 2
A bientot n'est-ce pas? 3 Sam Beckett
ALS; 1 leaf, 1 side; NjP. New Review Correspondence of Samuel Putnam, COl11/1/9. Dating: SB anived in Paris on 26 March; Pilling notes that SB went to Kassel for the Easter holiday on 5 April (A Samuel Beckett Chronology, 7); SB details his travel from Paris via Niirnberg to Kassel in April 1931 (BIF, UoR, GD 5/f. 55, 1 March 1937). He may have returned to Paris immediately afterwards, for Wambly Bald (1902-1990) mentions SB in his column "La Vie de Boheme (As Lived on the Left Bank)" on 7 April: "Another Irish poet now among us is Samuel Beckett," which suggests that SB was in Paris at that time and possibly into the following week (Chicago Daily Tribune, European Edition [Paris] 7 April 1931: 4; rpt. in Wambly Bald, On the Left Bank, 1929-1933, ed. Benjamin Franklin, V [Athens: Ohio University Press, 1987] 57). SB returned to Dublin for the Trinity Term that began on 20 April 1931.
1 SB anived in Paris on 26 March 1931, the day of a "Seance consacree a James Joyce" (session devoted to James Joyce) organized by Adrienne Monnier at La Maison des Amis desLivres (see Ellmann,JamesJoyce, 636-637, and Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 129-131). The offices of The New Review (1930-1932) were situated in Fontenay aux-Roses, near Paris.
2 GeorgeReaveyhadgivenSBthefirstissueofTheNewReviewOanuary-February 1931), edited by Putnam. Although the second issue and its contents were announced for March-April 1931, it was published as May-June-July 1931. SB had submitted
77
Monday[? 30 March to 13 April 1931}, Putnam
"Return to the Vestty," but the poem was not published until the third issue, August-September-October 1931 (98-99); there was also a mention of Proust in this issue.
3 "Abientotn'est-cepas? "(Tillsoon. amIright? ).
THOMAS McGREEVY TARBERT, CO. KERRY
29/5/31 Cooldrinagh, Foxrock,
Co. Dublin.
Dear Tom
Very glad to get your letter. Yes I got the box of dolls that
1
me H. C. E. & N. R. F. both autographed. I'm afraid I let too many
days pass before answering to thank him, which I did finally via
Sylvia, rushing in foolishly to say that it was impossible to read
his text without understanding the futility of the translation. I
can't believe that he doesn't see through the translation himself,
its horrible quip atmosphere & vulgarity, necessarily because
you can't translate a motive; I had a Whitsun card from the three
2
God knows when I'll be let out of the room though I feel all right except for a reluctance to sneeze & belch. Poor Ruddy & Pelorson
3
using a phrase out of my book. T. C. D. honoured you with an
ereintement last week. I hear they have done mine this week but
Ihavenotseenit. IamthinkingnowofmyreviewofyourT. S. E. for
4
morning and left them round at the Abbey for L. R. Joyce sent
of them with an address in London.
I have been in bed for the last week with a dry pleurisy, &
have been sharing my work.
Glad to hear that the Aldington is finished & away. Thanks for
SeumasO'S. togetherwiththetranslationofAnabase. Iamwriting the German Comedy in a ragged kind of way, on & off, and would
78
like to show you a page or two when you come up. I'll never believe that the intoxicated dentist was an artist though I don't know anything about him except a few shocking lines here & there. 5
Was ich weiss kann jeder wissen, mein Herz hab['] ich allein! !
Herz! 6 Always the break down & the flabby word & the more than menstrual effusion ofcredulity. IfI could only get you to sleep in Dostoievski's bed somewhere! I'm reading the 'Possedes' in a foul translation. Even so it must be very carelessly & badly written in the Russian, full of cliches & journalese: but the movement, the transitions! 7 No one moves about like Dostoievski. No one ever caught the insanity ofdialogue like he did.
Do you know a decent French life of Marie Stuart? 8 Yes a temperance hotel is like a celibate brothel.
If you arrive after 1 o'clock Monday 8th I could meet
you at station with car. Try and keep an evening for me if
you can.
Love ever
Sam
ALS; I leaf, 4 sides; letterhead; TCD, MS 10402/19. 1 AbbeyTheatre,LennoxRobinson.
2 JamesJoyce, Haveth Childers Everywhere: Fragment. from Work in Progress (Paris: Henry Babou and Jack Kahane, 1930; Paris: Fountain Press, 1930; Criterion Miscellany [London: Faber and Faber, 1931)); it is likely thatJoyce sent the Faber edition which was published on 2 April 1931.
James Joyce, "Anna Livie Plurabelle," tr. Samuel Beckett et al. , La Nouvelle Revue Franraise, 637-646.
SB wrote toJoyce care of Sylvia Beach. At this time, theJoyces and Lucia were at 28B Campden Grove, Kensington WS, London. Whitsun (Whitsunday, the celebration of Pentecost) follows fifty days after Easter; in 1931 it fell on 24 May.
3 SB'sclassesweretaughtbyRudmose-BrownandPelorson.
4 As an epigraph for his book, Richard Aldington: An Englishman, The Dolphin Books (London: Chatto and Windus, 1931), McGreevy quoted SB: "Yesterday is not a milestone
79
29 May 1931, McGreevy
29 May 1931, McGreevy
that has been passed, but a daystone on the beaten track of the years, and irremediably part of us, within us, heavy and dangerous. We are not merely more weary because of yester day, we are other, no longer what we were before the calamity of yesterday" (Proust, 3).
McGreevy's Thomas Steams Eliot received an unfavorable review in T. C.
D: A College Miscellany, a weekly journal ofTrinity College Dublin (D. H. V. , "Reviews" [21 May 1931] 162). SB's Proust was reviewed in the following issue: "His critical integrity and close comprehension of his subject make this essay a valuable piece of penetrating criticism" (W. J. K. M. , "Reviews" [28 May 1931) 177).
"Ereintement" (slating, harsh review).
No review of McGreevy's Thomas Steams Eliot or of Eliot's translation of St. -John Perse's Anabase was published in Dublin Magazine (see 11 March 1931, n. 6).
5 "The German Comedy" may refer to the first of the Belacqua stories. "Sedendo et Quiescendo," as Ruby Cohn suggests, but more probably to its expanded form as part of Dream of Fair to Middling Women (A Beckett Canon, 28; John Pilling, Beckett Before Godot [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 56-57). Belshazzar is a "fat dentist of a chess-player" in Dream ofFair to Middling Women. When he invitesSmeraldina to his table she rebuffs him: when he invites Belacqua to the table, he accepts. This causesSmeraldina to insist that she and Belacqua leave at once (Beckett, Dream ofFair to Middling Women, 89-91).
6 " Ach, was ich weiB kann jeder wissen - meinHerz habe ich allein! ! " (Ah, the knowledge I possess anyone can acquire, but my heart is all my own) Uohann Wolfgang [von] Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, Synoptischer Druck der beiden Fassungen 1774 und 1787, ed. Annika Lorenz undHelmutSchmiedt [Paderbom:Igel Verlag Literatur, 1997] 123;Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows ofYoung Werther, Goethe's Collected Works, XI, ed. DavidE. Wellbery, tr. Victor Lange andJudithRyan [New York:Suhrkamp Publishers, 1988] 52).
7 At this time the only French translation of Dostoevsky's novel was Les Possedes, 2 vols, tr. Victor Derely (Paris:Editions Plon, 1886).
8 There were no contemporary French biographies of MaryStuart, Queen of Scotland (1542-1587).
SEUMAS O'SULLIVAN, DUBLIN MAGAZINE DUBLIN
7/8/31 39T. CD. [Dublin]
Dear Seumas
May I propose these samples ofembarrassed respiration to you
in the first instance and to your magazine in the second instance? 1 Beautiful greetings to Stella and to yourself
s/ Sam Beckett
80
15 August 1931, Prentice
TLS; 1 leaf, 1 side; poems not enclosed; KU, James Starkey collection.
1 SB called the two poems he sent to O'Sullivan "the Albas," as is clear from the letter written by SB to McGreevy, Saturday 112 September 1931]. And, later, SB to McGreevy, Tuesday le. 22 September 1931]: "Seumas O'Sullivan condescends to pub lish the 'sheet' Alba, but he wouldn't touch the other. He didn't like 'give us a wipe' & he didn't like the anthrax" (TCD. MS 10402/13).
The "Alba" that was published included the lines "whose beauty shall be a sheet before me" and "only I and then the sheet / and bulk dead" (Dublin Magazine 6. 4 [October-December 1931] 4). The "second" "Alba" poem, that included the lines "give us a wipe for the love ofJesus" and "shining round the corner like an anthrax," was published later under the new title "Enueg 2" in Samuel Beckett, Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates, Europa Poets 3 (Paris: Europa Press, 1935; Samuel Beckett, Poems 1930-1989 ILondon: Calder Publications, 2002] 16).
2 EstellaSolomons.
CHARLES PRENTICE,CHATTO AND WINDUS LONDON
15/8/31 39 Trinity College Dublin
Dear Prentice
For your more than charming letter gratias tibi. You're right
about my top heavy Sedendo et Quiescendo, though the title's meant to embrace the following section also: They Go Out for the
1
Evening. AndofcourseitstinksofJoyceinspiteofmostearnest endeavours to endow it with my own odours. Unfortunately for myselfthat's the only way I'm interested in writing. The next is a clumsy exercise, ribs false & floating & unbreakable (? ) glass. Believe me I am grateful for your interest & the trouble you have taken and touched by your letter. I meant what I said to you in London. I wasn't showing it to Chatto & Windus. I was showing it to you. 2 When I imagine I have a real 'twice round the pan & pointed at both ends' I'll offend you with its spiral on my
81
15 August 1931, Prentice
soilman's shovel. I'm glad to have the thing back again in the
dentist's chair. I still believe there's something to be done with it.
I have just finished what I might describe as a whore's get
version ofWalking Out, the story I spoke to you ofin London, &
sent it to Pinker who won't be able to place it but will be
annoyed I hope. 3 That old dada is narrowing down at last to an
4
Forgive me for keeping Apocalypse so long.
much on the first reading that I put it aside relying on your indulgence. But the sponge will soon be dry again.
Dublin is bloody. But it's almost a pleasure to be paralysed after the French daymare and the rain is lovely.
Yours ever
Sam Beckett
ALS; 1 leaf, 2 sides; date stamped received 18-8-31; UoR, MS 2444 CW 24/9.
1 "Gratiastibi"(mythankstoyou).
"Sedendo et Quiescendo" (It. , Sitting and Reposing) was published in transition 21 (March 1932) 13-20, with a typo as "Sedendo et Quiesciendo"; it was later reworked in SB's novel, Dream ofFair to Middling Women (64-73). Prentice's letter to SB responding to the story has not been found, but Prentice did write in some detail to McGreevy, and from this letter it is clear that the story as given to Prentice began with "The Smeraldina's Billet Doux" (Dream of Fair to Middling Women, 55-61); this story, with some variants, is also part of More Pricks Than Kicks (! New York: Grove Press, 19721 152-157); all citations are from this edition.
Prentice wrote to McGreevy: "The love letters at the beginning of the story are devastating, as rendingly good as anything I have ever read in this vein. But the Joyce bit that comes next seems to be more suitable for a long work than a short one, & anyhow it's not his own style, & the best parts, though there are some supreme times in them, dribble through one's hands in a way that cannot be wholly inten tional" (3 August 1931, TCD, MS 8092/50). The story that SB calls "They Go Out for the Evening" became the next section ofDream ofFair to Middling Women (74-99).
2 SBmetPrenticeinLondonon28July1931ashetraveledfromFrancetoDublin. As SB explained to McGreevy: "A very pleasant evening with Charles Prentice. His voice slows down your heart and tires your eyes. I brought him round the ? next day though I hadn't meant to. Haven't heard anything since. Proposed a Dostoievski for the sake of something to say more than anything else & knowing bloody well I would (could) never do it. Fortunately the partner refrained from being interested" ([? after
82
apex and then I hope it will develop seven spectral petals.
5
It yielded so
[? after 15 August 1931}, McGreevy
2 August to 8 August 1931], TCD, MS 10402/12). Prentice wrote to McGreevy: "He didn't formally submit the story, but he allowed me personally to see it - yet I fear that the firm won't do it, if it were offered to them" (3 August 1931, TCD. MS 8092/50).
3 "WalkingOut"waspublishedasastoryinMorePricksThanKicks(London:Chatto and Windus, 1934). "Whore's get" (Ir. slang, lowest of the low).
4 "Dada"(colloq. ,hobbyhorse).
The seven spectral petals suggest the women in the amphitheatre of Paradise, who sit at Mary's feet; Rachel with Beatrice, Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, and Ruth are enthroned on the rose, dividing those who believe in the Christ yet to come from those who held their eyes on the Christ already come (Dante, The Divine Comedy, III. Paradiso. tr. John D. Sinclair [London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1946, rev. 1948] Canto XXXII, lines 7-18, 463).
5 Charles Prentice had sent SB his copy of D. H. Lawrence's Apocalypse, edited by Richard Aldington (Florence: G. Orioli, 1931); Lawrence's commentary on the Book of Revelation had been published in this limited edition on 3 June 1931; trade editions did not follow until November 1931 (New York: Knopf) and May 1932 (London: Secker). Prentice replied to SB: "By all means. keep 'Apocalypse' until you have properly finished with it. There is no hurry, but when you have finished with it I shall be glad to have it back again" (18 August 1931, UoR. MS 2444 CW letterbook 133/708).
THOMAS McGREEVY LE CAN ADE L, VAR
[? after 15 August 1931] T. C. D. [Dublin]
Dear Tom
May all things come right somehow and you be happy some
how[. ] 1
No news from outside or inside. Charles Prentice sent my
thing back with a covering letter putting charming and gracious relations before me. He is very nice. Pinker sent back a short story
2
I'm very tired, tired - enough to slip back into the embarrassed
respirations. Herewith. I can't write like Boccaccio and I don't
3
witharejectionslip. Idon'tknowwhetherheisveryniceornot.
wanttowritelikeBoccaccio. I'llstayintownandtakedownthe petites merdes de mon ame. No I never did the T. S. E. Telegraphie
83
{? after 15 August 1931}, McGreevy
4
settle in Ireland with the two youngest children. Boss won't leave
sansether. NothingmoreaboutLeipzig. Cissiemaybecomingto
the sinking ship - because ofthe virgins on board. 5 I was reading 6
yourcabpoem. Wentupinaspasmisagreatphrase. Yes,Night
of the Rabblement is good. Silence Exile and Cunning isn't quite
H. C. E. However I don't feel there's anything wrong anywhere.
He's getting a great name for himself in Dublin by the way. The
cute thing to do now would be to write the Prolegomena ofW. I. P.
Do you feel like collelaborating? And what about making a book
on the title? 7 I have not yet said anything to Ruddy about fucking
the field. He wanted me to apply for a job, oh a very good job, in
Capetown or for a job, oh quite a good job, in Cardiff, where I could
lie with Rikky. Starkie will probably be appointed at Oxford -
he was first man out last time, and then my dear Sam of course
they'll appoint you Professor of Italian Literature juxta Dublin
8
fricatrix on her bicycle, the sabreflat fricatrix, for dear death
pedalling faster and faster, her mouth ajar and her nostrils
dilated. Daddy says come off it for the love of God, come out
and dine, I'll give you a drink, kiss and make friends. God bless
dear Daddy Mummy Frank Bibby and all that I love and make
9
juxta Dublin. That'll be the real pig's back. I'll feel like a
me a good boy for Jesus Christ's sake armen.
So I said some
thing quiet and flat and blank but I won't. No sir. Nothing
would induce me to. Pelorson was glad to hear about Grasset.
He is very mou and I don't see enough of him. Like one of his
10
TL; 1 leaf, 1 side; TCD, MS 10402/25. Dating: follows SB to Charles Prentice 15 August 1931 which indicates that Pinker had returned the story.
84
own policepigeons - mous et lourds sur les toits du monde. Dear Tom forgive and forget this pestilential letter. I feel
hollow.
Beautiful greetings to Richard and Bridget [for Brigit]11
and love ever
[? after 15 August 1931}, McGreevy
1 RichardAldington,withwhomMcGreevywasstayinginLeCanadel,wasunwell, as was McGreevy's mother. Offurther concern to McGreevy was where he would go when Aldington left the south of France; he confided to Prentice that staying with Hester Dowden• (1868-1949) in London would be impossible because the forthcoming marriage of her daughter Dolly Travers-Smith to Lennox Robinson "has been rather a knock out" (29July 1931, UoR, MS 2444 CW 41/2).
2 Prentice'slettertoSBhasnotbeenfoundintheChattoandWindusfiles(UoR), which suggests that it was a personal letter covering the return ofthe stories.
3 SB sent "Walking Out" to McGreevy. Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), Italian author best known for the Decameron (1349-1351).
4 "Petitesmerdesdemoname"(droppingsfrommysoul).
SB did not write the review of McGreevy's Thomas Stearns Eliot, nor of Eliot's trans lation ofAnabase by St. ·John Perse.
SB spins T. S. E. (Eliot's initials) into "Telegraphie sans ether" (literally, telegraphy without ether), playing on "Telegraphie Sans Fil" (wireless), commonly referred to in France as TSF.
5 SBhadbeenthinkingofgoingtoLeipzig(see112September1931I). CissieSinclair considered leaving Germany and returning to Ireland with her two youngest children, Deirdre and Morris (1918-2007); however, her husband, Boss, was unwilling to leave Kassel because their older daughters Annabel Lilian (known as Nancy, 1916-1969), Sara Estella (known as Sally, 1910-1976), and Peggy wanted to remain in Germany where they had boyfriends (Morris Sinclair, 10 August 2004).
6 McGreevy's "cab poem" is "Cron Trath Na nDeithe" (Twilight ofthe Gods); the phrase is from part III: "When the Custom House took fire / Hope slipped off her green petticoat / The Four Courts went up in a spasm / Moses felt for Hope" (MacGreevy, Collected Poems of Thomas MacGreery, 19, 107-122; the translation of the Irish title is supplied by Susan Schreibman with an explanation ofits context, 109).
7 "Night of the Rabblement" plays on the title of an indignant essay by James Joyce about the parochialism of the Irish Literary Theatre, "The Day of the Rabblement" (15 October 1901);Joyce's essay was rejected by St. Stephen's, a magazine published by students ofUniversity College. Joyce protested to the President of the University, and, in the end, the essay was privately printed (F. J. C. Skeffington and James Joyce, Two Essays: A Forgotten Aspect of the University Question, and The Day of the Rabblement [Dublin: Gerrard Brothers, 19011 7-8; rpt. in The Critical Writings of]ames Joyce, ed. Ellsworth Mason and Richard Ellmann ! Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1959] 68-72).
Near the end ofJoyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the character Stephen
Dedalus avows: "I will try to express myselfin some mode oflife or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use - silence, exile, and cunning" (247).
Padraic Colum (1881-1972) reviewed Joyce's Haveth Childers Everywhere ("From a Work in Progress," Dublin Magazine 6. 3 [July-September 1931] 33-37); a review of Stuart Gilbert's study James Joyce's "Ulysses" had appeared in the previous issue of Dublin Magazine (6. 2 [April-June 1931] 64-65). The London wedding ofJames and Nora Joyce received mention in The Irish Times (4 July 1931: 6; 11 July 1931: 6). SB proposes that he and McGreevy write a preface or introduction to Work in Progress, or a book on the (as yet unannounced) title of the novel.
85
[? after 15 August 1931], McGreevy
8 "Fucking the field": SB's grotesque English-literal adaptation of the dead French metaphor "foutre le camp" (get away quickly). Rudmose-Brown encouraged SB to seek academic positions in Cape Town, SouthAfrica, and at the University of Cardiff, Wales. Leopold John Dixon Richardson (known as Reeky, called by SB "Rikky," 1893-1979), who had won highest honors in Classics at Trinity College Dublin; he was lecturer inLatin at the University of Cardiff.
Walter Starkie had been a Visiting Professor at the University of Madrid (1928-1929) and may have been considered for a position at Oxford, but he remained at TCD until 1940, when he became Director of the British Institute in Madrid.
9 TheimageofthesabreflatfricatrixappearsinDreamofFairtoMiddlingWomenas "the hard breastless Greek Slave or huntress" (83); the phrase "his mouth ajar and his nostrils dilated" appears in the opening of this novel (1). The prayer beginning "God bless" is found in Dream of Fair to Middling Women (8); Bibby was SB's nanny (Bridget Bray, n. d. ) (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 35-36, 134-135).
10 SB had written to thank McGreevy for sending on the manuscript of Georges Pelorson's novel "Claudiurnales" to Henri Muller (1902-1980); Muller, a friend of Pelorson, worked directly with Bernard Grasset (1881-1955), the founder and editor of Les Editions Grasset, Paris. SB commented to McGreevy: "Neither do I think Grasset will take it" ([after 2August - before 8August 1931] TCD, MS 10402/12). Pelorson had typed the novel on SB's typewriter, and sent it to McGreevy at SB's insistence; the manuscript was indeed refused (Belmont, Souvenirs d'outre-monde, 415-416).
"Mou" (soft); "mous et lourds sur Jes toits du monde" (soft and heavy on the roofs of the world). Pelorson said he saw a similarity between the walk of an Irish policeman and the strutting of pigeons (interview 2 November 1990).
11 Richard Aldington, Brigit Patmore. SB wrote "<theAldingtons> Richard and Bridget.
