27 Brothel regulation was an element inNazi policy from 1933 up until the War (see Julia Roose, "Backlash against Prostitutes' Rights: Origins and Dynamics ofNazi Prostitution Policy," Journal of the History of
Sexuality
11.
Samuel Beckett
).
7 I have seen several excellent private collections (where
alone living art is to be seen in Germany at present. The
Kronprinzenpalais in Berlin is closed, & that is typical for the
whole country, and the campaign against "Art-Bolschevism" is
only just beginning\ those of Fraulein Dr. Rosa Schapire, art
historian, exclusively Schmidt-Rottluff; 9 of Frau Sauerlandt,
widow of Professor Sauerlandt of the Art & Crafts Museum
here, whose banned book on the painting of the past 30 years I
succeeded in obtaining, mostly Nolde;10 and of a merchant
prince called Hudtwalcker, mostly Munch. 11 I also got permis
sion to view the Cellar of the Gallery, or rather one of the
cellars, & saw there in the twilight some excellent pictures of
the "Bridge" Group; in another cellar are some 60 pictures of the
German impressionist Liebermann. 12 I was refused permission
in the Art & Crafts Museum to inspect a carpet after design
by Schmidt-Rottluff. 13 I have introductions to Schmidt-Rottluff,
Nolde & Heckel in Berlin. 14 The fundamental antithesis, & the
two poles of influence, is Schmidt-Rottluff-Nolde. Spend [for
spent] a very interesting evening with Grimm & Ballmer, then
Grimm alone. Their enthusiasm for early Christian miniature
painting, especially the Irish Celtic. 15 Ballmer's painting is like
nothing I have seen, except some moods of the later Picasso (do
you remember the tremendous figure on a shore that I liked so
much in the big Paris Exhibition? ), metaphysical concrete. 16
Grimm draws like Lautrec, & then frail lyrical tempera colours.
Bargheer is very violent & intelligent & anatomical. Pollaiuolo,
whom I mentioned, he analyzed with admiral [for admirable]
17
justness & sensitiveness.
therefore only a very little disturbed by the official attitude
387
They are all profoundly serious and
28 November 1937 [for 1936}, McGreevy
towards them. I shall be surprised & lucky ifl find such energetic underground of painting in other parts of Germany. I hear on all
18
removed & leave a remainded [for remainder].
Drunken Boat was to have been published in New Poetry;
but I hear this has been deferred, to make room for an article by
20
sorry you have had to lay the Yeats aside. I'm afraid I couldn't write about pictures at all. I used never to be happy with a
21
I heard a lovely concert with the Berlin Philharmonic under
Sabata (pupil of Toscanini) from Milan: Strauss's Don Quixote,
which belongs to same period as Heldenleben & which therefore
I expected would be awful but which was exquisite; Bolero,
mistimed as usual, ejaculatio praecox as usual; & Brahms' �nd
Symphony superbly played, so that I understand Brahms (the
Brahms of the symphonies) a little for the first time & why I had
almost [for? always] found him so difficult to understand. Sabata
22
a Kraft <lurch Freude spinster from Altona. But Hindemith's
388
I meant to go home by Paris, but think now of going home the way I came. By April I expect to be far too tired for Paris. Perhaps I shall get off the boat at Southhampton or Plymouth or wherever it calls and have a short time in London & see you & Geoffrey. I suppose that will partly depend on what happens with Murphy. I hear from Reavey that Nott would take it if an American mug could be found, & furthermore that Houghton Mifflin are "on", but screaming for a cut of one third! 19 So the matter still pends, I not having refused blankly to change a syllable, but having replied with a polite request to be told how I was to remove more than I had already
sides that Hamburg is an island.
Ezra Pound.
I am glad you have got a translation from Heinemann, but
picture till it was literature, but now that need is gone.
was more conducted than conducting.
I was invited one evening to a Hausmusik. Wolf sung by
28 November 1937 [for 1936}, McGreevy
Matthias der Maler symphony on gramophone. 23 I so want to
see the Isenheimer Altar in Colmar, but don't see how it is to
be managed. There is something also in Aschaffenburg &
I think in Munich, but apparently trivial beside the
24
cent form. Mother has had no holiday & wont take one. Young
Sinclair has a job waiting in South Africa (I think thanks to
Dorothy Elvery), but is not well enough to travel. He is spending
a few days at Cooldrinagh! Boss has been moved to Rathdrum &
fallen in love with a nun. Cissie is beyond writing to me, & I have
25
Edinburgh, which he found appalling. And there is an Irishman
called Power, who has not been in Ireland, who was born in
Gibraltar, whose home is in Peru, whose interests are in Spain &
family in Marburg, whose family left Waterford, while the going
was good, in the 1s! li century. He stood me lunch in a vegetarian
26
in Brunswick would take me in. Only in ports does the new
27
Flamand] called Brulez, professor of French here, & gave
28
through him a real little German pedant Fraulein Tied[t]ke,
whose thesis on the Proustian Symbol I am at present skim
ming. She wrote me a long letter in crabbed French about
the shortcomings of my book, & I must meet here [for her]
Monday before a flowershop & render an account. But there is
something magnificent in doing a doctorate in 1936 with a
29
389
Isenheimer.
News from home is good. Frank seems to be in magnifi
this news from home.
We have an Icelander in the Pension now, fresh from
restaurant.
I am tired of this Pension. I wonder is there a whore left
Germany tolerate brothels.
I met a Proust fiend in the University, a Flamant [for
him my book, which released his compliments. And
work on not merely an "exquisite", but a non-Aryan.
Brulez
28 November 1937 {for 1936}, McGreevy
quoted with scorn Huxley's "mental masturbation". I said there were worst things, mental aspermatism for example. My Proust is apparently not positive & intellectual enough for the disciples of Curtius, I mean my presentation of Proust. They want to make his "solution" a little moral tri umph, the reward of endeavour & the crown of a life of striving a la Goethe. 30
Forgive this dry letter. It is all I can do to-day & to-morrow would be more than I could do.
Perhaps you would write in about a week to Poste Restante, Braunschweig. I expect to be there from about g! ! ! to 15! ! ! December.
Love ever Sam
31
ALS; 2 leaves, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/145. Dating: the letter is dated 193[7], the 7 added by AH; however, the year should be 1936, when SB was in Hamburg and Professor W. R. Fearon was appointed to the Irish Censorship of Publications Board (see n. 31 below).
1 SB left Hamburg for Luneburg on 4 December (Beckett, Alles kommt auf so viel an, 57).
2 Riddagshausen is a small town east of Brunswick with a church from 1278, part of a Cistercian monastery; K6nigslutter, a small town on the river Lutter, has a Romanesque church dating from 1150. In the end, SB did not visit Goslar (Lower Saxony), Halberstadt, or Quedlinburg (see 31 December 1936 below).
3 SBreferstoearlyRomanesquearchitecture.
4 "Grippe"(withflu). ThecollectionsoftheBremenKunsthallehadbecomedimin ished by circumspection in view of increasing government pressure (see Andreas Kreul, Oskar Kokoschka: Pariser Oper, Kunsthalle Bremen 30 June-30 August 1992 [Berlin: KulturStiftung der Lander and Kunstverein Bremen, 1992]; for the directive of 5 November 1936 to German gallery directors instructing them to remove decadent modern art, see Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 223).
5 SBmadesidetripsfromBrunswickandthenmadehiswaytoBerlin,arrivingon 11 December 1936 (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 226).
390
I hear Fearon has been put on Censorship Committee.
28 November 1937 [for 1936], McGreevy
6 German painters Karl Kluth (1898-1972), Willem Grimm (1904-1986), Eduard Bargheer {1901-1979), Erich Hartmann (1886-1974), and Swiss painter Karl Ballmer (1891-1958).
SB met Kluth and Hartmann at a dinner on 23 November at the home of Margaritha (nee Hoffmann, 1883-1955) and Theodor Durrieu (1875-1967); SB met Kluth again on 25 November and also on that day he visited Grimm (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 27, 48-49, 50). As he wrote in his diary: "Grimm's painting most interesting I have yet seen of Hamburg group . . . Munch influence seems worked out . . . Exquisite colour & composition" (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 50). For Ballmer, see n. 16 below.
7 TheseartistsweremembersoftheHamburgSecessiongroupwhich"sawitself as the successor to Die Briicke"; it was established in 1919 and "disbanded itself on 16 May 1933 in response to the Nazi demand to expel its Jewish members" (Struan Robertson, "A History of the Jews in Hamburg: Three Jewish Women Hamburg Secessionists" [wwwl. uni-hamburg. de/rz3a035//secession. html], 27 October 2006). The Bibliothek der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft had been closed on 16 November 1935 (Quadflieg, Beckett was here, 171).
8 TheKronprinzenpalaiswasthedepartmentformodemartoftheBerlinNational Gallery, Unter den Linden, 3; the upper rooms on its first floor "were closed on 30 October 1936" because works by "Barlach, Beckmann, Dix, Hofer, Nolde and other contemporary artists" were exhibited there (Professor Dr. Bernd Evers, Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 3 June 1993). Ernst Barlach {1870-1938), Max Beckmann (1884-1950), Otto Dix (1891-1969), Karl Hofer (also Carl, 1878-1955).
The Nazi campaign against "Art-Bolshevism" ("Kulturbolschewismus") perniciously linked Communists, Jews, and contemporary artists, attacking them as degenerate influences on Aryan culture.
SB adopts the German spelling of the root word (Bolsche-) and adds an English ending (-vism).
9 Dr. RosaSchapire:14November1936,n. 6.
10 SB visited Frau Alice Sauerlandt (nee Schmidt, 1880-1972), the widow of Max Sauerlandt, who had been Director of the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe until 1933. SB's notes on his visits on 21 and 26 November mention work by Nolde, Schmidt-Rottluff, Kirchner, and Ballmer (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an. 46, 52). Aware that Sauerlandt's catalogue, Die Kunst der Letzten 30Jahre (1935) had been banned, SB asked Frau Sauerlandt if he could buy a copy from her (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 46).
11 ThroughRosaSchapire,SBmetDr. HeinrichC. Hudtwalcker(1880-1952),indus trialist and art patron in Hamburg, whose collection he visited on 22 November. SB admired Munch's Girls on the Bridge (1900; now HK 5052) and a painting of a man and a woman by Otto Muller; he noted works by the German-born Norwegian painter Rolf Nesch (1893-1975) and Munch's portraits of Hudtwalcker (1925, Oslo, Munch Museum 116) and Maria Agatha Hudtwalcker (1927; Oslo, Munch Museum 124) (Beckett. Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 47; Quadflieg, Beckett was here, 145-146; Maike Bruhns, Kunst in der Krise: Hamburger Kunst im "Dritten Reich" [Hamburg: Dolling und Galitz Verlag, 2001] 244; Ame Eggum, Edvard Munch: Portretter [Oslo: Munch-Musette / Labyrinth Press, 1994] 23, 244).
12 SBwenttotheHamburgerKunsthalleon19NovembertoviewSchmidt-Rottluff and Kirchner drawings in its Kupferstichkabinett or Print Gallery. Rosa Schapire was
391
28 November 1937 [for 1936}, McGreevy
there, and, through her intervention, SB was allowed to visit the storage area. SB's spontaneous visit broke with restrictions, and there were repercussions for the museum staff (see Matthias Miihling, Mit Samuel Beckett in der Hamburger Kunsthalle ! Hamburg: Hamburger Kunsthalle, 2003J, frontispiece and 29-30).
Here SB saw works by Schmidt-Rottluff, Kirchner, Pechstein; he specifically men tioned Windbride by Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) (HK 2256, confiscated as degenerate art in 1937; now in the Basel Kunstmuseum, 1745) and Nolde's Christ Among the Children (also known as Christ and the Children, HK 1683, confiscated as degenerate art in 1937; now in MOMA 341. 55). The last ofthese moved SB to say: "Feel at once on terms with the picture, & that I want to spend a long time before it, & play it over & over much like the record ofa quartet" (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso viel an, 44; with appreciation to Mark Nixon and James KnowIson for their assistance with this transcription).
The Hamburg museum listed sixty-four paintings or studies by Max Liebermann (1847-1935). Liebermann's work was banned for its depiction of! aborers and because he was Jewish; he was pressured to resign as President ofthe Prussian Academy ofArt in 1932.
13 SBwenttotheMuseumfiirKunstundGewerbeon17November1936(Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 42).
14 FrauSauerlandtgaveSBaddressesforNolde,Schmidt-Rottluff,andHeckel,and permission to use her name in contacting them; she also encouraged SB to visit the collection of Gustav Schiefler (1857-1935) in Hamburg (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 52).
15 At the studio of Willem Grimm on 25 November, SB met the painter and graphic artist Gretchen Wohlwill (1878-1962), and artist Hans Martin Ruwoldt (1891-1969) (Quadflieg, Beckett was here, 155). Grimm and Ruwoldt were especially interested in the Celtic motifs found in the Book ofKells (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 51).
16 SB visited Ballmer in his studio on 26 November 1936. He described Ballmer's paintings: "Transparent figures before landscapes . . . Wonderful red Frauenkopf, skull earth sea & sky. " He continued: "Would not occur to me to call this painting abstract. A metaphysical concrete. Nor nature convention, but its source, fountain ofErscheinung. Fully a posteriori painting. Object not exploited to illustrate an idea . . . The communi cation exhausted by the optical experience that is its motive & content" (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso viel an, 51-52; Quadflieg, Beckett was here, 168-169; Ballmer's Head in Red IAargauer Kunsthaus, Aargau, Switzerland, 28471). "Erscheinung" (manifestation).
SB likens Ballmer's work to Picasso's Figure au bord de la mer (1929; MOMA, on loan, no. 187 in the Exposition Picasso at the Galeries Georges Petit, Paris, 16 June-30 July 1932 (Charles Vrancken, ed. , Exposition Picasso: 16 juin-30 juillet 1932 ! Paris: Galeries Georges Petit, 1932] 62, illus. follows 70).
17 SB was especially drawn to Grimm's "Rummelpott" series; he preferred "the stillness & the unsaid ofGrimm & Ballmer" to the preoccupation with the "dynamics ofmovement" in the work ofEduard Bargheer, which he called "the bull ofpainting by the horns" (Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an, 50, 53; Quadflieg, Beckett was here, 175-176). SB met Eduard Bargheer at his studio on 27 November; as Bargheer had recently returned from Italy, SB asked him about the painting of Piero Pollaiuolo (1441-1496) (for their discussion see Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 53).
392
28 November 1937 [for 1936}, McGreevy
18 Ballmer had not been able to exhibit since 1933, and Bargheer had experi enced similar difficulties (Beckett, Alles kommt auf so viel an, 52-53; Quadflieg, Beckett was here, 170).
19 BothGeoffreyThompsonandMcGreevywereinLondon.
Attempts to publish Murphy: see SB to George Reavey, 13 November 1936, and to Mary Manning Howe, 14 November 1936.
20 CommissionedbyEdwardTitus,SBhadtranslatedRimbaud'spoem"LeBateauivre" as "The Drunken Boat" in 1932 (see 13 September 1932, n. 9). It was to be published not in New Poetry, but in Contemporary Poetry and Prose. However, SB's translation was displaced by a letter that Ezra Pound had written against surrealism, "The Coward Surrealists," to which the editor Roger Roughton (1916-1941) replied ("Eyewash, Do You? ," Contemporary Poetry and Prose 7 [November 1936] 137-138). The following number of Contemporary Poetry and Prose (8 [December 19361) was a short-story issue. The journal's final two numbers were issued as a quarterly in 1937.
21 McGreevy was translating Oasis interdites: de Pekin au Cachemire (1937) by Ella K. Maillart (1903-1997) for Heinemann; the translation was entitled Forbidden Journey: From Peking to Kashmir. Prior to this, he had been working on his study ofJack B. Yeats.
22 On20NovemberattheConventgartenTheatre,SBheardtheBerlinPhilharmonic conducted by Victor de Sabata (1892-1967), pupil of Italian-born conductor Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957). Don Qµixote, op. 35 ("Fantasy with Variations on a Theme of Knightly Character, for cello and orchestra"), and Bin Heldenleben (A Hero's Life), op. 40, by Richard Strauss are both tone poems. SB refers to Bolero by Maurice Ravel and Brahms's Symphony no. 2 in D major, op. 73 (see Beckett,AUes kommt aufso vie! an, 45-46).
23 SBwenttoa"Hausmusik"(homeconcert)atthehomeofOrs. MariaandPaul Riimker (n. d. ) on 24 November: the singer from Altona has not been identified. "Kraft <lurch Freude" (Strength through Joy) was a Nazi slogan and the name of a Nazi organization created in 1933 to sponsor "appropriate" recreation and leisure activities for the working population.
Austrian composer Hugo Wolf is known for his musical settings of poetry. The symphony Mathis der Maler (1934) was the first musical response by Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) to his interest in the north German painter Grunewald (ne Mathis Gothart, also called Nithart or Neithardt, c. 1475-1528), on whose life and work he later (1938) based his opera of the same name.
24 Grunewald'sIsenheimAltarpiece(MuseumUnterlinden,Colmar). SBalsorefersto the altar by Grunewald for the Mariaschnee Chapel in the Church of St. Peter and St. Alexander in Aschaffenburg and paintings in the collection of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.
25 MorrisSinclairwenttoSouthAfricaasatutortotwoboysonasheepfarmnear GraaffReinet; Dorothy Kay (nee Elvery, 1886-1964), Irish-born South African artist, a girlhood friend of Morris's mother Cissie Beckett Sinclair, arranged this post for him (Morris Sinclair, 9 May 1991).
Boss Sinclair had been moved from the National Hospital for Consumption in Ireland (Newcastle Sanatorium) in Newtownmountkennedy in Co. Wicklow to St. Colman's Hospital, Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow, which was run by The Sisters of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God.
393
28 November 1937 [for 1936], McGreevy
26 TheIcelander is mentioned in SB's diary entry for 24November 1936, but not named (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso viel an, 50). Power's full name is not known; he and SB had lunch together on 17November (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso viel an, 26, 41).
27 Brothel regulation was an element inNazi policy from 1933 up until the War (see Julia Roose, "Backlash against Prostitutes' Rights: Origins and Dynamics ofNazi Prostitution Policy," Journal of the History of Sexuality 11. 1-2 [2002] 67-94).
28 Dr. LucienBrulez(1891-1982)wasaLektor(Lecturer)inFrenchattheUniversity of Hamburg from 1920 to 1956; he taught nineteenth-and twentieth-century French literature, although his publications were primarily in philosophy (Eckart Krause, 27 July 1993). SB met Brulez through Frau Durrieu, and attended his lecture on Diderot on 12November 1936; SB noted that Brulez was interested in Proust "as philosopher & symbolist" (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso viel an, 38).
Flamand (Fleming).
29 IrmaTiedtke(1910-? 1943)tookherdissertationoralexaminationsinJune1935; Dr. Brulez directed her thesis, which was published as Symbole und Bilder im Werke Marcel Prousts (1936) (Quadflieg, Beckett was here, 120). SB arranged on 28November to meet her on Monday, 1 December; she was also present on 16 November when SB met Brulez again.
30 On16November,Brulezdiscussed"Proust,Bergson,Plato&Kant"(Beckett,Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 44). Brulez apparently quoted from Aldous Huxley's Eyeless in Gaza a passage in which the narrator discusses meditation as one of many "bolt-holes" from unpleasant reality: "Charismata like masturbations. Masturbations, however, that are dignified, by the amateur mystics who practise them, with all the most sacred names of religion and philosophy. 'The contemplative life'" ([London: Chatto and Windus, 1936] 503).
ErnstRobert Curtius (1886-1956), German literary historian and Professor ofFrench at the universities of Bonn, Marburg, and Heidelberg.
31 W. R. FearonwasnamedtotheCensorshipofPublicationsBoardinIrelandon 23November1936("CensorshipBoard:ResignationofMr. Thrift,Dr. FearonAppointed as Successor," The Irish Times 24November 1936: 7).
BRIAN COFFEY DUB LIN
5/12/36
[no greeting]
C'est ici que pendant 50 ans il se faisait des idees distinctes,
ou, pire, s'en laissait faire. C'est maintenant musee des arts et desmetiers. 1 Solidementassisdansunelumierenordilbarraita tombeau ouvert. Je viens de subir une petite amende (lRM) pour
394
13 December 1936, Manning Howe
m'etre promene d'une fac;on dangereuse. Par consequent je pars, pour Braunschweig, en silence dore, d'ou je t'ecrirais.
Sam
APCS; 1 leaf, 1 side; "Hannover: Leibniz-Haus"; to Brian Coffey Esq, 41 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin C 19, Irland; pm 5-12-36,Hannover, 7-12·36, Dublin; DeU, Coffey.
5/12/36
[no greeting]
This is where, for fifty years, he formed distinct ideas, or,
1
1 TheLeibnizhausinHanoverwasrestoredin1891-1892andatthistimehoused the Kunstgewerbe-Museum (Arts and Crafts Museum). The building was destroyed in World War II and subsequently rebuilt.
Leibniz administered the library that was moved from theHerrenhausen Palace into Hanover in 1679; from 1698, the library had its own building, and included living quarters for the librarian. From 1690, Leibniz was also librarian for the more impor
tant HerzogAugust Bibliothek in Wolfenbiittel.
worse, let them form in him. Now it is a museum ofarts and crafts. Solidly seated in a north light he did his deleting and striking out over an open tomb. I have just had a small fine (1 RM) imposed on me for walking in a dangerous fashion. As a result, I am leaving for Braunschweig, in golden silence. I would write to you from there.
Sam
MARY MANNI NG HOWE CAMBRIDGE, MAS SACHUSETTS
13/12/36
Hotel Deutsche Traube Berlin n 4, InvalidenstraBe 32
dear Mary
I'm writing this to you in a pub, because my room in the
picture gives me the chinks. I was very glad to have your long
395
13 December 1936, Manning Howe
letter, which reached me here, where I have been for 2 days,
1
I did not know I wrote you any unkind cryptograms, and am heartily sorry if so. I shall now try and be clear & pleasant. Even
2
I do not know Grene. If he is the person that was once pointed out to me in Dublin, he looks like a semicircumcised bugger.
4
The last I heard about the book from Reavey, as I thought I
wrote to you, was that Mifflin were suggesting that 1/3 should be
ablated, & enclosing a letter that I have forgotten. I replied to
Reavey, saying that I did not understand how more could be
taken away from the unfortunate book than I had already taken
away myself, & leave a remainder; but that I only asked to be in
this matter enlightened, by some critic more alive to the econ
omy of the work than I was myself. To this humble obeisance I
have received no reply. Nott was apparently prepared to take on
the book if an American mug could be found; & Mifflin if an
5
I also am very interested in the Johnson-Thrale-Piozzi arrangement, and often thought what a good subject was
6
having come slowly from Hamburg by Hannover & Brunswick. In a few weeks I shall go on to Dresden & from there to Munich & from there I suppose slowly home, probably the same way I came. For by April I expect to be far too tired for Paris. I am tired already.
an improvement in the script perhaps you may notice.
3
I am not on the lookout for a lap.
Englishmug. Itseemedtome,unfamiliarwiththeniceties,that my agent had merely to bring the mugs together & the abuse would begin to pour in. It seems I was wrong again.
there,perhapsonlyonelongact. Whatinterestedmeespecially was the breakdown ofJohnson as soon as Thrale disappeared. I do not think Piozzi enters Johnson's psychological situation at all. I think that his abuse of Piozzi is a blind. Piozzi was the
396
pretext that he needed, to get away with an appearance of
7
the Platonic gigolo or housefriend, with not a testicle, auricle
or ventricle to stand on when the bluff is called. His impotence
was mollified by Mrs Thrale so long as Thrale was there, then
suddenly exasperated when the licensed mentula was in the
connubial position for the first time for years, thanks to rigor
8
his den in Fleet Street after the last visit to Mrs Thrale, forgetting
a lamppost & hurrying back. Can't think why there hasn't been a
film ofJohnson, with Laughton. But I think one act, with some
thing like the psychology above, in an outburst to Mrs Thrale,
or in his house in confidence to the mysterious servant, would
9
scarce. I am tired all the time. All the modern pictures are in the cellars. I keep a pillar to post account, but have written nothing connected since I left home, nor disconnected. 10 And not the thart ofa book beginning. The physical mess is trivial, beside the intellectual mess. I do not care, & don't know, whether they are connected or not. It is enough that I can't imagine anything worse than the mental marasmus, in which I totter & sweat for months. It has turned out indeed to be a journey from, and not to, as I knew it was, before I began it. I can't begin to make it clear to you, I haven't the energy to make it clear to myself. An instinctive respect, at least, for what is real, & therefore has not in its nature, to be clear. Then when somehow this goes over into words, one is called an obscurantist. The classifiers are the obscurantists.
mortis. ThinkofafilmopeningwithJohnsondancinghometo
13 December 1936, Manning Howe
justification. What interests me above all is the condition of
be worth doing. There are 50 plays in his life.
The trip is being a failure. Germany is horrible. Money is
Write to Leperstown. Love
11
Sam
397
13 December 1936, Manning Howe
ALS; 1 leaf, 2 sides; letterhead, A date by SB; TxU.
1 TheletterheadshowsanimageoftheHotelDeutscheTraube(seefrontispiece).
Having taken the train from Hamburg to Liineburg and on to Hanover via Celle on 4 December 1936, SB was in Hanover on 5 December and traveled on to Brunswick that afternoon (Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an, 57; see also 5 December 1936 above).
2 MaryManningHowehadrespondedtoSB'slettertoherof14November1936.
3 Grenehasnotbeenidentified.
4 SeeSB'sletterof14November1936toMaryManningHowe.
5 Houghton Mifflin's request for cuts to Murphy apparently threatened Reavey's arrangement with Stanley Nott (see 28 November 1937 [for 19361).
6 MaryManningHowe'slettertoSBhasnotbeenfound,butmusthaveincludeda reference to the "Johnson-Thrale-Piozzi arrangement. " In 1936 there was considerable interest in Johnson's life; in March new Boswell manuscripts were found ("Yet More of Boswell," The Times 9 March 1936: 15). In April C[olwayn] E[dward] Vulliamy published Mrs. Thra! e ofStreatham, Her Place in the Life ofDr. SamuelJohnson and in the Society ofher Time, her Character and Family Affairs (London: Heinemann). In November a new edition of James Boswell, Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL. D. , ed. Frederick A. Pottle and Charles H. Bennet, based on recently discovered manuscripts, was published. Also in November the play Dr. Johnson's Mrs. Thra! e by Winifred Carter (1884-1949) was produced in London; a review of Carter's play noted of Johnson: "Twice he is on the point of declaring his illicit passion, and twice he is saved by a trivial interruption" ("Strand Theatre, 'Dr. Johnson's Mrs. Thrale,"' The Times 25 November 1936: 12).
In 1765 Johnson was introduced to Henry Thrale (c. 1728-1781), brewery owner and Member of Parliament for Southwark from 1765 to 1780, and to his wife Hester Lynch (nee Salusbury, 1741-1821). From 1766 until Thrale's death in 1781, Johnson was an intimate of the Thrales, such a frequent guest that he had his own room in their various houses in Streatham, Southwark, Brighton, and Grosvenor Square; he also traveled with them to Wales and France.
Thrale's death was, as SB put it to McGreevy, "the causa irritans"; it changed the relationship between Mrs. Thrale and Johnson as well as their material situation ([before 23 July 1937], TCD, MS 10402/129). Mrs. Thrale, at forty, looked forward to a less encumbered life, whereas Johnson, at seventy-one, confronted physical and emo tional displacement from the Thrales' comfortable household and suffered a "break down" (W. Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson [New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975] 560, 568, 572, 575-579).
After her husband's death, Mrs. Thrale fixed her attentions on Gabriel Mario Piozzi (1740-1809); despite objections by Johnson, family, and friends, she married him in 1784 (Bate, SamuelJohnson, 572).
7 SBmayrefertoJohnson'santagonismtoPiozziongroundsthathewasCatholic, Italian, and a social inferior to Mrs. Thrale; Johnson's stated objection to their mar riage was that it would cause Mrs. Thrale to desert "country, religion, and family" (Leslie Stephen, SamuelJohnson, English Men of Letters [New York: Harper and Brothers, 1879] 153).
398
8 InMrs. ThraleofStreatham,Vulliamywrotethat"noseriousattempthaseverbeen made to examine the sexual character of Dr. Johnson," raising the issue if not the question that SB asks himself (243). Johnson's testicular hydrocele was eventually diagnosed as a tumor (Bate, Samuel Johnson, 577, 581-583). SB writes "<member> mentula. "
9 One ofJohnson's compulsive habits was "touching the posts as he passed, and going back if he missed one" (Bate, SamuelJohnson, 382).
American film actor Charles Laughton (1899-1962) starred in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1934), The Barretts ofWimpoleStreet (1934), Les Miserables (1935), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), and Rembrandt (1936).
SB refers to Francis Barber (known as Frank, 1735-1801), a freed slave from Jamaica placed in Johnson's care from the age of ten; Johnson educated him, and Barber was later Johnson's "man-servant" (Bate, Samuel Johnson, 325-327, 503-504).
10 SBreferstohisGermanDiaries(BIF,UoR).
11 Leopardstown, once known as Leperstown, was near Foxrock station, Co. Dublin.
20 December 1936, Reavey
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
20/12/36
Berlin W. 50
bei Kempt Budapesterstrasse 45
dear Georg
This pigeonhole will find me for a fortnight or three
weeks, so make a sign, before I leave for Dresden. I came on slowly from Hamburg last week, by Luneburg, Hannover, Brunswick, Hildesheim, etc.
Is there no further news about Quigley, I mean Murphy? Have
you not contrived to join the hands of the two philanthropists
across the pond? I know finding the terms is child[']s play to
bringing them together. The last I remember is my readiness to
cut down the work to its title. I am now prepared to go further, and
change the title, ifit gives offence, to Quigley, Trompetenschleim,
1
Eliot, or any other name that the publishers fancy.
399
20 December 1936, Reavey
I don't even know if you got the apes at chess. Lighten my darkness. 2
Heil, Sieg, fette Beute and a Merry Xmas/ Sam
APCS; 1 leaf, 2 sides; to George Reavey Esq, 1 Parton Street. London, WC 1. England; pm 20-12-36, Berlin-Charlottenburg; TxU.
1 QuigleyisthenameofthepersonsupportingMurphyinSB'snovel.
Reavey's efforts to find an American publisher to join forces with Stanley Nott: 13 November 1936, n. 4, and 13 December 1936, n. 5.
"Trompetenschleim" (trumpet slime); this suggestion derives from a conversation on the evening of13 October 1936 in SB's pension in Hamburg, during which amusing names were discussed (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 16).
2 The"apesatchess":see13November1936,n. 5. 3 "Heil,Sieg,fetteBeute"(Hail. victory,richspoils).
THOMAS McGREEVY [LONDON]
22/12/36
Berlin 10-50
bei Kempt Budapesterstr. 45
Dear Tom
I do not like sending this to you c/o Hester, but have no
alternative, as I have lost your [? Lad] Lane address, & cannot
1
or recent. As hung it is given to Giorgione, and I do not know who else could have painted it. It is infinitely more interest ing for me at least than the very early lyrical Giorgione of the Kaiser Friedrich, also herewith. No doubt you know them both in reproduction. I felt as soon as I saw the Brunswick picture, and each time I went back to it, that it was made for you, and
400
remember Heinemann[']s.
I do not know if the grotesque Dossi attribution is old
that you should have this faint echo at least. Lass es dir gut
2
various excursions to the incredibly beautiful Hildesheim, and
to Wolfenbiittel, where I would not have been surprised to see
Lessing come limping out of the August Bibliothek and across
the square, to take up the thread of the "happiest year of his
life. "3 I wanted to visit Halberstadt & Quedlinburg on the way to
Berlin, but was tired & broke and feel anyway that they would be
only shadows of Hildesheim, so came on straight here. The first
week I spent in a sinister hotel in the North, a German North
Star as opposite Amiens St. Station; then found this place, beside
the Zoo & the Kurfiirstendamm. Museum Island is au <liable,
but the tube is child's play. The collections are stupendous; the
town itself a monstrous comic, but rapidly sympathetic, with
skies nearly as good as Dublin[']s, one wonderful park and an
excellent brim to the hat, lakes, plain & forest. The weather is
lovely, ciel quintessencie, but desperately cold. I expect to stay
4
News from home good. Frank is in Miirren, playing in
the snow. So Mother is alone. But writes in excellent spirits.
Young Sinclair is on his way to South Africa, Boss still alive in
Rathdrum. Cissie got a bad turn when out visiting, I don't know
5
cut the work down to its title and to change that, if it gave offence. I sent Bion a card for Xmas, the Subarair earth goddess in the Tell Halaf museum, complete with chalice for the fertilising
rain and archaic smile. 7
Geoffrey is well dug in in Harley Street, with more patients
than he can manage. Bion is his "supervisor" in the clinic, does me
401
gefallen.
I had a week in Brunswick on the way here, and made
22 December 1936, McGreevy
till middle of January, & then go on to the Porcelaine Madonna.
exactly what, but seems to be well over it.
No further news of the book. The last was my willingness to
6
20 December 1936, McGreevy
the honour to remember me, deprecates my untimely departure, just when I was all set to become the uomo universale, & looks forward to getting his hooks into me again. Quien sabe! 8
The modern rooms of the Kronprinzenpalais are closed,
i. e. modern German painting from Nolde on. I got a permit in
Hamburg to visit the various works no longer accessible to
German public, and shall try it on director ofKronprinzenpalais
here, though it is only valid for Hamburg. On the ground floor
9
on with the Yeats, or work of your own. I seem not to have heard from you for ages. I have almost decided to cut out Paris on way
home (Devisen complications) & take boat from Hamburg to Southhampton, & thence to London, where I shall hope to find
10
know anyone here and though I am often lonely don't feel like picking up anyone. Expect to spend Xmas alone with a bottle of wine & the Kaiser Friedrich catalogue, full of impayable quota tions from Bode. Do you know Friedlander[')s Niederlandische Malerei or Dehio's colossal work? 1 1
Love ever Sam
ALS; 2 leaves. 2 sides; TCD. MS 10402/111.
1 SB addressed this letter to McGreevy care of Hester Dowden. There was a Lad Lane in Dublin, but, at this time, none in London; McGreevy wrote to Lennox Robinson on 29 December 1936 from 49 Harrington Road, London SW (TCD, MS 8103/259).
Heinemann published McGreevy's Poems (1934) and had commissioned the trans lation of Maillart's Oasis interdites: de Pekin au Cachemire.
2 SB had sent McGreevy a reproduction of the Giorgione painting in Brunswick, Selfportrait as David (Herzog Anton illrich Museum, GG 454). In 1900 the Italian
402
are wonderful Munchs & Van Goghs.
I hope you have got the translation behind you & are getting
you.
alone living art is to be seen in Germany at present. The
Kronprinzenpalais in Berlin is closed, & that is typical for the
whole country, and the campaign against "Art-Bolschevism" is
only just beginning\ those of Fraulein Dr. Rosa Schapire, art
historian, exclusively Schmidt-Rottluff; 9 of Frau Sauerlandt,
widow of Professor Sauerlandt of the Art & Crafts Museum
here, whose banned book on the painting of the past 30 years I
succeeded in obtaining, mostly Nolde;10 and of a merchant
prince called Hudtwalcker, mostly Munch. 11 I also got permis
sion to view the Cellar of the Gallery, or rather one of the
cellars, & saw there in the twilight some excellent pictures of
the "Bridge" Group; in another cellar are some 60 pictures of the
German impressionist Liebermann. 12 I was refused permission
in the Art & Crafts Museum to inspect a carpet after design
by Schmidt-Rottluff. 13 I have introductions to Schmidt-Rottluff,
Nolde & Heckel in Berlin. 14 The fundamental antithesis, & the
two poles of influence, is Schmidt-Rottluff-Nolde. Spend [for
spent] a very interesting evening with Grimm & Ballmer, then
Grimm alone. Their enthusiasm for early Christian miniature
painting, especially the Irish Celtic. 15 Ballmer's painting is like
nothing I have seen, except some moods of the later Picasso (do
you remember the tremendous figure on a shore that I liked so
much in the big Paris Exhibition? ), metaphysical concrete. 16
Grimm draws like Lautrec, & then frail lyrical tempera colours.
Bargheer is very violent & intelligent & anatomical. Pollaiuolo,
whom I mentioned, he analyzed with admiral [for admirable]
17
justness & sensitiveness.
therefore only a very little disturbed by the official attitude
387
They are all profoundly serious and
28 November 1937 [for 1936}, McGreevy
towards them. I shall be surprised & lucky ifl find such energetic underground of painting in other parts of Germany. I hear on all
18
removed & leave a remainded [for remainder].
Drunken Boat was to have been published in New Poetry;
but I hear this has been deferred, to make room for an article by
20
sorry you have had to lay the Yeats aside. I'm afraid I couldn't write about pictures at all. I used never to be happy with a
21
I heard a lovely concert with the Berlin Philharmonic under
Sabata (pupil of Toscanini) from Milan: Strauss's Don Quixote,
which belongs to same period as Heldenleben & which therefore
I expected would be awful but which was exquisite; Bolero,
mistimed as usual, ejaculatio praecox as usual; & Brahms' �nd
Symphony superbly played, so that I understand Brahms (the
Brahms of the symphonies) a little for the first time & why I had
almost [for? always] found him so difficult to understand. Sabata
22
a Kraft <lurch Freude spinster from Altona. But Hindemith's
388
I meant to go home by Paris, but think now of going home the way I came. By April I expect to be far too tired for Paris. Perhaps I shall get off the boat at Southhampton or Plymouth or wherever it calls and have a short time in London & see you & Geoffrey. I suppose that will partly depend on what happens with Murphy. I hear from Reavey that Nott would take it if an American mug could be found, & furthermore that Houghton Mifflin are "on", but screaming for a cut of one third! 19 So the matter still pends, I not having refused blankly to change a syllable, but having replied with a polite request to be told how I was to remove more than I had already
sides that Hamburg is an island.
Ezra Pound.
I am glad you have got a translation from Heinemann, but
picture till it was literature, but now that need is gone.
was more conducted than conducting.
I was invited one evening to a Hausmusik. Wolf sung by
28 November 1937 [for 1936}, McGreevy
Matthias der Maler symphony on gramophone. 23 I so want to
see the Isenheimer Altar in Colmar, but don't see how it is to
be managed. There is something also in Aschaffenburg &
I think in Munich, but apparently trivial beside the
24
cent form. Mother has had no holiday & wont take one. Young
Sinclair has a job waiting in South Africa (I think thanks to
Dorothy Elvery), but is not well enough to travel. He is spending
a few days at Cooldrinagh! Boss has been moved to Rathdrum &
fallen in love with a nun. Cissie is beyond writing to me, & I have
25
Edinburgh, which he found appalling. And there is an Irishman
called Power, who has not been in Ireland, who was born in
Gibraltar, whose home is in Peru, whose interests are in Spain &
family in Marburg, whose family left Waterford, while the going
was good, in the 1s! li century. He stood me lunch in a vegetarian
26
in Brunswick would take me in. Only in ports does the new
27
Flamand] called Brulez, professor of French here, & gave
28
through him a real little German pedant Fraulein Tied[t]ke,
whose thesis on the Proustian Symbol I am at present skim
ming. She wrote me a long letter in crabbed French about
the shortcomings of my book, & I must meet here [for her]
Monday before a flowershop & render an account. But there is
something magnificent in doing a doctorate in 1936 with a
29
389
Isenheimer.
News from home is good. Frank seems to be in magnifi
this news from home.
We have an Icelander in the Pension now, fresh from
restaurant.
I am tired of this Pension. I wonder is there a whore left
Germany tolerate brothels.
I met a Proust fiend in the University, a Flamant [for
him my book, which released his compliments. And
work on not merely an "exquisite", but a non-Aryan.
Brulez
28 November 1937 {for 1936}, McGreevy
quoted with scorn Huxley's "mental masturbation". I said there were worst things, mental aspermatism for example. My Proust is apparently not positive & intellectual enough for the disciples of Curtius, I mean my presentation of Proust. They want to make his "solution" a little moral tri umph, the reward of endeavour & the crown of a life of striving a la Goethe. 30
Forgive this dry letter. It is all I can do to-day & to-morrow would be more than I could do.
Perhaps you would write in about a week to Poste Restante, Braunschweig. I expect to be there from about g! ! ! to 15! ! ! December.
Love ever Sam
31
ALS; 2 leaves, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/145. Dating: the letter is dated 193[7], the 7 added by AH; however, the year should be 1936, when SB was in Hamburg and Professor W. R. Fearon was appointed to the Irish Censorship of Publications Board (see n. 31 below).
1 SB left Hamburg for Luneburg on 4 December (Beckett, Alles kommt auf so viel an, 57).
2 Riddagshausen is a small town east of Brunswick with a church from 1278, part of a Cistercian monastery; K6nigslutter, a small town on the river Lutter, has a Romanesque church dating from 1150. In the end, SB did not visit Goslar (Lower Saxony), Halberstadt, or Quedlinburg (see 31 December 1936 below).
3 SBreferstoearlyRomanesquearchitecture.
4 "Grippe"(withflu). ThecollectionsoftheBremenKunsthallehadbecomedimin ished by circumspection in view of increasing government pressure (see Andreas Kreul, Oskar Kokoschka: Pariser Oper, Kunsthalle Bremen 30 June-30 August 1992 [Berlin: KulturStiftung der Lander and Kunstverein Bremen, 1992]; for the directive of 5 November 1936 to German gallery directors instructing them to remove decadent modern art, see Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 223).
5 SBmadesidetripsfromBrunswickandthenmadehiswaytoBerlin,arrivingon 11 December 1936 (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 226).
390
I hear Fearon has been put on Censorship Committee.
28 November 1937 [for 1936], McGreevy
6 German painters Karl Kluth (1898-1972), Willem Grimm (1904-1986), Eduard Bargheer {1901-1979), Erich Hartmann (1886-1974), and Swiss painter Karl Ballmer (1891-1958).
SB met Kluth and Hartmann at a dinner on 23 November at the home of Margaritha (nee Hoffmann, 1883-1955) and Theodor Durrieu (1875-1967); SB met Kluth again on 25 November and also on that day he visited Grimm (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 27, 48-49, 50). As he wrote in his diary: "Grimm's painting most interesting I have yet seen of Hamburg group . . . Munch influence seems worked out . . . Exquisite colour & composition" (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 50). For Ballmer, see n. 16 below.
7 TheseartistsweremembersoftheHamburgSecessiongroupwhich"sawitself as the successor to Die Briicke"; it was established in 1919 and "disbanded itself on 16 May 1933 in response to the Nazi demand to expel its Jewish members" (Struan Robertson, "A History of the Jews in Hamburg: Three Jewish Women Hamburg Secessionists" [wwwl. uni-hamburg. de/rz3a035//secession. html], 27 October 2006). The Bibliothek der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft had been closed on 16 November 1935 (Quadflieg, Beckett was here, 171).
8 TheKronprinzenpalaiswasthedepartmentformodemartoftheBerlinNational Gallery, Unter den Linden, 3; the upper rooms on its first floor "were closed on 30 October 1936" because works by "Barlach, Beckmann, Dix, Hofer, Nolde and other contemporary artists" were exhibited there (Professor Dr. Bernd Evers, Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 3 June 1993). Ernst Barlach {1870-1938), Max Beckmann (1884-1950), Otto Dix (1891-1969), Karl Hofer (also Carl, 1878-1955).
The Nazi campaign against "Art-Bolshevism" ("Kulturbolschewismus") perniciously linked Communists, Jews, and contemporary artists, attacking them as degenerate influences on Aryan culture.
SB adopts the German spelling of the root word (Bolsche-) and adds an English ending (-vism).
9 Dr. RosaSchapire:14November1936,n. 6.
10 SB visited Frau Alice Sauerlandt (nee Schmidt, 1880-1972), the widow of Max Sauerlandt, who had been Director of the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe until 1933. SB's notes on his visits on 21 and 26 November mention work by Nolde, Schmidt-Rottluff, Kirchner, and Ballmer (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an. 46, 52). Aware that Sauerlandt's catalogue, Die Kunst der Letzten 30Jahre (1935) had been banned, SB asked Frau Sauerlandt if he could buy a copy from her (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 46).
11 ThroughRosaSchapire,SBmetDr. HeinrichC. Hudtwalcker(1880-1952),indus trialist and art patron in Hamburg, whose collection he visited on 22 November. SB admired Munch's Girls on the Bridge (1900; now HK 5052) and a painting of a man and a woman by Otto Muller; he noted works by the German-born Norwegian painter Rolf Nesch (1893-1975) and Munch's portraits of Hudtwalcker (1925, Oslo, Munch Museum 116) and Maria Agatha Hudtwalcker (1927; Oslo, Munch Museum 124) (Beckett. Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 47; Quadflieg, Beckett was here, 145-146; Maike Bruhns, Kunst in der Krise: Hamburger Kunst im "Dritten Reich" [Hamburg: Dolling und Galitz Verlag, 2001] 244; Ame Eggum, Edvard Munch: Portretter [Oslo: Munch-Musette / Labyrinth Press, 1994] 23, 244).
12 SBwenttotheHamburgerKunsthalleon19NovembertoviewSchmidt-Rottluff and Kirchner drawings in its Kupferstichkabinett or Print Gallery. Rosa Schapire was
391
28 November 1937 [for 1936}, McGreevy
there, and, through her intervention, SB was allowed to visit the storage area. SB's spontaneous visit broke with restrictions, and there were repercussions for the museum staff (see Matthias Miihling, Mit Samuel Beckett in der Hamburger Kunsthalle ! Hamburg: Hamburger Kunsthalle, 2003J, frontispiece and 29-30).
Here SB saw works by Schmidt-Rottluff, Kirchner, Pechstein; he specifically men tioned Windbride by Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) (HK 2256, confiscated as degenerate art in 1937; now in the Basel Kunstmuseum, 1745) and Nolde's Christ Among the Children (also known as Christ and the Children, HK 1683, confiscated as degenerate art in 1937; now in MOMA 341. 55). The last ofthese moved SB to say: "Feel at once on terms with the picture, & that I want to spend a long time before it, & play it over & over much like the record ofa quartet" (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso viel an, 44; with appreciation to Mark Nixon and James KnowIson for their assistance with this transcription).
The Hamburg museum listed sixty-four paintings or studies by Max Liebermann (1847-1935). Liebermann's work was banned for its depiction of! aborers and because he was Jewish; he was pressured to resign as President ofthe Prussian Academy ofArt in 1932.
13 SBwenttotheMuseumfiirKunstundGewerbeon17November1936(Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 42).
14 FrauSauerlandtgaveSBaddressesforNolde,Schmidt-Rottluff,andHeckel,and permission to use her name in contacting them; she also encouraged SB to visit the collection of Gustav Schiefler (1857-1935) in Hamburg (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 52).
15 At the studio of Willem Grimm on 25 November, SB met the painter and graphic artist Gretchen Wohlwill (1878-1962), and artist Hans Martin Ruwoldt (1891-1969) (Quadflieg, Beckett was here, 155). Grimm and Ruwoldt were especially interested in the Celtic motifs found in the Book ofKells (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 51).
16 SB visited Ballmer in his studio on 26 November 1936. He described Ballmer's paintings: "Transparent figures before landscapes . . . Wonderful red Frauenkopf, skull earth sea & sky. " He continued: "Would not occur to me to call this painting abstract. A metaphysical concrete. Nor nature convention, but its source, fountain ofErscheinung. Fully a posteriori painting. Object not exploited to illustrate an idea . . . The communi cation exhausted by the optical experience that is its motive & content" (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso viel an, 51-52; Quadflieg, Beckett was here, 168-169; Ballmer's Head in Red IAargauer Kunsthaus, Aargau, Switzerland, 28471). "Erscheinung" (manifestation).
SB likens Ballmer's work to Picasso's Figure au bord de la mer (1929; MOMA, on loan, no. 187 in the Exposition Picasso at the Galeries Georges Petit, Paris, 16 June-30 July 1932 (Charles Vrancken, ed. , Exposition Picasso: 16 juin-30 juillet 1932 ! Paris: Galeries Georges Petit, 1932] 62, illus. follows 70).
17 SB was especially drawn to Grimm's "Rummelpott" series; he preferred "the stillness & the unsaid ofGrimm & Ballmer" to the preoccupation with the "dynamics ofmovement" in the work ofEduard Bargheer, which he called "the bull ofpainting by the horns" (Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an, 50, 53; Quadflieg, Beckett was here, 175-176). SB met Eduard Bargheer at his studio on 27 November; as Bargheer had recently returned from Italy, SB asked him about the painting of Piero Pollaiuolo (1441-1496) (for their discussion see Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 53).
392
28 November 1937 [for 1936}, McGreevy
18 Ballmer had not been able to exhibit since 1933, and Bargheer had experi enced similar difficulties (Beckett, Alles kommt auf so viel an, 52-53; Quadflieg, Beckett was here, 170).
19 BothGeoffreyThompsonandMcGreevywereinLondon.
Attempts to publish Murphy: see SB to George Reavey, 13 November 1936, and to Mary Manning Howe, 14 November 1936.
20 CommissionedbyEdwardTitus,SBhadtranslatedRimbaud'spoem"LeBateauivre" as "The Drunken Boat" in 1932 (see 13 September 1932, n. 9). It was to be published not in New Poetry, but in Contemporary Poetry and Prose. However, SB's translation was displaced by a letter that Ezra Pound had written against surrealism, "The Coward Surrealists," to which the editor Roger Roughton (1916-1941) replied ("Eyewash, Do You? ," Contemporary Poetry and Prose 7 [November 1936] 137-138). The following number of Contemporary Poetry and Prose (8 [December 19361) was a short-story issue. The journal's final two numbers were issued as a quarterly in 1937.
21 McGreevy was translating Oasis interdites: de Pekin au Cachemire (1937) by Ella K. Maillart (1903-1997) for Heinemann; the translation was entitled Forbidden Journey: From Peking to Kashmir. Prior to this, he had been working on his study ofJack B. Yeats.
22 On20NovemberattheConventgartenTheatre,SBheardtheBerlinPhilharmonic conducted by Victor de Sabata (1892-1967), pupil of Italian-born conductor Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957). Don Qµixote, op. 35 ("Fantasy with Variations on a Theme of Knightly Character, for cello and orchestra"), and Bin Heldenleben (A Hero's Life), op. 40, by Richard Strauss are both tone poems. SB refers to Bolero by Maurice Ravel and Brahms's Symphony no. 2 in D major, op. 73 (see Beckett,AUes kommt aufso vie! an, 45-46).
23 SBwenttoa"Hausmusik"(homeconcert)atthehomeofOrs. MariaandPaul Riimker (n. d. ) on 24 November: the singer from Altona has not been identified. "Kraft <lurch Freude" (Strength through Joy) was a Nazi slogan and the name of a Nazi organization created in 1933 to sponsor "appropriate" recreation and leisure activities for the working population.
Austrian composer Hugo Wolf is known for his musical settings of poetry. The symphony Mathis der Maler (1934) was the first musical response by Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) to his interest in the north German painter Grunewald (ne Mathis Gothart, also called Nithart or Neithardt, c. 1475-1528), on whose life and work he later (1938) based his opera of the same name.
24 Grunewald'sIsenheimAltarpiece(MuseumUnterlinden,Colmar). SBalsorefersto the altar by Grunewald for the Mariaschnee Chapel in the Church of St. Peter and St. Alexander in Aschaffenburg and paintings in the collection of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.
25 MorrisSinclairwenttoSouthAfricaasatutortotwoboysonasheepfarmnear GraaffReinet; Dorothy Kay (nee Elvery, 1886-1964), Irish-born South African artist, a girlhood friend of Morris's mother Cissie Beckett Sinclair, arranged this post for him (Morris Sinclair, 9 May 1991).
Boss Sinclair had been moved from the National Hospital for Consumption in Ireland (Newcastle Sanatorium) in Newtownmountkennedy in Co. Wicklow to St. Colman's Hospital, Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow, which was run by The Sisters of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God.
393
28 November 1937 [for 1936], McGreevy
26 TheIcelander is mentioned in SB's diary entry for 24November 1936, but not named (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso viel an, 50). Power's full name is not known; he and SB had lunch together on 17November (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso viel an, 26, 41).
27 Brothel regulation was an element inNazi policy from 1933 up until the War (see Julia Roose, "Backlash against Prostitutes' Rights: Origins and Dynamics ofNazi Prostitution Policy," Journal of the History of Sexuality 11. 1-2 [2002] 67-94).
28 Dr. LucienBrulez(1891-1982)wasaLektor(Lecturer)inFrenchattheUniversity of Hamburg from 1920 to 1956; he taught nineteenth-and twentieth-century French literature, although his publications were primarily in philosophy (Eckart Krause, 27 July 1993). SB met Brulez through Frau Durrieu, and attended his lecture on Diderot on 12November 1936; SB noted that Brulez was interested in Proust "as philosopher & symbolist" (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso viel an, 38).
Flamand (Fleming).
29 IrmaTiedtke(1910-? 1943)tookherdissertationoralexaminationsinJune1935; Dr. Brulez directed her thesis, which was published as Symbole und Bilder im Werke Marcel Prousts (1936) (Quadflieg, Beckett was here, 120). SB arranged on 28November to meet her on Monday, 1 December; she was also present on 16 November when SB met Brulez again.
30 On16November,Brulezdiscussed"Proust,Bergson,Plato&Kant"(Beckett,Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 44). Brulez apparently quoted from Aldous Huxley's Eyeless in Gaza a passage in which the narrator discusses meditation as one of many "bolt-holes" from unpleasant reality: "Charismata like masturbations. Masturbations, however, that are dignified, by the amateur mystics who practise them, with all the most sacred names of religion and philosophy. 'The contemplative life'" ([London: Chatto and Windus, 1936] 503).
ErnstRobert Curtius (1886-1956), German literary historian and Professor ofFrench at the universities of Bonn, Marburg, and Heidelberg.
31 W. R. FearonwasnamedtotheCensorshipofPublicationsBoardinIrelandon 23November1936("CensorshipBoard:ResignationofMr. Thrift,Dr. FearonAppointed as Successor," The Irish Times 24November 1936: 7).
BRIAN COFFEY DUB LIN
5/12/36
[no greeting]
C'est ici que pendant 50 ans il se faisait des idees distinctes,
ou, pire, s'en laissait faire. C'est maintenant musee des arts et desmetiers. 1 Solidementassisdansunelumierenordilbarraita tombeau ouvert. Je viens de subir une petite amende (lRM) pour
394
13 December 1936, Manning Howe
m'etre promene d'une fac;on dangereuse. Par consequent je pars, pour Braunschweig, en silence dore, d'ou je t'ecrirais.
Sam
APCS; 1 leaf, 1 side; "Hannover: Leibniz-Haus"; to Brian Coffey Esq, 41 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin C 19, Irland; pm 5-12-36,Hannover, 7-12·36, Dublin; DeU, Coffey.
5/12/36
[no greeting]
This is where, for fifty years, he formed distinct ideas, or,
1
1 TheLeibnizhausinHanoverwasrestoredin1891-1892andatthistimehoused the Kunstgewerbe-Museum (Arts and Crafts Museum). The building was destroyed in World War II and subsequently rebuilt.
Leibniz administered the library that was moved from theHerrenhausen Palace into Hanover in 1679; from 1698, the library had its own building, and included living quarters for the librarian. From 1690, Leibniz was also librarian for the more impor
tant HerzogAugust Bibliothek in Wolfenbiittel.
worse, let them form in him. Now it is a museum ofarts and crafts. Solidly seated in a north light he did his deleting and striking out over an open tomb. I have just had a small fine (1 RM) imposed on me for walking in a dangerous fashion. As a result, I am leaving for Braunschweig, in golden silence. I would write to you from there.
Sam
MARY MANNI NG HOWE CAMBRIDGE, MAS SACHUSETTS
13/12/36
Hotel Deutsche Traube Berlin n 4, InvalidenstraBe 32
dear Mary
I'm writing this to you in a pub, because my room in the
picture gives me the chinks. I was very glad to have your long
395
13 December 1936, Manning Howe
letter, which reached me here, where I have been for 2 days,
1
I did not know I wrote you any unkind cryptograms, and am heartily sorry if so. I shall now try and be clear & pleasant. Even
2
I do not know Grene. If he is the person that was once pointed out to me in Dublin, he looks like a semicircumcised bugger.
4
The last I heard about the book from Reavey, as I thought I
wrote to you, was that Mifflin were suggesting that 1/3 should be
ablated, & enclosing a letter that I have forgotten. I replied to
Reavey, saying that I did not understand how more could be
taken away from the unfortunate book than I had already taken
away myself, & leave a remainder; but that I only asked to be in
this matter enlightened, by some critic more alive to the econ
omy of the work than I was myself. To this humble obeisance I
have received no reply. Nott was apparently prepared to take on
the book if an American mug could be found; & Mifflin if an
5
I also am very interested in the Johnson-Thrale-Piozzi arrangement, and often thought what a good subject was
6
having come slowly from Hamburg by Hannover & Brunswick. In a few weeks I shall go on to Dresden & from there to Munich & from there I suppose slowly home, probably the same way I came. For by April I expect to be far too tired for Paris. I am tired already.
an improvement in the script perhaps you may notice.
3
I am not on the lookout for a lap.
Englishmug. Itseemedtome,unfamiliarwiththeniceties,that my agent had merely to bring the mugs together & the abuse would begin to pour in. It seems I was wrong again.
there,perhapsonlyonelongact. Whatinterestedmeespecially was the breakdown ofJohnson as soon as Thrale disappeared. I do not think Piozzi enters Johnson's psychological situation at all. I think that his abuse of Piozzi is a blind. Piozzi was the
396
pretext that he needed, to get away with an appearance of
7
the Platonic gigolo or housefriend, with not a testicle, auricle
or ventricle to stand on when the bluff is called. His impotence
was mollified by Mrs Thrale so long as Thrale was there, then
suddenly exasperated when the licensed mentula was in the
connubial position for the first time for years, thanks to rigor
8
his den in Fleet Street after the last visit to Mrs Thrale, forgetting
a lamppost & hurrying back. Can't think why there hasn't been a
film ofJohnson, with Laughton. But I think one act, with some
thing like the psychology above, in an outburst to Mrs Thrale,
or in his house in confidence to the mysterious servant, would
9
scarce. I am tired all the time. All the modern pictures are in the cellars. I keep a pillar to post account, but have written nothing connected since I left home, nor disconnected. 10 And not the thart ofa book beginning. The physical mess is trivial, beside the intellectual mess. I do not care, & don't know, whether they are connected or not. It is enough that I can't imagine anything worse than the mental marasmus, in which I totter & sweat for months. It has turned out indeed to be a journey from, and not to, as I knew it was, before I began it. I can't begin to make it clear to you, I haven't the energy to make it clear to myself. An instinctive respect, at least, for what is real, & therefore has not in its nature, to be clear. Then when somehow this goes over into words, one is called an obscurantist. The classifiers are the obscurantists.
mortis. ThinkofafilmopeningwithJohnsondancinghometo
13 December 1936, Manning Howe
justification. What interests me above all is the condition of
be worth doing. There are 50 plays in his life.
The trip is being a failure. Germany is horrible. Money is
Write to Leperstown. Love
11
Sam
397
13 December 1936, Manning Howe
ALS; 1 leaf, 2 sides; letterhead, A date by SB; TxU.
1 TheletterheadshowsanimageoftheHotelDeutscheTraube(seefrontispiece).
Having taken the train from Hamburg to Liineburg and on to Hanover via Celle on 4 December 1936, SB was in Hanover on 5 December and traveled on to Brunswick that afternoon (Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an, 57; see also 5 December 1936 above).
2 MaryManningHowehadrespondedtoSB'slettertoherof14November1936.
3 Grenehasnotbeenidentified.
4 SeeSB'sletterof14November1936toMaryManningHowe.
5 Houghton Mifflin's request for cuts to Murphy apparently threatened Reavey's arrangement with Stanley Nott (see 28 November 1937 [for 19361).
6 MaryManningHowe'slettertoSBhasnotbeenfound,butmusthaveincludeda reference to the "Johnson-Thrale-Piozzi arrangement. " In 1936 there was considerable interest in Johnson's life; in March new Boswell manuscripts were found ("Yet More of Boswell," The Times 9 March 1936: 15). In April C[olwayn] E[dward] Vulliamy published Mrs. Thra! e ofStreatham, Her Place in the Life ofDr. SamuelJohnson and in the Society ofher Time, her Character and Family Affairs (London: Heinemann). In November a new edition of James Boswell, Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL. D. , ed. Frederick A. Pottle and Charles H. Bennet, based on recently discovered manuscripts, was published. Also in November the play Dr. Johnson's Mrs. Thra! e by Winifred Carter (1884-1949) was produced in London; a review of Carter's play noted of Johnson: "Twice he is on the point of declaring his illicit passion, and twice he is saved by a trivial interruption" ("Strand Theatre, 'Dr. Johnson's Mrs. Thrale,"' The Times 25 November 1936: 12).
In 1765 Johnson was introduced to Henry Thrale (c. 1728-1781), brewery owner and Member of Parliament for Southwark from 1765 to 1780, and to his wife Hester Lynch (nee Salusbury, 1741-1821). From 1766 until Thrale's death in 1781, Johnson was an intimate of the Thrales, such a frequent guest that he had his own room in their various houses in Streatham, Southwark, Brighton, and Grosvenor Square; he also traveled with them to Wales and France.
Thrale's death was, as SB put it to McGreevy, "the causa irritans"; it changed the relationship between Mrs. Thrale and Johnson as well as their material situation ([before 23 July 1937], TCD, MS 10402/129). Mrs. Thrale, at forty, looked forward to a less encumbered life, whereas Johnson, at seventy-one, confronted physical and emo tional displacement from the Thrales' comfortable household and suffered a "break down" (W. Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson [New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975] 560, 568, 572, 575-579).
After her husband's death, Mrs. Thrale fixed her attentions on Gabriel Mario Piozzi (1740-1809); despite objections by Johnson, family, and friends, she married him in 1784 (Bate, SamuelJohnson, 572).
7 SBmayrefertoJohnson'santagonismtoPiozziongroundsthathewasCatholic, Italian, and a social inferior to Mrs. Thrale; Johnson's stated objection to their mar riage was that it would cause Mrs. Thrale to desert "country, religion, and family" (Leslie Stephen, SamuelJohnson, English Men of Letters [New York: Harper and Brothers, 1879] 153).
398
8 InMrs. ThraleofStreatham,Vulliamywrotethat"noseriousattempthaseverbeen made to examine the sexual character of Dr. Johnson," raising the issue if not the question that SB asks himself (243). Johnson's testicular hydrocele was eventually diagnosed as a tumor (Bate, Samuel Johnson, 577, 581-583). SB writes "<member> mentula. "
9 One ofJohnson's compulsive habits was "touching the posts as he passed, and going back if he missed one" (Bate, SamuelJohnson, 382).
American film actor Charles Laughton (1899-1962) starred in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1934), The Barretts ofWimpoleStreet (1934), Les Miserables (1935), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), and Rembrandt (1936).
SB refers to Francis Barber (known as Frank, 1735-1801), a freed slave from Jamaica placed in Johnson's care from the age of ten; Johnson educated him, and Barber was later Johnson's "man-servant" (Bate, Samuel Johnson, 325-327, 503-504).
10 SBreferstohisGermanDiaries(BIF,UoR).
11 Leopardstown, once known as Leperstown, was near Foxrock station, Co. Dublin.
20 December 1936, Reavey
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
20/12/36
Berlin W. 50
bei Kempt Budapesterstrasse 45
dear Georg
This pigeonhole will find me for a fortnight or three
weeks, so make a sign, before I leave for Dresden. I came on slowly from Hamburg last week, by Luneburg, Hannover, Brunswick, Hildesheim, etc.
Is there no further news about Quigley, I mean Murphy? Have
you not contrived to join the hands of the two philanthropists
across the pond? I know finding the terms is child[']s play to
bringing them together. The last I remember is my readiness to
cut down the work to its title. I am now prepared to go further, and
change the title, ifit gives offence, to Quigley, Trompetenschleim,
1
Eliot, or any other name that the publishers fancy.
399
20 December 1936, Reavey
I don't even know if you got the apes at chess. Lighten my darkness. 2
Heil, Sieg, fette Beute and a Merry Xmas/ Sam
APCS; 1 leaf, 2 sides; to George Reavey Esq, 1 Parton Street. London, WC 1. England; pm 20-12-36, Berlin-Charlottenburg; TxU.
1 QuigleyisthenameofthepersonsupportingMurphyinSB'snovel.
Reavey's efforts to find an American publisher to join forces with Stanley Nott: 13 November 1936, n. 4, and 13 December 1936, n. 5.
"Trompetenschleim" (trumpet slime); this suggestion derives from a conversation on the evening of13 October 1936 in SB's pension in Hamburg, during which amusing names were discussed (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 16).
2 The"apesatchess":see13November1936,n. 5. 3 "Heil,Sieg,fetteBeute"(Hail. victory,richspoils).
THOMAS McGREEVY [LONDON]
22/12/36
Berlin 10-50
bei Kempt Budapesterstr. 45
Dear Tom
I do not like sending this to you c/o Hester, but have no
alternative, as I have lost your [? Lad] Lane address, & cannot
1
or recent. As hung it is given to Giorgione, and I do not know who else could have painted it. It is infinitely more interest ing for me at least than the very early lyrical Giorgione of the Kaiser Friedrich, also herewith. No doubt you know them both in reproduction. I felt as soon as I saw the Brunswick picture, and each time I went back to it, that it was made for you, and
400
remember Heinemann[']s.
I do not know if the grotesque Dossi attribution is old
that you should have this faint echo at least. Lass es dir gut
2
various excursions to the incredibly beautiful Hildesheim, and
to Wolfenbiittel, where I would not have been surprised to see
Lessing come limping out of the August Bibliothek and across
the square, to take up the thread of the "happiest year of his
life. "3 I wanted to visit Halberstadt & Quedlinburg on the way to
Berlin, but was tired & broke and feel anyway that they would be
only shadows of Hildesheim, so came on straight here. The first
week I spent in a sinister hotel in the North, a German North
Star as opposite Amiens St. Station; then found this place, beside
the Zoo & the Kurfiirstendamm. Museum Island is au <liable,
but the tube is child's play. The collections are stupendous; the
town itself a monstrous comic, but rapidly sympathetic, with
skies nearly as good as Dublin[']s, one wonderful park and an
excellent brim to the hat, lakes, plain & forest. The weather is
lovely, ciel quintessencie, but desperately cold. I expect to stay
4
News from home good. Frank is in Miirren, playing in
the snow. So Mother is alone. But writes in excellent spirits.
Young Sinclair is on his way to South Africa, Boss still alive in
Rathdrum. Cissie got a bad turn when out visiting, I don't know
5
cut the work down to its title and to change that, if it gave offence. I sent Bion a card for Xmas, the Subarair earth goddess in the Tell Halaf museum, complete with chalice for the fertilising
rain and archaic smile. 7
Geoffrey is well dug in in Harley Street, with more patients
than he can manage. Bion is his "supervisor" in the clinic, does me
401
gefallen.
I had a week in Brunswick on the way here, and made
22 December 1936, McGreevy
till middle of January, & then go on to the Porcelaine Madonna.
exactly what, but seems to be well over it.
No further news of the book. The last was my willingness to
6
20 December 1936, McGreevy
the honour to remember me, deprecates my untimely departure, just when I was all set to become the uomo universale, & looks forward to getting his hooks into me again. Quien sabe! 8
The modern rooms of the Kronprinzenpalais are closed,
i. e. modern German painting from Nolde on. I got a permit in
Hamburg to visit the various works no longer accessible to
German public, and shall try it on director ofKronprinzenpalais
here, though it is only valid for Hamburg. On the ground floor
9
on with the Yeats, or work of your own. I seem not to have heard from you for ages. I have almost decided to cut out Paris on way
home (Devisen complications) & take boat from Hamburg to Southhampton, & thence to London, where I shall hope to find
10
know anyone here and though I am often lonely don't feel like picking up anyone. Expect to spend Xmas alone with a bottle of wine & the Kaiser Friedrich catalogue, full of impayable quota tions from Bode. Do you know Friedlander[')s Niederlandische Malerei or Dehio's colossal work? 1 1
Love ever Sam
ALS; 2 leaves. 2 sides; TCD. MS 10402/111.
1 SB addressed this letter to McGreevy care of Hester Dowden. There was a Lad Lane in Dublin, but, at this time, none in London; McGreevy wrote to Lennox Robinson on 29 December 1936 from 49 Harrington Road, London SW (TCD, MS 8103/259).
Heinemann published McGreevy's Poems (1934) and had commissioned the trans lation of Maillart's Oasis interdites: de Pekin au Cachemire.
2 SB had sent McGreevy a reproduction of the Giorgione painting in Brunswick, Selfportrait as David (Herzog Anton illrich Museum, GG 454). In 1900 the Italian
402
are wonderful Munchs & Van Goghs.
I hope you have got the translation behind you & are getting
you.
