THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
25/3/36 Cooldrinagh [Co.
25/3/36 Cooldrinagh [Co.
Samuel Beckett
Niccolo Gallo, II [Turin: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1958] 598).
Forgive him: for he tries with idle dreams To make the hour less bitter than it seems. Bitter, for he can turn no other way
To show a higher worth, do what he may; For graver themes
He sees no chance of patronage or pay.
(Mandragola in The Literary Works ofMachiavelli, 6)
16 SBexpressesthewishtoreadthreeItalianwritersoftheCinquecento,whose work is characterized by robust humor and earthy satire: Teofila Folengo (ne Girolamo, pseud. Merlin Coccalo or Cocai, 1491-1544), the most important of the "macaronic poets" whose best-known work is Baldus (1517): Francesco Berni (c. 1497-1535); Bernardo Bibbiena (ne Bernardo Dovizi, 1470-1520), whose most cele brated work was La Calandra (1513; Calandra), perhaps the most scurrilous play of the 1400s; and the philosopher Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) whose only play was n Candelaio (c. 1582; The Candle-Bearer).
Thomas Reid (1710-1796), Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. There were many eighteenth-century three-volume editions of Reid's Essays on the Intellectual and Active Powers of Man, collecting essays published in 1785 and 1788; however, the earliest collected edition was The Works of Thomas Reid (Edinburgh: Bell and Bradfute, 1803).
316
2 March 1936, Eisenstein
Italian physician Girolamo Fracastoro (1478-1553) wrote the epic poem Syphilis sive de morbo gallico (1530: Syphilis or the French Disease), whose central figure Syphilis suffers from the disease that now bears his name.
SB adapts the famous line about Naples, "Vedi Napoli e poi muori" (See Naples and die).
SERGEI EISENSTEIN MOSCOW
2/3/36 6 Clare Street Dublin
Irish Free State
Monsieur
I write to you on the advice of Mr Jack Isaacs of London, to
ask to be considered for admission to the Moscow State School of
1
teur d'anglais at Ecole Normale, Paris. Worked with Joyce, colla
borated in French translation of part of his Work in Progress
(N. R. F. , May 1931) and in critical symposium concerning same
2
I have no experience of studio work and it is naturally in the
scenario and editing end ofthe subject that I am most interested.
It is because I realise that the script is function of its means of
realisation that I am anxious to make contact with your mastery
ofthese, and beg you to consider me a serious cineaste worthy of
3
s/
( Samuel Beckett )
Cinematography.
Born 1906 in Dublin and "educated" there. 1928-1930 lec
(Our Exagmination, etc. ). Published Proust (essay, Chatto & Windus, London 1931), More Pricks Than Kicks (short stories, do. , 1934), Echo's Bones (poems, Europa Press, Paris 1935).
admissiontoyourschool. Icouldstayayearatleast. Veuilliez [for Veuillez] agreer mes meilleurs hommages. 4
317
2 March 1936, Eisenstein
TLS; 1 leaf, 1 side; Russian State Archive ofLiterature and Art, Eisenstein archive 1923- 1-1642; copy, Museum of Modern Art. Oxford; previous publication (transcription with variants): Jay Leyda, ed. , Eisenstein 2: A Premature Celebration ofEisenstein's Centenary, tr. Alan Y. Upchurch, et al. (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1985; rpt. London: Methuen, 1988) 59, and transcription in "Scripted by Beckett," Rolling Stock 7 (1984), 4.
1 Jack Isaacs {1896-1973), Professor of English Language and Literature at Queen Mary College (London). was a founding member ofthe Film Society {1925-1938). He perforn1ed in Eisenstein's film, Lost, and when Eisenstein came to London, Isaacs was his guide.
2 ForJamesJoyce,"AnnaLiviaPlurabelle,"see29May1931,n. 2. Beckett, "Dante . . . Bruno. Vico. . Joyce," Our Exagmination.
3 Describing the curriculum at the GIK (Gosudarstvenni institut kinematografii [State Institute ofCinematography]) in Moscow, Eisenstein wrote: "To realize how it is done and actually participate in the process seems to me most advantageous and instructive for students" ("Cinematography with Tears! " 9). The scenario was the phase between narrative treatment and its cinematographic analysis, the "shooting script" (Vsevolod Pudovkin, On Film Technique, tr. Ivor Montagu [London: V. Gollancz, 1929J 176-177).
4 "Veuillezagreermesmeilleurshommages"(Yoursrespectfully).
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
5/3/36 Cooldrinagh [Co. Dublin]
Dear Tom
I hope you are feeling better & with perhaps some birds in a
bush somewhere.
It is difficult to write from the appalling sameness, blankness,
apathy, stupidity, pusillanimity, day after day, herE [sic]. Molly the cousin from Wales is over till the Grand National, an epidemic
1
I have been reading Geulincx in T. C. D. , without knowing why exactly. Perhaps because the text is so hard to come by. But
318
having released her from her dummy pianos. She is held to be company for mother. Thus she is not an evil communication.
5 March 1936, McGreevy
that is rationalisation & my instinct is right & the work worth
doing, because of its saturation in the conviction that the sub
specie aetemitatis vision is the only excuse for remaining alive.
He does not put out his eyes on that account, as Heraclites did &
Rimbaud began to, nor like the terrified Berkeley repudiate
2
Schwarmerei turned in-ward, Janus or Telephus eyes, like those
of Frenhofer in the Chef d'Oeuvre Inconnu, when he shall have
3
the greatest literary artist (as distinct from poet) of them all
perhaps & Goethe's Tasso, than which, except for some good
rhetoric, anything more disgusting would be hard to devise. If he
wants to state a personal position, as seems the case here, why
can't he do so directly, even if only with the directness of the
Wahlverwandtschaften, without soliciting precedents from
among the installed, whereby he is condoned & they falsified?
them. Onefeelsthemverypatientlyturnedoutward,&without
forgotten Mabuse & ceased to barbouiller.
Tasso again also with boredom, & Ariosto, feeling him to be
He really invites one very patiently to think of him as a machine
a mots, a cliche separator, & a bunker of the suffering that has
not proved its merit in a thousand impressions, or a vademecum
4
or rather Limerick, freedom of which had just been conferred on him, would rather be a good Irishman than a great painter! Brigit [for Brigid] is marrying a dentist [. . . ] 5
I haven't seen JBY for a fortnight. Last time I was there with
a crowd including Fearon grinding out mots and Miss Purser
scuttling along the treetops; and Miss MacCardle (for Macardle],
6
edition.
Dermod O'Brien, to come down to heaven, addressing Cork
smelling of Castle Cromer. HE is I think OFF to the Alpine next week, before when I hope to see him. 7 I perceived Miss Purser again at the R. D. S. the following Monday at Cortot's
319
5 March 1936, McGreevy
recital which was a disappointment. I think he was very ill. He played all the Preludes, Children[']s Comer & Liszt's 2nd
8
having dragged in Herbert Reid [for Read] to the Eluard party. I have not had a word from him for months, & no news of the
9
he want stamps licked in Clare Street. Though I fear my present saliva would bum a hole in the envelope.
Love Sam
ALS; 2 leaves, 2 sides; env to Thomas McGreevy Esq, 15 Cheyne Gardens, Chelsea, London; pm 6-3-36, Dublin; TCD, MS 10402/91.
1 Maria Belis Roe (known as Molly, 1903-1986), SB's cousin, daughter ofEdward Price Roe, May Beckett's brother. Molly taught music at Howell's School in Denbigh, Wales, which at that time was closed on account of an outbreak of measles. The Irish Grand National steeplechase was run on 13 April in 1936, but Molly left on 2 April 1936 ("The cousin left this day week," SB to McGreevy, 9 April [1936], TCD, MS 10402/93).
2 In Ethica (Opera philosophica, III), Arnold Geulincx advocates total submission to God, "sub specie aeternitatis" (in the perspective of eternity). See also 16 January [1936], n. 5.
SB mentions philosophers and a poet who repudiated literal reality (as perceived through the eyes). According to Dante's account, "Heraclitus wept," see 27 February 1934, n. 3. For Rimbaud's "eye-suicide," see 11 March 1931, n. 7. The "immaterialist hypothesis" of George Berkeley denied the existence of matter, and claimed that material objects have no existence outside ofthe mind; see 8 September 1934, n. 18).
3 "Schwarmerei" (effusiveness). The Roman god Janus was symbolized by a double-faced head looking in opposite directions. When Telephus, the son of Hercules, was wounded in battle by Achilles, the Delphic Oracle said that only rust from the spear that wounded him would cure his wounds.
In Balzac's "Chef d'Oeuvre Inconnu" (1837; "The Unknown Masterpiece"), the character ofthe aging artist Frenhofer, who is the only pupil ofthe Flemish painter Mabuse (neJan Gossart, c. 1478-1532), has been working on a secret painting for years; when, after his disappearance, it is revealed, all that can be seen is a mass oflines and layers ofpaint. "Barbouiller" (to daub, or slap on paint).
320
Rhapsodie.
A letter from Brian this morning, furious with Reavey for
Bones from any quarter.
Murphy will not budge. I am thinking of asking Frank does
SB refers to Goethe's verse play Torquato Tasso (1788-1790) and his Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809; Elective Affinities ).
"Machine a mots" (word machine).
5 Dermod O'Brien. who was born in Co. Limerick, received the "Freedom of the City" award in Limerick (The Irish Times 29 February 1936: 11). Brigid O'Brien married dental surgeon and writer Andrew Ganly (1908-1982) on 19 May 1936.
6 William Robert Fearon (1892-1959) was a Professor ofBiochemistry (1934-1959) at Trinity College Dublin as well as a playwright, author ofParnell ofAvondale (1934).
"Mots" (witticisms).
Sarah Purser.
Dorothy Macardle (1899-1958), historian, playwright. novelist, and drama critic; she
was active in the Irish War oflndependence and the Irish Civil War and as a journalist with the League of Nations in Geneva. At this time she was writing The Irish Republic (1937), a history commissioned by Eamon De Valera, founder and President ofFianna Fail, and later President oflreland (1959-1963). Castlecromer is a coal mining town in Co. Kilkenny.
7 JackB. Yeats'sexhibitionwasnotattheAlpineClubGalleryinLondon,butatthe Rembrandt Gallery (also known as the Robert Dunthorne Gallery), 5 Vigo Street, London, opening 19 March 1936 (The Times 24 March 1936: 21; Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonne oftheOil Paintings. II. 1098; see 29 January 1935 [for 1936], n. 2).
8 Pianist Alfred Cortot performed at the Royal Dublin Society in two programs on 24 February 1936. SB refers to the evening program: Chopin's Twenty-four Preludes, op. 28, and his Andante Spianato in G major, op. 22; Debussy's suite Children's Comer; and Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2 in C-sharp minor ("Royal Dublin Society Recital: Cortot Plays to Large Audiences," The Irish Times 25 February 1936: 5).
9 BrianCoffey.
British poet, art critic, and essayist Herbert Edward Read (1893-1968) edited Burlington Magazine from 1933 to 1939, wrote regularly on art for The Listener, and published The Meaning ofArt (1933) and Art Now (1933). He was one of the organizers ofthe 1936 Surrealist Exhibition in London.
Paul Eluard chose Herbert Read to write the preface for the English translations of his selected poems, Thoms of Thunder. Eluard wrote to Reavey on 5 May 1936: "'j'avais pense a Herbert Read parce que je crois qu'il a une assez large audience en Angleterre. Mais je serais tres heureux que vous l'ecriviez'" ("I thought of Herbert Read because I think that he has quite a wide audience in England. But I would be very pleased ifyou would write it") (Paul Eluard, Oeuvres completes, I, ed. Marcelle Dumas and Lucien Scheler, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade [Paris: Gallimard, 1968] 1459).
That Read wrote the introduction troubled more than one of Eluard's translators; Denis Devlin wrote to Thomas McGreevy on 15 March 1936: "I demurred at Read, then I found R. [eavey] had not told Br. [ian] and Sam about Read. Anyhow Br. [ian[ & Sam refuse to appear with Read and I too" (TCD MS 8112/9).
321
5 March 1936, McGreevy
4 Torquato Tasso: see 29 January 1935 [for 1936], n. 14.
It is probable that SB was readingOrlandojurioso (1532) by Italian poet Lodovico Ariosto (1474-1533), which he had read earlier for his Trinity Moderatorship Examination; see TCD, MS 10962 for SB's notes on Ariosto (Everett Frost and Jane Maxwell, "TCD, MS 10962: Machiavelli and Ariosto," Notes Diverse Holo, Special issue, SBT/A 16 [2006] 31-32).
12 March {1936}, Reavey
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
12/3 [1936]
6 Clare St [Dublin]
Dear George
Geheimrat Roberts is sublime. 1 Would he care to appoint a
time do you think for me to bend over. Poets' bottoms are so very much the same.
Fail to see the point of holding up Denis's poems. The Fall will not sell them any more than the Rise. 2
IfI succeed in getting away from here it will not be to London.
Several people, including Mrs Salkeld, asked for my poems in Combridges, in vain. They told her they had written to you, in vain. 3
Yours Sam
ALS; 1 leaf, 1 side; letterhead <Royal Hibernian Hotel Co. Ltd. , Dublin>; TxU. Dating: AN AH l 935 and ? 12/5/36 (pencil) are incorrect dates; Denis Devlin's collection Intercessions was not published until October 1937, after much delay by Reavey; although SB's Echo's Bones was published in November 1935, in 5 March 1936, SB complains that he has not heard from Reavey nor anything of Bones in months. In 25 March 1936 to McGreevy, SB also mentions Roberts, which confirms 1936 as the year of this letter.
1 Michael Roberts had written to George Reavey on 12 February 1936 with his response to Echo's Bones. While it is not clear that Reavey sent the letter to SB, he did send a copy to McGreevy on 8 March 1936, with the note: "Dear Tom. Enclosed critique of pure reason. "
My dear George.
It was most kind of you to send me Samuel Beckett's new book.
The poems mostly leave me without any definite impression: I mean, they
dont impinge poetically. I get some sort of idea of the kind of person S. B. is, I learn that he knows Dublin, has read Joyce, and gets a lyrical experience from things which used to be thought not to give it. But does he discover new and exciting collisions of words, do his rhythms seem dead accurate, does he create myth, like [C]oleridge in Christabel, does he make a marmoreal moment like Wordsworth in some of the Lucy poems, does he see more in things than most people, like Shakespeare, or do some new thing?
322
25 March 1936, McGreevy
I dunno. His ! s]ensibility to language (ifhe claims to do these things) isnt mine. Who is, or will be, his audience? Obviously you see something important in the poems or you wouldn't print 'em. What is their virtue apart from the negative one ofnot expressing any opinion or moral judg ment, and therefore not laying themselves open to irrelevant attacks (c. f. attacks on Eliot & Auden)[. ] Is he afraid that he might be silly or sentimental if he talked? Or does he say: there is so little I can be certain of, I will say only that which I know - i. e. the things I see & touch.
Has he a theory ofverbal rhetoric?
How, in short, is he to be read, and what is the advantage ofreading him?
Yours,
Michael [Roberts[
(TLcc, I leaf, 1 side; A. D. Roberts; TLS copy, TCD, MS 8117/9) "Geheimrat" (Privy Counselor).
2 SBhadwrittentoReaveyaboutthedelayedpublicationofDenisDevlin'spoemsin the Europa Poets series. Devlin's letterof15 March 1936 to McGreevy clarifies SB's concern: My book [. . . ] was to be out last November! Reavey left me without any information whatever for months, then wrote about a fortnight ago saying he had transferred his business to London and that he would not publish me till about the Summer. It makes me mad. Sam advised me to take the affair from him but I can't afford to lose the £20 I have paid him - he would certainly not give that back. He wants just to publish his book of translations ofEluard in time for the Surrealiste exhibition in May next[. . . ] I am bitterly disappointed
that my book should be delayed again & again. (TCD, MS 8112/9)
3 Irish poet Blanaid Salkeld (1880-1958) acted with the Abbey Theatre company under the stage name ofNell Byrne and was known in Dublin for her literary salon.
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
25/3/36 Cooldrinagh [Co. Dublin]
Dear Tom
Thank you for your letter & enclosure, which I greatly liked
1
I have to sleep with my window closed so that the birds wont wake me at 6 in the morning. The days pass pearly, mild and tolerable. I seldom go to town, unless to read Geulincx in Trinity
323
and appreciated.
It is a long time since I was in the country at this time ofyear.
25 March 1936, McGreevy
or do a pressing tot or square for Frank when hard beset. 2 I could
go into the office any time at a small salary, or so I imagine,
though nothing has been said, but shall not. Mary nee Manning,
touting for Houghton Mifflin, writes for more copies of my
works, and urges me to put in for lectures at Harvard, where
3
from bad to worse. I have written to Eisenstein asking him would
he take me on at the Moscow State Institute of Cinematography
if I went over. I have had no reply. Shall probably go soon
4
foralesson. Iexpecthimtogetinwithease. Hehasdugoutsome more Italian books for me, including the Storie Fiorentine, which
pleases me greatly; and I found some for myself at Webb's, left in
by some little Jez called Boyle or Doyle, lepping fresh from Florence,
including the accounts of Dante by the Villani, Boccaccio, Aretino
& Manetti brought together in one volume. 6 I have been reading
wildly all over the place, Goethe's Iphigenia & then Racine's
to remove the taste, Chesterfield, Boccaccio, Fischart, Ariosto &
Pope! "Is there no bright reversion in the sky" is lovely. Pope says
7
Frank had to go down to Galway so I went with him, just two
nights & a day there, a pick day, the Corrib shining & foaming,
and the light coming through the Connaught walls like filigree.
On the way back we stopped at Clonmacnoise, which is inde
8
countless ways. If things do not improve I fear he will not last long. He lent me a rather dull work by one Greene [for Green] called Minuet on 18th century in France & England. Some inter esting information about Retif however. I have asked Brian to get me his Paysan-Paysanne & Monsieur Nicolas, but nothing
324
herfather-in-lawisamugwump. Jen'enferairien. Murphygoes
whether or no. I read Pudovkin's new book and disliked it. Maurice Sinclair up for Schol. comes out perhaps once a week
5
bright or white, Goethe golden and Hugo vermeil.
scribably beautiful, as site & monument.
Poor Ruddy is in a bad way again, inextricably worried in
so far. Devlin I see has gone to Zurich. I lunched with him
25 March 1936, McGreevy
9
one day and he was upset by the postponement of his poems,
which I think is very bad of Reavey, & wrote & told him as
much. I wont appear after a preface by Herbert Reid [for Read].
The roubles of Geheimrat Roberts don't interest me. But I was
at the Salkeld's last night, when Blanaid told me she had been in
5 or 6 times to Combridge for my poems, & that they had written
for them to Reavey as often in vain. He says he has sent out
copies for review. 10 I don't believe him. I saw Cecil's poems for
the first time and was immensely impressed. He was dithering
11
think ofit with nostalgia.
indirectly that he is "idyllically" happy. The bewitching Eileen Hennessey has married Ganly the brother of the Ganly who is engaged to Bridget [for Brigid] O'Brien. And she also is idyllically happy. 13
My anus has been giving me a good deal of trouble and I still come to the boil out of my sleep, but otherwise am all right, and nothing matters very much. Frank is going to Llandudno for Easter and I shall try to arrange excursions for mother, to get her away from the house while it is being springcleaned. 14 She keeps well, while her friends and friends' friends die off all round.
Love
s/ Sam
TIS; 1 leaf, 1 side; A env to Thomas McGreevy Esq, 15 Cheyne Gardens, London SW 3; pm 25-3-36, Dublin; TCD, MS 10402/92.
1 McGreevy's enclosure has not been identified.
2 FrankBeckett,BeckettandMedcalf.
3 Mary Manning Howe was neither an agent for SB nor a reader for the Boston company Houghton Mifflin who were her own publishers.
325
in bed with a triple concerto and slap up full length verse play. Was it my old room you occupied at Mrs Frost's? I do not
12
No news at all from Geoffrey, except
25 March 1936, McGreevy
Mary Manning Howe's father-in-law was Mark Anthony DeWolfe Howe (1864-1960), Harvard graduate and Editor of the Alumni publication to 1913, a writer of biography and an Editor of The Atlantic Monthly; his wife Fanny Huntington Quincy Howe
(1879-1933) was a descendant of Josiah Quincy(1772-1864), President of Harvard from 1829 to 1845(The New York Times 1March 1967: 43). SB did not apply to Harvard: "Je n'en ferai rien"(I shall do no such thing). In his next letter toMcGreevy, 9April 119361, SB says: "I shall certainly suggest you for Harvard. All one needs apparently is a chit from Joyce, whom the proudest in Mass. adore" (TCD, MS 10402/93).
4 Murphywasstillincomplete.
SB did not receive a reply to his letter of 2 March 1936 to Eisenstein.
Vsevolod Pudovkin's Film Acting: A Course of Lectures delivered at the State Institute of
Cinematography, Moscow, tr. IvorMontagu(London: G. Newnes, 1935).
5 Morris Sinclair met SB to study for the Scholarship examination, among the most valued of awards open to students of Trinity College Dublin. Scholars are members of the Corporation of the College. receive commons and reduced room and tuition fees, and hold their Scholarships through the end of the June quarter of the fifth year following their election or until the awarding of a Master of Arts degree (Thom's Directory of Ireland for the Year 1936 [Dublin: Alex. Thom and Co. , 1936] 482).
6 AswellasthebooksgiventohimbyCissieSinclair(see29January1935[for1936), n. 14), SB had bought others at George Webb's, Dublin booksellers, 5 & 6 Crampton Quay. Francesco Guicciardini(1483-1540) wrote Storiefiorentine dal 1378 al 1509(1509; Florentine Histories); there was a 1931 edition of this book (Bari: G. Laterza & Figli).
"Jez" (Dublin slang. Jesuit). The former owner of the books may have been Fr. Francis Boyle (20 September 2005, Fergus O'Donoghue SJ, Archivist, The Society of Jesus. Ireland). "Lepping fresh" (Dublin slang, describing freshly caught fish).
Giovanni Villani. Filippo Villani, Giovanni Boccaccio, Leonardo Aretino, and Giannozzo Manetti. Le vite di Dante, intro. and notes by G[iuseppe] L[andol Passerini
(Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1917).
7 Goethe,IphigenieaufTauris(writtenasprosein1779,andreshapedasblankverse, 1786-1787; Iphigenia in Tauris); Racine Iphigenie (1674). Lord Chesterfield (Philip Donner Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, 1694-1773), noted for his Letters to his Son, Letters to Lord Huntingdon (1774). SB's specific reading in Boccaccio at this time is not known. German satirist and literacy opponent of the counter-reformation Johann Fischart
(called Mentzer, 1547-1590) adapted Gargantua (as Geschichtklitterung, 1575) by Rabelais. ForAriosto: see 5 March 1936, n. 4.
SB cites from "Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady" by Alexander Pope (1688-1744).
8 LoughCorrib,thesecondlargestlakeinIreland,is24milesnorthwestofGalway; the province of Connaught includes Connemara, Lough Corrib, and Clonmacnoise. Stone walls form the boundary of many fields. Clonmacnoise, a monastery founded by St. Ciaran in 548, is one of the most celebrated oflreland's holy places and was a center of learning in theMiddleAges; the site, on a plain south ofAthlone beside the Shannon River, includes a cathedral, eight church ruins, two round towers and three sculpted high crosses.
9 Rudmose-Brown had been recovering from illness, and was not teaching in Trinity College that term.
F[rederick] C[harles] Green. Minuet: A Critical Survey ofFrench and English Literary Ideas in the Eighteenth Century(London: J. M. Dent, 1935); the chapter on Nicolas-Edme Retif(known
326
25 March 1936, Ussher
as Retif de la Bretonne, 1734-1806) is entitled "The Leopard's Spots. " Retif wrote Le Paysan perverti (1775), La Paysanne pervertie (1784), and Monsieur Nicolas (1794-1797).
Brian Coffey was then in Paris.
10 DenisDevlinwasinZurichwiththeIrishDepartmentofExternalAffairs;when he wrote to GeorgeReavey on 19April 1936 from the HotelEden au Lac, Zurich, he noted that he had been abroad a month (TxU).
Devlin's impatience with the postponed publication ofIntercessions and SB's letter to Reavey: 12 March [1936], n. 2. For SB's distress that Herbert Read had been invited to write the preface for Thoms ofThunder: 5 March 1936, n. 9.
The negative response of Michael Roberts to Echo's Bones: 12 March 1936, n. 1.
Reavey had sent review copies ofEcho's Bones to the Times Literary Supplement, Time and Tide, New Statesman & Nation, English Review, The Criterion, Scrutiny, Life and Letters Today, The Spectator, Dublin Magazine, The Dublin Review, Cambridge Review, The Observer, The Sunday Times (see Lake, ed. , No Symbols Where None Intended, 30).
11 Although better known as a painter and engraver, Irish artist Cecil ffrench Salkeld (1904-1969) was also a poet, playwright, and publisher of Gayfield Press; in 1921 he studied art in Kassel under Ewald Diilburg, and worked in Germany through late 1925 (see S. B. Kennedy, "An IncisiveAesthetic," Irish Arts Review 21. 2 ! Summer 2004] 90-95). None of the writing mentioned by SB has been published or identified.
12 Mrs. Frost,SB'slandladyinLondonat34GertrudeStreet,S. W. 10.
13 Geoffrey Thompson had recently married. In 1936Eileen Patricia Margaret Hennessey (1904-1983) married William Percy Ganly (1910-1974), a brother of Andrew Ganly, the fiance of Brigid O'Brien.
14 From 8 to 15 April 1936, Frank Beckett was in Llandudno, Wales (SB to McGreevy, 9April 11936]; SB to McGreevy, 15April 11936]; TCD, MS 10402/93 and 94).
ARLAND USSHER
CAPPAGH, CO. WATERFORD
25/3/36 Cooldrinagh [Co. Dublin]
Alter Freund und Ego
I thank you for your letter, & Heaven that Cappa[gh] has not
1
his Old Dutch, Old London, Salvation Army & Sherry Party. He looks as I remember him, Il Traviato, in a world not worth the whetting. 2 All the family had had colds.
327
strained your quality.
Faces set steadfastly towards the Kildare Street Club, Joe &
25 March 1936, Ussher
Kah[a]n, having found Seville provincial, has now left Gib. [raltar]. 3
4
Bei Blanaid Salkeld last night. Cecil was vibrating in
bed, with triple concerto, full length verse play, from which
he read me an extract, in which the phrase occurs: "Love is a
gift refused. This is perversion. " His mother shewed me his
poems, which I liked immensely on rapid perusal, and advised
him to submit to TSE. I do not remember ever having seen any
of them before. 5 One in which the rime mouth-drouth occurs
repeatedly is most remarkable, like the bull let loose among
the cows in Eisenstein's General Line, a reference which I con
fess only occurs to me this moment, in the calm light of March
6
evening at the Sinclairs' you paved the way for one of your
explosions of reality, I allude of course to your laugh, whereby
you are separated not only from the lower but also from the
7
Con you know.
windscaughtuplikesleepingdaffodils. Iunderstandthatone
higher forms of natura naturata,
with a remark to the effect
that the mutual dislike of Cecil & me was the mutual jealousy
of two drunks. Now I did not dislike Cecil nor grudge him his
dipsos, any more than I liked him or approved it. And I cannot
do him the injury of imagining that his feeling for me was any
more precise. Now that he has noted on his music paper my
address in town and my telephone number in the country, I do
not say that an affective tissue is out of the question. But my
8
Mauriac with relish.
Jack Yeats created in a very short time some magnifi
cent works for his exhibition, now in full Fragonard, at the Rembrandt Galleries, Vigo Street. And the Irish Times accuses reception of his new prose work, The Amaranthers. 10 Walking
328
jealousy and dislike could only be of his talent.
Sean I do not see. Not only is he a veronicist, but he reads
9
25 March 1936, Ussher along Stephen's Green, N. , I quoted to him L. D. 's quatrain begin
ning: "What wonder if the poet . . " It made him feel that death
11
any precise affliction, unless it be a sebaceous cyst in my anus, which happily a fart swept away before it became operable.
I am obliged to read in Trinity College Library, as Amoldus Geulincx is not available elsewhere. I recommend him to you most heartily, especially his Ethica, and above all the second section of the second chapter of the first tractate, where he disquires on his fourth cardinal virtue, Humility, contemptus negativus sui ipsius. 12
Humiliter, Simpliciter, Fideliter,13 s/ Sam
TLS; 1 leaf, 1 side; TxU.
1 "AlterFreundundEgo"(Ger. ,oldfriendand;Lat. ,self). SBplayswith"alter"(Ger. , old; Lat. , other).
Arland Ussher's family home, Cappagh, was 5 miles from Dungarvan and Cappoquin, thirty miles from Waterford, in Co. Waterford.
2 Joe Hone and friends are invoked in SB's allusion to the Kildare Street Club, 1-3 Kildare Street, Dublin. In Parnell and His Island (1886), George Moore wrote that the Kildare Street Club represented "all that is respectable" and described it as "a sort of oyster-bed into which all the eldest sons of the landed gentry fall as a matter of course. There they remain spending their days, drinking sherry and cursing Gladstone" (Thomas Pakenham and Valerie Pakenham, eds. , Dublin: A Travellers' Companion [New York: Atheneum, 1988] 219).
SB uses "II Traviato" (man misled) to describe Joe Hone. SB's joke is based on the title of the opera La traviata by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901).
3 RobertIsaacKahan(1895-1951),whowasdescribedbyArlandUssherasa"Dublin literary friend" (Arland Ussher to Stanley Cooke-Smith, 15 January 1957, private collection).
4 A. J. ["Con"]Leventhal.
5 "Bei"(Ger. ,atthehomeof).
Cecil Salkeld's triple concerto, verse play, and poems have not been identified; T. S. Eliot edited The Criterion and was on the staff of Faber and Faber.
6 Eisenstein's film General Line used the technique of simultaneous montage to create the "vision of a gigantic stud bull [that] suddenly appears over the cows"
329
would only change charades into dumbcrambo.
Since my double dry pleurisy at Xmas time I cannot point to
25 March 1936, Ussher
(RudolfArnheim, Film, tr. L. M. Sieveking and Ian F. D. Morrow [London: Faber and
Faber, 1933] 125).
7 "Naturanaturata"(creatednature,inthiscase,humanity);seeSB'sPhilosophy
Notes taken on Spinoza (TCD, MS 10967/188; quoted by Feldman, Beckett's Books, 51). 8 "Town"referstoSB'sroomatBeckettandMedcalf,6ClareStreet:"country"to
the family home in Foxrock.
9 Sean O'Sullivan was known for his portraits. SB may refer to the image of Christ's face purportedly retained on the cloth offered him by St. Veronica on the journey to Calvary. French Catholic writer Frarn;:ois Mauriac (1885-1970).
10 Jack B. Yeats's exhibition: see 5 March 1936, n. 7. "Accuses reception" (Gallicism for "acknowledges receipt").
Jack B. Yeats's The Amaranthers (London: Heinemann, 1936} was announced under "Publications Received" (The Irish Times 21 March 1936: 7).
11 "A Thought ofSuicide" by John Lyle Donaghy (1902-1942): "What wonder ifa poet grow tired / Ofa charade unendingly conspired, / Ifweary mid a mental whore dom / He seek at length a change ofboredom" (Into the Light, and Other Poems [Dublin: The Cuala Press, 1934] 82).
Dumbcrambo is a game in which one set ofplayers has to guess a word proposed by the other set; after being told what it rhymes with, a designated player acts out the word in dumb show until teammates guess it correctly.
12 Geulincx, Ethica (1665), in his Opera Philosophica, III, ed. Land (1-271). In the first tractate, the second section of chapter two addresses humility: "Requiritur ergo ad Humilitatem contemptus negativus sui ipsius, quo quis de se non laboret, se non curet, nullam sui, prae Amore Rationis, rationem ducat" (29) (Therefore, in the search for humility one must deny oneself, not work for oneself, not care for oneself, [desire] nothing for oneselfexcept the love ofreason which leads to reason [tr. AvW]}.
Forgive him: for he tries with idle dreams To make the hour less bitter than it seems. Bitter, for he can turn no other way
To show a higher worth, do what he may; For graver themes
He sees no chance of patronage or pay.
(Mandragola in The Literary Works ofMachiavelli, 6)
16 SBexpressesthewishtoreadthreeItalianwritersoftheCinquecento,whose work is characterized by robust humor and earthy satire: Teofila Folengo (ne Girolamo, pseud. Merlin Coccalo or Cocai, 1491-1544), the most important of the "macaronic poets" whose best-known work is Baldus (1517): Francesco Berni (c. 1497-1535); Bernardo Bibbiena (ne Bernardo Dovizi, 1470-1520), whose most cele brated work was La Calandra (1513; Calandra), perhaps the most scurrilous play of the 1400s; and the philosopher Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) whose only play was n Candelaio (c. 1582; The Candle-Bearer).
Thomas Reid (1710-1796), Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. There were many eighteenth-century three-volume editions of Reid's Essays on the Intellectual and Active Powers of Man, collecting essays published in 1785 and 1788; however, the earliest collected edition was The Works of Thomas Reid (Edinburgh: Bell and Bradfute, 1803).
316
2 March 1936, Eisenstein
Italian physician Girolamo Fracastoro (1478-1553) wrote the epic poem Syphilis sive de morbo gallico (1530: Syphilis or the French Disease), whose central figure Syphilis suffers from the disease that now bears his name.
SB adapts the famous line about Naples, "Vedi Napoli e poi muori" (See Naples and die).
SERGEI EISENSTEIN MOSCOW
2/3/36 6 Clare Street Dublin
Irish Free State
Monsieur
I write to you on the advice of Mr Jack Isaacs of London, to
ask to be considered for admission to the Moscow State School of
1
teur d'anglais at Ecole Normale, Paris. Worked with Joyce, colla
borated in French translation of part of his Work in Progress
(N. R. F. , May 1931) and in critical symposium concerning same
2
I have no experience of studio work and it is naturally in the
scenario and editing end ofthe subject that I am most interested.
It is because I realise that the script is function of its means of
realisation that I am anxious to make contact with your mastery
ofthese, and beg you to consider me a serious cineaste worthy of
3
s/
( Samuel Beckett )
Cinematography.
Born 1906 in Dublin and "educated" there. 1928-1930 lec
(Our Exagmination, etc. ). Published Proust (essay, Chatto & Windus, London 1931), More Pricks Than Kicks (short stories, do. , 1934), Echo's Bones (poems, Europa Press, Paris 1935).
admissiontoyourschool. Icouldstayayearatleast. Veuilliez [for Veuillez] agreer mes meilleurs hommages. 4
317
2 March 1936, Eisenstein
TLS; 1 leaf, 1 side; Russian State Archive ofLiterature and Art, Eisenstein archive 1923- 1-1642; copy, Museum of Modern Art. Oxford; previous publication (transcription with variants): Jay Leyda, ed. , Eisenstein 2: A Premature Celebration ofEisenstein's Centenary, tr. Alan Y. Upchurch, et al. (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1985; rpt. London: Methuen, 1988) 59, and transcription in "Scripted by Beckett," Rolling Stock 7 (1984), 4.
1 Jack Isaacs {1896-1973), Professor of English Language and Literature at Queen Mary College (London). was a founding member ofthe Film Society {1925-1938). He perforn1ed in Eisenstein's film, Lost, and when Eisenstein came to London, Isaacs was his guide.
2 ForJamesJoyce,"AnnaLiviaPlurabelle,"see29May1931,n. 2. Beckett, "Dante . . . Bruno. Vico. . Joyce," Our Exagmination.
3 Describing the curriculum at the GIK (Gosudarstvenni institut kinematografii [State Institute ofCinematography]) in Moscow, Eisenstein wrote: "To realize how it is done and actually participate in the process seems to me most advantageous and instructive for students" ("Cinematography with Tears! " 9). The scenario was the phase between narrative treatment and its cinematographic analysis, the "shooting script" (Vsevolod Pudovkin, On Film Technique, tr. Ivor Montagu [London: V. Gollancz, 1929J 176-177).
4 "Veuillezagreermesmeilleurshommages"(Yoursrespectfully).
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
5/3/36 Cooldrinagh [Co. Dublin]
Dear Tom
I hope you are feeling better & with perhaps some birds in a
bush somewhere.
It is difficult to write from the appalling sameness, blankness,
apathy, stupidity, pusillanimity, day after day, herE [sic]. Molly the cousin from Wales is over till the Grand National, an epidemic
1
I have been reading Geulincx in T. C. D. , without knowing why exactly. Perhaps because the text is so hard to come by. But
318
having released her from her dummy pianos. She is held to be company for mother. Thus she is not an evil communication.
5 March 1936, McGreevy
that is rationalisation & my instinct is right & the work worth
doing, because of its saturation in the conviction that the sub
specie aetemitatis vision is the only excuse for remaining alive.
He does not put out his eyes on that account, as Heraclites did &
Rimbaud began to, nor like the terrified Berkeley repudiate
2
Schwarmerei turned in-ward, Janus or Telephus eyes, like those
of Frenhofer in the Chef d'Oeuvre Inconnu, when he shall have
3
the greatest literary artist (as distinct from poet) of them all
perhaps & Goethe's Tasso, than which, except for some good
rhetoric, anything more disgusting would be hard to devise. If he
wants to state a personal position, as seems the case here, why
can't he do so directly, even if only with the directness of the
Wahlverwandtschaften, without soliciting precedents from
among the installed, whereby he is condoned & they falsified?
them. Onefeelsthemverypatientlyturnedoutward,&without
forgotten Mabuse & ceased to barbouiller.
Tasso again also with boredom, & Ariosto, feeling him to be
He really invites one very patiently to think of him as a machine
a mots, a cliche separator, & a bunker of the suffering that has
not proved its merit in a thousand impressions, or a vademecum
4
or rather Limerick, freedom of which had just been conferred on him, would rather be a good Irishman than a great painter! Brigit [for Brigid] is marrying a dentist [. . . ] 5
I haven't seen JBY for a fortnight. Last time I was there with
a crowd including Fearon grinding out mots and Miss Purser
scuttling along the treetops; and Miss MacCardle (for Macardle],
6
edition.
Dermod O'Brien, to come down to heaven, addressing Cork
smelling of Castle Cromer. HE is I think OFF to the Alpine next week, before when I hope to see him. 7 I perceived Miss Purser again at the R. D. S. the following Monday at Cortot's
319
5 March 1936, McGreevy
recital which was a disappointment. I think he was very ill. He played all the Preludes, Children[']s Comer & Liszt's 2nd
8
having dragged in Herbert Reid [for Read] to the Eluard party. I have not had a word from him for months, & no news of the
9
he want stamps licked in Clare Street. Though I fear my present saliva would bum a hole in the envelope.
Love Sam
ALS; 2 leaves, 2 sides; env to Thomas McGreevy Esq, 15 Cheyne Gardens, Chelsea, London; pm 6-3-36, Dublin; TCD, MS 10402/91.
1 Maria Belis Roe (known as Molly, 1903-1986), SB's cousin, daughter ofEdward Price Roe, May Beckett's brother. Molly taught music at Howell's School in Denbigh, Wales, which at that time was closed on account of an outbreak of measles. The Irish Grand National steeplechase was run on 13 April in 1936, but Molly left on 2 April 1936 ("The cousin left this day week," SB to McGreevy, 9 April [1936], TCD, MS 10402/93).
2 In Ethica (Opera philosophica, III), Arnold Geulincx advocates total submission to God, "sub specie aeternitatis" (in the perspective of eternity). See also 16 January [1936], n. 5.
SB mentions philosophers and a poet who repudiated literal reality (as perceived through the eyes). According to Dante's account, "Heraclitus wept," see 27 February 1934, n. 3. For Rimbaud's "eye-suicide," see 11 March 1931, n. 7. The "immaterialist hypothesis" of George Berkeley denied the existence of matter, and claimed that material objects have no existence outside ofthe mind; see 8 September 1934, n. 18).
3 "Schwarmerei" (effusiveness). The Roman god Janus was symbolized by a double-faced head looking in opposite directions. When Telephus, the son of Hercules, was wounded in battle by Achilles, the Delphic Oracle said that only rust from the spear that wounded him would cure his wounds.
In Balzac's "Chef d'Oeuvre Inconnu" (1837; "The Unknown Masterpiece"), the character ofthe aging artist Frenhofer, who is the only pupil ofthe Flemish painter Mabuse (neJan Gossart, c. 1478-1532), has been working on a secret painting for years; when, after his disappearance, it is revealed, all that can be seen is a mass oflines and layers ofpaint. "Barbouiller" (to daub, or slap on paint).
320
Rhapsodie.
A letter from Brian this morning, furious with Reavey for
Bones from any quarter.
Murphy will not budge. I am thinking of asking Frank does
SB refers to Goethe's verse play Torquato Tasso (1788-1790) and his Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809; Elective Affinities ).
"Machine a mots" (word machine).
5 Dermod O'Brien. who was born in Co. Limerick, received the "Freedom of the City" award in Limerick (The Irish Times 29 February 1936: 11). Brigid O'Brien married dental surgeon and writer Andrew Ganly (1908-1982) on 19 May 1936.
6 William Robert Fearon (1892-1959) was a Professor ofBiochemistry (1934-1959) at Trinity College Dublin as well as a playwright, author ofParnell ofAvondale (1934).
"Mots" (witticisms).
Sarah Purser.
Dorothy Macardle (1899-1958), historian, playwright. novelist, and drama critic; she
was active in the Irish War oflndependence and the Irish Civil War and as a journalist with the League of Nations in Geneva. At this time she was writing The Irish Republic (1937), a history commissioned by Eamon De Valera, founder and President ofFianna Fail, and later President oflreland (1959-1963). Castlecromer is a coal mining town in Co. Kilkenny.
7 JackB. Yeats'sexhibitionwasnotattheAlpineClubGalleryinLondon,butatthe Rembrandt Gallery (also known as the Robert Dunthorne Gallery), 5 Vigo Street, London, opening 19 March 1936 (The Times 24 March 1936: 21; Pyle, Jack B. Yeats: A Catalogue Raisonne oftheOil Paintings. II. 1098; see 29 January 1935 [for 1936], n. 2).
8 Pianist Alfred Cortot performed at the Royal Dublin Society in two programs on 24 February 1936. SB refers to the evening program: Chopin's Twenty-four Preludes, op. 28, and his Andante Spianato in G major, op. 22; Debussy's suite Children's Comer; and Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2 in C-sharp minor ("Royal Dublin Society Recital: Cortot Plays to Large Audiences," The Irish Times 25 February 1936: 5).
9 BrianCoffey.
British poet, art critic, and essayist Herbert Edward Read (1893-1968) edited Burlington Magazine from 1933 to 1939, wrote regularly on art for The Listener, and published The Meaning ofArt (1933) and Art Now (1933). He was one of the organizers ofthe 1936 Surrealist Exhibition in London.
Paul Eluard chose Herbert Read to write the preface for the English translations of his selected poems, Thoms of Thunder. Eluard wrote to Reavey on 5 May 1936: "'j'avais pense a Herbert Read parce que je crois qu'il a une assez large audience en Angleterre. Mais je serais tres heureux que vous l'ecriviez'" ("I thought of Herbert Read because I think that he has quite a wide audience in England. But I would be very pleased ifyou would write it") (Paul Eluard, Oeuvres completes, I, ed. Marcelle Dumas and Lucien Scheler, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade [Paris: Gallimard, 1968] 1459).
That Read wrote the introduction troubled more than one of Eluard's translators; Denis Devlin wrote to Thomas McGreevy on 15 March 1936: "I demurred at Read, then I found R. [eavey] had not told Br. [ian] and Sam about Read. Anyhow Br. [ian[ & Sam refuse to appear with Read and I too" (TCD MS 8112/9).
321
5 March 1936, McGreevy
4 Torquato Tasso: see 29 January 1935 [for 1936], n. 14.
It is probable that SB was readingOrlandojurioso (1532) by Italian poet Lodovico Ariosto (1474-1533), which he had read earlier for his Trinity Moderatorship Examination; see TCD, MS 10962 for SB's notes on Ariosto (Everett Frost and Jane Maxwell, "TCD, MS 10962: Machiavelli and Ariosto," Notes Diverse Holo, Special issue, SBT/A 16 [2006] 31-32).
12 March {1936}, Reavey
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
12/3 [1936]
6 Clare St [Dublin]
Dear George
Geheimrat Roberts is sublime. 1 Would he care to appoint a
time do you think for me to bend over. Poets' bottoms are so very much the same.
Fail to see the point of holding up Denis's poems. The Fall will not sell them any more than the Rise. 2
IfI succeed in getting away from here it will not be to London.
Several people, including Mrs Salkeld, asked for my poems in Combridges, in vain. They told her they had written to you, in vain. 3
Yours Sam
ALS; 1 leaf, 1 side; letterhead <Royal Hibernian Hotel Co. Ltd. , Dublin>; TxU. Dating: AN AH l 935 and ? 12/5/36 (pencil) are incorrect dates; Denis Devlin's collection Intercessions was not published until October 1937, after much delay by Reavey; although SB's Echo's Bones was published in November 1935, in 5 March 1936, SB complains that he has not heard from Reavey nor anything of Bones in months. In 25 March 1936 to McGreevy, SB also mentions Roberts, which confirms 1936 as the year of this letter.
1 Michael Roberts had written to George Reavey on 12 February 1936 with his response to Echo's Bones. While it is not clear that Reavey sent the letter to SB, he did send a copy to McGreevy on 8 March 1936, with the note: "Dear Tom. Enclosed critique of pure reason. "
My dear George.
It was most kind of you to send me Samuel Beckett's new book.
The poems mostly leave me without any definite impression: I mean, they
dont impinge poetically. I get some sort of idea of the kind of person S. B. is, I learn that he knows Dublin, has read Joyce, and gets a lyrical experience from things which used to be thought not to give it. But does he discover new and exciting collisions of words, do his rhythms seem dead accurate, does he create myth, like [C]oleridge in Christabel, does he make a marmoreal moment like Wordsworth in some of the Lucy poems, does he see more in things than most people, like Shakespeare, or do some new thing?
322
25 March 1936, McGreevy
I dunno. His ! s]ensibility to language (ifhe claims to do these things) isnt mine. Who is, or will be, his audience? Obviously you see something important in the poems or you wouldn't print 'em. What is their virtue apart from the negative one ofnot expressing any opinion or moral judg ment, and therefore not laying themselves open to irrelevant attacks (c. f. attacks on Eliot & Auden)[. ] Is he afraid that he might be silly or sentimental if he talked? Or does he say: there is so little I can be certain of, I will say only that which I know - i. e. the things I see & touch.
Has he a theory ofverbal rhetoric?
How, in short, is he to be read, and what is the advantage ofreading him?
Yours,
Michael [Roberts[
(TLcc, I leaf, 1 side; A. D. Roberts; TLS copy, TCD, MS 8117/9) "Geheimrat" (Privy Counselor).
2 SBhadwrittentoReaveyaboutthedelayedpublicationofDenisDevlin'spoemsin the Europa Poets series. Devlin's letterof15 March 1936 to McGreevy clarifies SB's concern: My book [. . . ] was to be out last November! Reavey left me without any information whatever for months, then wrote about a fortnight ago saying he had transferred his business to London and that he would not publish me till about the Summer. It makes me mad. Sam advised me to take the affair from him but I can't afford to lose the £20 I have paid him - he would certainly not give that back. He wants just to publish his book of translations ofEluard in time for the Surrealiste exhibition in May next[. . . ] I am bitterly disappointed
that my book should be delayed again & again. (TCD, MS 8112/9)
3 Irish poet Blanaid Salkeld (1880-1958) acted with the Abbey Theatre company under the stage name ofNell Byrne and was known in Dublin for her literary salon.
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
25/3/36 Cooldrinagh [Co. Dublin]
Dear Tom
Thank you for your letter & enclosure, which I greatly liked
1
I have to sleep with my window closed so that the birds wont wake me at 6 in the morning. The days pass pearly, mild and tolerable. I seldom go to town, unless to read Geulincx in Trinity
323
and appreciated.
It is a long time since I was in the country at this time ofyear.
25 March 1936, McGreevy
or do a pressing tot or square for Frank when hard beset. 2 I could
go into the office any time at a small salary, or so I imagine,
though nothing has been said, but shall not. Mary nee Manning,
touting for Houghton Mifflin, writes for more copies of my
works, and urges me to put in for lectures at Harvard, where
3
from bad to worse. I have written to Eisenstein asking him would
he take me on at the Moscow State Institute of Cinematography
if I went over. I have had no reply. Shall probably go soon
4
foralesson. Iexpecthimtogetinwithease. Hehasdugoutsome more Italian books for me, including the Storie Fiorentine, which
pleases me greatly; and I found some for myself at Webb's, left in
by some little Jez called Boyle or Doyle, lepping fresh from Florence,
including the accounts of Dante by the Villani, Boccaccio, Aretino
& Manetti brought together in one volume. 6 I have been reading
wildly all over the place, Goethe's Iphigenia & then Racine's
to remove the taste, Chesterfield, Boccaccio, Fischart, Ariosto &
Pope! "Is there no bright reversion in the sky" is lovely. Pope says
7
Frank had to go down to Galway so I went with him, just two
nights & a day there, a pick day, the Corrib shining & foaming,
and the light coming through the Connaught walls like filigree.
On the way back we stopped at Clonmacnoise, which is inde
8
countless ways. If things do not improve I fear he will not last long. He lent me a rather dull work by one Greene [for Green] called Minuet on 18th century in France & England. Some inter esting information about Retif however. I have asked Brian to get me his Paysan-Paysanne & Monsieur Nicolas, but nothing
324
herfather-in-lawisamugwump. Jen'enferairien. Murphygoes
whether or no. I read Pudovkin's new book and disliked it. Maurice Sinclair up for Schol. comes out perhaps once a week
5
bright or white, Goethe golden and Hugo vermeil.
scribably beautiful, as site & monument.
Poor Ruddy is in a bad way again, inextricably worried in
so far. Devlin I see has gone to Zurich. I lunched with him
25 March 1936, McGreevy
9
one day and he was upset by the postponement of his poems,
which I think is very bad of Reavey, & wrote & told him as
much. I wont appear after a preface by Herbert Reid [for Read].
The roubles of Geheimrat Roberts don't interest me. But I was
at the Salkeld's last night, when Blanaid told me she had been in
5 or 6 times to Combridge for my poems, & that they had written
for them to Reavey as often in vain. He says he has sent out
copies for review. 10 I don't believe him. I saw Cecil's poems for
the first time and was immensely impressed. He was dithering
11
think ofit with nostalgia.
indirectly that he is "idyllically" happy. The bewitching Eileen Hennessey has married Ganly the brother of the Ganly who is engaged to Bridget [for Brigid] O'Brien. And she also is idyllically happy. 13
My anus has been giving me a good deal of trouble and I still come to the boil out of my sleep, but otherwise am all right, and nothing matters very much. Frank is going to Llandudno for Easter and I shall try to arrange excursions for mother, to get her away from the house while it is being springcleaned. 14 She keeps well, while her friends and friends' friends die off all round.
Love
s/ Sam
TIS; 1 leaf, 1 side; A env to Thomas McGreevy Esq, 15 Cheyne Gardens, London SW 3; pm 25-3-36, Dublin; TCD, MS 10402/92.
1 McGreevy's enclosure has not been identified.
2 FrankBeckett,BeckettandMedcalf.
3 Mary Manning Howe was neither an agent for SB nor a reader for the Boston company Houghton Mifflin who were her own publishers.
325
in bed with a triple concerto and slap up full length verse play. Was it my old room you occupied at Mrs Frost's? I do not
12
No news at all from Geoffrey, except
25 March 1936, McGreevy
Mary Manning Howe's father-in-law was Mark Anthony DeWolfe Howe (1864-1960), Harvard graduate and Editor of the Alumni publication to 1913, a writer of biography and an Editor of The Atlantic Monthly; his wife Fanny Huntington Quincy Howe
(1879-1933) was a descendant of Josiah Quincy(1772-1864), President of Harvard from 1829 to 1845(The New York Times 1March 1967: 43). SB did not apply to Harvard: "Je n'en ferai rien"(I shall do no such thing). In his next letter toMcGreevy, 9April 119361, SB says: "I shall certainly suggest you for Harvard. All one needs apparently is a chit from Joyce, whom the proudest in Mass. adore" (TCD, MS 10402/93).
4 Murphywasstillincomplete.
SB did not receive a reply to his letter of 2 March 1936 to Eisenstein.
Vsevolod Pudovkin's Film Acting: A Course of Lectures delivered at the State Institute of
Cinematography, Moscow, tr. IvorMontagu(London: G. Newnes, 1935).
5 Morris Sinclair met SB to study for the Scholarship examination, among the most valued of awards open to students of Trinity College Dublin. Scholars are members of the Corporation of the College. receive commons and reduced room and tuition fees, and hold their Scholarships through the end of the June quarter of the fifth year following their election or until the awarding of a Master of Arts degree (Thom's Directory of Ireland for the Year 1936 [Dublin: Alex. Thom and Co. , 1936] 482).
6 AswellasthebooksgiventohimbyCissieSinclair(see29January1935[for1936), n. 14), SB had bought others at George Webb's, Dublin booksellers, 5 & 6 Crampton Quay. Francesco Guicciardini(1483-1540) wrote Storiefiorentine dal 1378 al 1509(1509; Florentine Histories); there was a 1931 edition of this book (Bari: G. Laterza & Figli).
"Jez" (Dublin slang. Jesuit). The former owner of the books may have been Fr. Francis Boyle (20 September 2005, Fergus O'Donoghue SJ, Archivist, The Society of Jesus. Ireland). "Lepping fresh" (Dublin slang, describing freshly caught fish).
Giovanni Villani. Filippo Villani, Giovanni Boccaccio, Leonardo Aretino, and Giannozzo Manetti. Le vite di Dante, intro. and notes by G[iuseppe] L[andol Passerini
(Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1917).
7 Goethe,IphigenieaufTauris(writtenasprosein1779,andreshapedasblankverse, 1786-1787; Iphigenia in Tauris); Racine Iphigenie (1674). Lord Chesterfield (Philip Donner Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, 1694-1773), noted for his Letters to his Son, Letters to Lord Huntingdon (1774). SB's specific reading in Boccaccio at this time is not known. German satirist and literacy opponent of the counter-reformation Johann Fischart
(called Mentzer, 1547-1590) adapted Gargantua (as Geschichtklitterung, 1575) by Rabelais. ForAriosto: see 5 March 1936, n. 4.
SB cites from "Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady" by Alexander Pope (1688-1744).
8 LoughCorrib,thesecondlargestlakeinIreland,is24milesnorthwestofGalway; the province of Connaught includes Connemara, Lough Corrib, and Clonmacnoise. Stone walls form the boundary of many fields. Clonmacnoise, a monastery founded by St. Ciaran in 548, is one of the most celebrated oflreland's holy places and was a center of learning in theMiddleAges; the site, on a plain south ofAthlone beside the Shannon River, includes a cathedral, eight church ruins, two round towers and three sculpted high crosses.
9 Rudmose-Brown had been recovering from illness, and was not teaching in Trinity College that term.
F[rederick] C[harles] Green. Minuet: A Critical Survey ofFrench and English Literary Ideas in the Eighteenth Century(London: J. M. Dent, 1935); the chapter on Nicolas-Edme Retif(known
326
25 March 1936, Ussher
as Retif de la Bretonne, 1734-1806) is entitled "The Leopard's Spots. " Retif wrote Le Paysan perverti (1775), La Paysanne pervertie (1784), and Monsieur Nicolas (1794-1797).
Brian Coffey was then in Paris.
10 DenisDevlinwasinZurichwiththeIrishDepartmentofExternalAffairs;when he wrote to GeorgeReavey on 19April 1936 from the HotelEden au Lac, Zurich, he noted that he had been abroad a month (TxU).
Devlin's impatience with the postponed publication ofIntercessions and SB's letter to Reavey: 12 March [1936], n. 2. For SB's distress that Herbert Read had been invited to write the preface for Thoms ofThunder: 5 March 1936, n. 9.
The negative response of Michael Roberts to Echo's Bones: 12 March 1936, n. 1.
Reavey had sent review copies ofEcho's Bones to the Times Literary Supplement, Time and Tide, New Statesman & Nation, English Review, The Criterion, Scrutiny, Life and Letters Today, The Spectator, Dublin Magazine, The Dublin Review, Cambridge Review, The Observer, The Sunday Times (see Lake, ed. , No Symbols Where None Intended, 30).
11 Although better known as a painter and engraver, Irish artist Cecil ffrench Salkeld (1904-1969) was also a poet, playwright, and publisher of Gayfield Press; in 1921 he studied art in Kassel under Ewald Diilburg, and worked in Germany through late 1925 (see S. B. Kennedy, "An IncisiveAesthetic," Irish Arts Review 21. 2 ! Summer 2004] 90-95). None of the writing mentioned by SB has been published or identified.
12 Mrs. Frost,SB'slandladyinLondonat34GertrudeStreet,S. W. 10.
13 Geoffrey Thompson had recently married. In 1936Eileen Patricia Margaret Hennessey (1904-1983) married William Percy Ganly (1910-1974), a brother of Andrew Ganly, the fiance of Brigid O'Brien.
14 From 8 to 15 April 1936, Frank Beckett was in Llandudno, Wales (SB to McGreevy, 9April 11936]; SB to McGreevy, 15April 11936]; TCD, MS 10402/93 and 94).
ARLAND USSHER
CAPPAGH, CO. WATERFORD
25/3/36 Cooldrinagh [Co. Dublin]
Alter Freund und Ego
I thank you for your letter, & Heaven that Cappa[gh] has not
1
his Old Dutch, Old London, Salvation Army & Sherry Party. He looks as I remember him, Il Traviato, in a world not worth the whetting. 2 All the family had had colds.
327
strained your quality.
Faces set steadfastly towards the Kildare Street Club, Joe &
25 March 1936, Ussher
Kah[a]n, having found Seville provincial, has now left Gib. [raltar]. 3
4
Bei Blanaid Salkeld last night. Cecil was vibrating in
bed, with triple concerto, full length verse play, from which
he read me an extract, in which the phrase occurs: "Love is a
gift refused. This is perversion. " His mother shewed me his
poems, which I liked immensely on rapid perusal, and advised
him to submit to TSE. I do not remember ever having seen any
of them before. 5 One in which the rime mouth-drouth occurs
repeatedly is most remarkable, like the bull let loose among
the cows in Eisenstein's General Line, a reference which I con
fess only occurs to me this moment, in the calm light of March
6
evening at the Sinclairs' you paved the way for one of your
explosions of reality, I allude of course to your laugh, whereby
you are separated not only from the lower but also from the
7
Con you know.
windscaughtuplikesleepingdaffodils. Iunderstandthatone
higher forms of natura naturata,
with a remark to the effect
that the mutual dislike of Cecil & me was the mutual jealousy
of two drunks. Now I did not dislike Cecil nor grudge him his
dipsos, any more than I liked him or approved it. And I cannot
do him the injury of imagining that his feeling for me was any
more precise. Now that he has noted on his music paper my
address in town and my telephone number in the country, I do
not say that an affective tissue is out of the question. But my
8
Mauriac with relish.
Jack Yeats created in a very short time some magnifi
cent works for his exhibition, now in full Fragonard, at the Rembrandt Galleries, Vigo Street. And the Irish Times accuses reception of his new prose work, The Amaranthers. 10 Walking
328
jealousy and dislike could only be of his talent.
Sean I do not see. Not only is he a veronicist, but he reads
9
25 March 1936, Ussher along Stephen's Green, N. , I quoted to him L. D. 's quatrain begin
ning: "What wonder if the poet . . " It made him feel that death
11
any precise affliction, unless it be a sebaceous cyst in my anus, which happily a fart swept away before it became operable.
I am obliged to read in Trinity College Library, as Amoldus Geulincx is not available elsewhere. I recommend him to you most heartily, especially his Ethica, and above all the second section of the second chapter of the first tractate, where he disquires on his fourth cardinal virtue, Humility, contemptus negativus sui ipsius. 12
Humiliter, Simpliciter, Fideliter,13 s/ Sam
TLS; 1 leaf, 1 side; TxU.
1 "AlterFreundundEgo"(Ger. ,oldfriendand;Lat. ,self). SBplayswith"alter"(Ger. , old; Lat. , other).
Arland Ussher's family home, Cappagh, was 5 miles from Dungarvan and Cappoquin, thirty miles from Waterford, in Co. Waterford.
2 Joe Hone and friends are invoked in SB's allusion to the Kildare Street Club, 1-3 Kildare Street, Dublin. In Parnell and His Island (1886), George Moore wrote that the Kildare Street Club represented "all that is respectable" and described it as "a sort of oyster-bed into which all the eldest sons of the landed gentry fall as a matter of course. There they remain spending their days, drinking sherry and cursing Gladstone" (Thomas Pakenham and Valerie Pakenham, eds. , Dublin: A Travellers' Companion [New York: Atheneum, 1988] 219).
SB uses "II Traviato" (man misled) to describe Joe Hone. SB's joke is based on the title of the opera La traviata by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901).
3 RobertIsaacKahan(1895-1951),whowasdescribedbyArlandUssherasa"Dublin literary friend" (Arland Ussher to Stanley Cooke-Smith, 15 January 1957, private collection).
4 A. J. ["Con"]Leventhal.
5 "Bei"(Ger. ,atthehomeof).
Cecil Salkeld's triple concerto, verse play, and poems have not been identified; T. S. Eliot edited The Criterion and was on the staff of Faber and Faber.
6 Eisenstein's film General Line used the technique of simultaneous montage to create the "vision of a gigantic stud bull [that] suddenly appears over the cows"
329
would only change charades into dumbcrambo.
Since my double dry pleurisy at Xmas time I cannot point to
25 March 1936, Ussher
(RudolfArnheim, Film, tr. L. M. Sieveking and Ian F. D. Morrow [London: Faber and
Faber, 1933] 125).
7 "Naturanaturata"(creatednature,inthiscase,humanity);seeSB'sPhilosophy
Notes taken on Spinoza (TCD, MS 10967/188; quoted by Feldman, Beckett's Books, 51). 8 "Town"referstoSB'sroomatBeckettandMedcalf,6ClareStreet:"country"to
the family home in Foxrock.
9 Sean O'Sullivan was known for his portraits. SB may refer to the image of Christ's face purportedly retained on the cloth offered him by St. Veronica on the journey to Calvary. French Catholic writer Frarn;:ois Mauriac (1885-1970).
10 Jack B. Yeats's exhibition: see 5 March 1936, n. 7. "Accuses reception" (Gallicism for "acknowledges receipt").
Jack B. Yeats's The Amaranthers (London: Heinemann, 1936} was announced under "Publications Received" (The Irish Times 21 March 1936: 7).
11 "A Thought ofSuicide" by John Lyle Donaghy (1902-1942): "What wonder ifa poet grow tired / Ofa charade unendingly conspired, / Ifweary mid a mental whore dom / He seek at length a change ofboredom" (Into the Light, and Other Poems [Dublin: The Cuala Press, 1934] 82).
Dumbcrambo is a game in which one set ofplayers has to guess a word proposed by the other set; after being told what it rhymes with, a designated player acts out the word in dumb show until teammates guess it correctly.
12 Geulincx, Ethica (1665), in his Opera Philosophica, III, ed. Land (1-271). In the first tractate, the second section of chapter two addresses humility: "Requiritur ergo ad Humilitatem contemptus negativus sui ipsius, quo quis de se non laboret, se non curet, nullam sui, prae Amore Rationis, rationem ducat" (29) (Therefore, in the search for humility one must deny oneself, not work for oneself, not care for oneself, [desire] nothing for oneselfexcept the love ofreason which leads to reason [tr. AvW]}.
