7 SBreadadraftofFreundlich'sessay"DerbildhafteRaum"(TheImaginableSpace) which formulates a social and
aesthetic
theory that announces abstraction as a uni versal language (Dr.
Samuel Beckett
InYeats'spaintingHelen(Pyle499;TelAvivMuseum 2372).
Helen stands on a quay as if launching a ship, while "a figure kneeling beside her writes on a wax tablet placed on the ground" (Pyle.
Jack B.
Yeats: Catalogue Raisonne of the Oil Paintings, I, 455).
SB compares Helen to paintings by Jacopo Bassano and by Eugene Delacroix (ne Ferdinand-Eugene-Victor Delacroix, 1798-1863).
5 PeggyGuggenheim'smemoirgivestheimpressionthatSBhadalreadysuggested an exhibition ofYeats's painting at Guggenheim Jeune, but thatYeats did not think his work was appropriate for her gallery (Guggenheim, Out ofthis Century: Confessions ofan Art Addict, 163-164).
McGreevy's Jack B. Yeats had not been accepted by Routledge.
6 Withregardtotheseplans:15June1938,n. 8.
7 Alfred de Vigny, Journal d'un poete, ed. Leon-Adolphe Gauthier-Ferrieres (Paris: Bibliotheque Larousse, 1913; rpt. 1919, 1920); the Journal was composed of extracts from the personal papers of Comte Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863) originally published by Louis Ratisbonne (1867).
Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions ofTristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-1767).
SB's long-considered play on Samuel Johnson, extant only as the fragment "Human Wishes. "
638
love, & to Hester & to Dilly. God's blessing
Ever Sam
5 August 1938, Reavey Although there are notes in the SeumasO'Sullivan papers on the subject ofOliver
Goldsmith, no such biography was published (TCD, MS 4056, 4260-4299, 4630-4649).
8 Cissie Sinclair had returned from South Africa in June. Morris Sinclair was resuming his studies at Trinity College Dublin. "Little Go" was the unofficial name of the Final Freshman examination at TCD.
9 SB refers to Harry Sinclair, in whose libel suit against Gogarty SB testified in November 1937.
10 Poet, biographer, and critic Anna Seward was a member of Lichfield's intellec tual circle and known as the "Swan of Lichfield" (Norma Clarke, "Anna Seward: Swan, Duckling or Goose? " New Rambler E. 7 [2003/2004] 54). SB transfers the appellation to Hester Thrale, whose home was in Streatham, and thence to Mary Manning Howe, whose novel Mount Venus was published in autumn 1938.
11 The annual Dublin Horse Show is a major social event of early August. The Abbey Theatre Festival (6 to 20 August 1938) included a lecture on 8 August by drama critic and journalist Andrew E. Malone (ne Laurence Patrick Byrne. 1888-1939) on the early history of the Abbey Theatre, a lecture on 11 August by F. R. Higgins on W. B. Yeats, as well as productions of several plays by Yeats: Cathleen ni Houlihan, Purgatory, and On Baile's Strand. The photographic studio Lafayette, 32 Westmoreland Street, Dublin, was credited with several portraits in the program, for which Lennox Robinson wrote the introduction ("Abbey Theatre Festival Souvenir" [19381). The excursion scheduled for 7 August 1937 was to Tara and the Boyne Valley.
12 Geoffrey and Ursula Thompson with whom SB had lunch in London on his way from Paris to Dublin. W. R. Bion, with whom SB had been in psychotherapy, was a colleague of Geoffrey Thompson; both took piano lessons for relaxation.
13 Thomas Holmes Ravenhill, whose sister's circumstance is unknown. Hester Dowden, Geraldine Cummins.
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
5! ! ! Aug 1938
6 Clare Street Dublin
dear George
Many thanks for information.
No, no news from Longman Green & Co. Nor ofSweeney.
I am lunching with Brian to-day. He says he is staying two
months here, the better to work . . .
1
639
5 August 1938, Reavey
I expect to be here about another fortnight. Then I don't know whether I shall go to Brittany to join up with Peron or straight back to Paris. 2
I hope to be here for the first night of Yeats's new play Purgatory next Wednesday week at the Abbey. I saw Jack yester day. He has some magnificent new pictures. 3
You might send me a couple of copies of Murphy. No
review appeared in Dublin Magazine. Austin Clarke had it for
review, having taken it from Sheehy who had it before that, but
4
1 JulieRemanatLongmanGreenandCompanyinNewYorkhadaskedtoreadMore Pricks Than Kicks and Murphy for possible publication in the United States.
American art critic James Johnson Sweeney (1900-1986) worked with Eugene Jolas on numbers 24-27 of transition (1936-1938) in the United States; Sweeney was Curator ofthe Museum ofModem Art in New York from 1935 to 1946, and later Director ofthe Guggenheim Museum in New York from 1952 to 1960. He was in Dublin in early August 1938 (Sweeney to George Reavey, 22 August 1937, TxU).
2 BrianCoffey. AlfredPeron.
3 The opening night of W. B. Yeats's play Purgatory as part of the Abbey Theatre Festival took place on 10 August 1938. The new paintings by Jack B. Yeats have not been identified.
4 AnunsignedreviewofMurphyappearedlaterinDublinMagazine14. 2(April-June 1939) 98: "Murphy comes in the guise of a novel. But it is more a study in words and phrases,thecharactersbeingsecondaryaffairs . . . Thewholethingisabizarrefantasy, with a nasty twist about it that its self-evident cleverness and scholarship cannot redeem . . . And the one really human character in the book is Celia, the lady of loose morals. "
Neither Edward Sheehy, an editor ofireland To-Day, nor Austin Clarke wrote a signed review Murphy. Austin Clarke had recently published Night and Morning: Poems (Dublin: Orwell Press, 1938).
5 "Abient6t"(tillsoon).
640
withheld his hand. He has published another book ofverse. Hope Gwynedd had a pleasant time in the country. Give her
my love & a bientot. 5 Yours ever
Sam
ALS; 1 leaf, 2 sides; TxU.
Friday {19 August 1938}, Reavey
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
Friday 38 [19 August 1938]
6 Clare St. [Dublin]
dear George
I was hoping to receive two copies of Murphy from you.
Or did you not get my letter? Anyway don't bother about them
1
them?
I am not yet quite sure whether I shall return directly
to Paris or go first to Brittany to visit Peron. Ussher also is in St Malo. In any case I shall not be more than a night in London.
I had a letter from Geer & Lisi. They seem to be enjoy
2
I enclose the usual from Julie Reman. 3 Love to Gwynedd
Ever Sam
ALS; 1 leaf, 2 sides; letterhead <THE DAWROS BAY HOTELS, ROSBEG, GLENTIES, co. DONEGAL>; enclosure not extant; TxU. Dating: SB WTote "38" on the date line of the letterhead; ins August 1938 SB had indicated that he planned to be in Dublin for about another fortnight; 19 August was a Friday in 1938.
1 SB'sletterof5August1938.
2 Geer and Lisi van Velde had moved to Cagnes-sur-Mer on the Cote d'Azur.
3 Julie Reman WTote on behalf of LongmanGreen and Company in New York, rejecting More Pricks Than Kicks and Murphy.
641
now as I expect to be in London early next week.
If any letters come for me in the meantime will you keep
ing themselves in Cagnes. They have conferred my name on a cat.
27 September 1938, Reavey
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
27th Sept 1938
6 Rue des Favorites Paris 15
Dear George
Thanks for letter & poem, which I like very much indeed.
I heard Adolf the Peacemaker on the wireless last night. And
thought I heard the air escaping - a slow puncture. But no matter how things go I shall stay on here, on the 7! h floor with my
handful of sand. 2 All I have to lose is legs, arms, balls[,] etc. , and I owe them no particular debt of gratitude as far as I know. The streets are full of khaki-cum-civils departing shabbily in requisi tioned trade vans - and at night horrible curfew lighting, like that through which Proust stumbled to the Temple of Delights. I have promised Peron, in event of mobilisation, to evacuate in his car his children, his mother-in-law, his aunt-in-law. 3
I have been running into Gore, flaxenly unshaven & wanly constructive, wondering is he on his way through from Athens
4
Otto Freundlich's ostentatious miseries. The last time I was
there I left behind me a pair of soiled drawers and Sartre's
Nausee. These at least I hope to recover. Adler has no news of
Geer, but talks of going down there & getting together. His latest
painting is distressing. I have no news of Geer either, except that
I hear the sister-in-law (not the Prague one, back in Prague) is
5
6
642
1
to . . Cork. Says art answers questions.
Adler calls for me this afternoon, to take me by the hand to
with them.
I had a good time in Normandy & Brittany before returning
to Paris.
No work. I read an average of an hour a day, after an hour
the illusion of comprehension ceases, Kant, Descartes, Johnson,
Renard and a kindergarten manual of science: "L'air est part
7
not accept. I suppose now more than ever it will come off on the g! ! ! _ Here there is great afflux of tenderness, even in the com
8
ordinary way, all the higher centres on the pillow, & woke up greatly refreshed to find my feet there. The perfect suicide: to somnambulate through the window. But would one wake up on the way down?
Love to Gwynedd yrs ever
Sam
ALS; 2 leaves, 2 sides; TxU.
1 Reavey's letter has not been found. The poem enclosed with it has not been identified.
2 Hitler had "ordered an 'historic manifestation' to the nation on the subject of Czechoslovakia" in the Berlin Sportspalast on 26 September 1938, and "the whole German people had been ordered to listen to a broadcast of his address" ("All Reich Rallied: 'Historic Manifestation' Tonight will Reply to a Czech Broadcast," The New York Times 26 September 1938: 1; also on this page is a summary of Hitler's memorandum of 23 September 1938 to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain [1869-1940] and a map of the Sudetenland; for full text: The New York Times, 27 September 1938: 17).
SB refers to his apartment at 6 Rue des Favorites.
3 In Le Temps retrouve Marcel during World War I walks through the darkened streets of Paris and unwittingly enters a male brothel seeking a drink and a place to rest; he leaves during a bombardment which plunges the streets into total blackness (Le Temps retrouve in A la recherche du temps perdu, N, 388-412); Time Regained in In Search of Lost Time, VI, 173-207).
Alfred Peron's family included his wife, Mania, their twin sons Michel and Alexis (b. 1932), Mania's mother Maria Lezine (nee Spiridonof, n. d. ), and her mother's sister Elizabeth Spiridonof (n. d. ).
27 September 1938, Reavey
out", "Le plomb est un metal lourd et tendre".
Brian sent me an invitation to his wedding, which I could
mune ofVaugirard.
I went to bed one night lately in even more than usual the
4 Gorehasnotbeenidentified.
643
27 September 1938, Reavey
5 Polish-bornartistJanke! Adler(1895-1949)hadbeenworkinginGermany,where he had been involved in the Rheinische Sezession and the Union of Progressive International Artists (1922); in 1933 his work was declared "entartet," and in 1934 he moved to Paris. There he was involved in 1937 with the studio of Stanley William Hayter (1901-1988),Atelier 17 Uankel Adler,JankelAdler, intro. Stanley William Hayter [London: Nicholson and Watson,1948] viii).
Otto Freundlich,who had been a friend ofAdler's since the 1920s in Berlin: 15 June 1938,n. 6.
Geer and Lisi van Velde were living in Cagnes-sur-Mer. Lisl's sister from Berlin was Anna MarieJoki (known as Moidi, 1911-2001); she and their sister from Prague (not identified) had visited the van Veldes in the summer of 1938.
6 AccordingtoaletterfromPeggyGuggenheimtoAmericanwriterEmilyColeman (nee Holmes,1899-1974),Guggenheim had lent SB her car to drive to Brittany (DeU: Coleman,[23 September 1939]; Knowlson,Damned to Fame, 265,674).
7 The specific books SB was reading by Immanuel Kant, Rene Descartes,Samuel Johnson,Jules Renard, as well as the basic science text, have not been identified. "L'air est partout" (air is everywhere); "Le plomb est un metal lourd et tendre" (lead is a soft
heavy metal).
8 The wedding of Brian Coffey and Bridget Baynes took place on 8 October 1938, St. Patrick's Church, Soho Square,London.
Vaugirard was the nearest metro station to SB's apartment.
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
[after 24 October 1938] 6 Rue des Favorites Paris 15
dear George
Many thanks for letter & order form. Put me down for
3 copies at 3/6, for which I enclose cheque for 11/9. It is very good of you to reserve me a special copy. Wish I was in a position
1
Dublin for a couple of weeks at Xmas. I would not stop in London
on the way through, but might on the way back, if Father Xmas
2
to do as much for you.
Nothing new here. It is just possible I may have to go to
was kind. I hope not to have to go at all.
644
[after 24 October 1938}, Reavey
Adler has left for Cagnes in a Simca. He lent me 3 pictures to keep during his absence. I fear he thinks I spend my time enter taining rich English & Yanks. They have something, the begin nings of a delectatio morosa. 3
I am halfway through a modified version in French of Love & Lethe. I don't know ifit is better than the English version or merely as bad. I have 10 Poems in French also, mostly short. When I have a few more I shall send them to Eluard. Or get Duchamp to do so. 4
I see Brian & Bridget occasionally. They are smelling after a
5
oranges were orange and the gnats gnats, & that he was working with both.
Poor Barlach is dead. Dans la misere. 6
Freundlich gave me a large aesthetic essay to read, all about
7
ALS; 1 leaf, 1 side; TxU. Dating: when SB wrote to Reavey on 27 September 1938, Adler was planning to go to Cagnes-sur-Mer to visit Geer van Velde; Ernst Barlach died on 24 October 1938.
1 SB ordered copies of Reavey's Quixotic Perquisitions, formally published in January 1939; he received his copies by 27 January 1939 (SB to George Reavey, 27 January 1939, TxU).
2 SB went to Dublin for Christmas and New Year; he wrote from Greystones to Brian and Bridget Coffey on 30 December 1938 that he expected to return to Paris at the end of the following week (DeU, MS 382, Brian Coffey Papers Supplement).
3 Janke! AdlerhadplannedtovisitGeerandLisivanVeldeinCagnes-sur-Mer. The three pictures lent to SB have not been identified. "Delectatio morosa" (morose delight). Adler's return to Paris is noted in SB to Reavey, 27 January 1939 (TxU).
4 "LoveandLethe"inMorePricksThanKicks,85-100;SB'sFrenchtranslationofthis story was unpublished.
645
flat at the Porte de Versailles.
I had a highly coloured card from Geer & Lisl, saying the
the absolute & the pananthropod.
Love to Gwynedd. I hope she is well again.
Ever Sam
[after 24 October 1938}, Reavey
SB refers to ten of the twelve poems published as "Poemes 38-39," Les Temps Modemes, 288-293. SB often played chess with French artist Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), also a friend ofEluard.
5 BrianandBridgetCoffey.
6 German sculptor Ernst Barlach died on 24 October 1938. "Dans la misere" (in poverty).
7 SBreadadraftofFreundlich'sessay"DerbildhafteRaum"(TheImaginableSpace) which formulates a social and aesthetic theory that announces abstraction as a uni versal language (Dr. Joachim Heusinger von Waldegg, Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Kiinste Karlsruhe, 16 February 1995). Observing that religions and myth ologies no longer filled the creative spaces between man and the universe, Freundlich proposed that art could respond to the intellectual crisis of modernity and could bring together two dynamics - man's instinct to form and cosmic formlessness - to make visible "the process of becoming rather than being. " The Fonds Otto Freundlich/ Archives IMEC has about half (pages 41-89) of Freundlich's draft of this essay dated 1 March 1938; there is also a carbon copy of what may be the full text, possibly prepared by another hand. A summary of those pages and other works written by Freundlich is published in Otto Freundlich, Otto Freundlich - Schrifien: Ein Wegbereiter der gegenstandslosen Kunst, ed. IBi Bohnen (Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag, 1982) 211-220.
SB shared his own essay "Les Deux Besoins" with Freundlich (NhD, Lawrence Harvey Papers, MS 661[2]: 27). SB wrote to John Fletcher on 3 June 1966 that it "was not on the van Veldes. It must have been written 1938 or early 1939 at latest. I remember showing it to the painter & sculptor Otto Freundlich since disappeared in the 'tourmente"' (TxU; TMS of "Les Deux Besoins," NhD, Beckett collection; Beckett, Disjecta, 55-57; see Freundlich's Profile in the Appendix; Alain Bonfand, Christophe Duvivier, Edda Maillet, Jerome Serri, and Guy Tosatto, Otto Freundlich [Rochechouart: Musee Departemental de Rochechouart, 1988] 82).
OTTO FREUNDLICH PAR! S
SB's errors of Gennan in this letter have not been corrected.
[autumn 1938]
[Paris]
Lieber Herr Freundlich
Ich bedaure sehr, heute morgen war ich nicht frei.
Samstag nachmittag zwischen 2 u. 4. werden Sie mich bei mir
finden, wenn Sie Lust haben,
646
28 December 1938, Ussher
dabei zu kommen - 1hr
Sam Beckett
ALS; 1 leaf, 1 side; Fonds Otto Freundlich/ Archives IMEC. Dating: the year ascribed to this letter is consistent with evidence of a growing acquaintance between SB and Freundlich in 1938. In view of the deepening relationship, it seems more likely that this note was written in the autumn of 1938, rather than earlier in that year.
[autumn 1938] [Paris]
Dear Mr Freundlich
I am very sorry, I was not available this morning.
You will find me at home on Saturday afternoon between
2 and 4, if you feel like coming by. Yours
Sam Beckett
ARLAND USSHER
[? CAPPAGH, CO. WATERFORD]
28/12/38
Greystones
Dear Arland
Thanks for papers. Glad to sea [sic] you are bursting into
print again. The "suspender" essay I always liked very much, and
1
ful abortion. It is only to keep my mother company during
the season of that other. And I hope soon to return to the
people where the little operation is cheap, safe, legal & popular.
more than ever in such sad company.
Do not imagine I am returned to the land of my unsuccess
"Curetage".
2
647
28 December 1938, Ussher
My mother has been wintering on this cote de misere since
September. What does not face north faces east. She is the worse
for it. But from the window she can see the cemetery where my
3
steadfastly in this course.
It is a long time since we had nothing to say to one another,
and if your progress has been anything like mine I should think we could now be united in a silence even more substantial - or as some would say, thick - than heretofore.
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that you will always be welcome in 6 rue des Favorites (formerly Impasse des Favorites, not far from the still existing Impasse de L'Enfant Jesus) should your Schicksal at any time allow you so much license. 5
I have begun a Primer of higher French syntax. It takes the form of Xenian. Here is one
Ci-git qui y echappa tant
Qu'il n'en echappe que maintenant.
Porte-toi bien7 Sam
ALS; 1 leaf. 2 sides; TxU.
1 SB refers to Ussher's essay "The Age of Shadows," in Nineteenth Century and After: 12 May 1938, n. 1.
2 "Curetage" (curettage).
3 MayBeckettmovedtoGreystonesinSeptember. HerviewincludedtheRedford cemetery, where William Beckett was buried. "Cote de misere" (Misery Coast).
4 CissieSinclairandherfamily.
5 SB'sapartmentonRuedesFavoriteswasofftheRuedeVaugirard,alongwhich was the Impasse de l'EnfantJesus. "Schicksal" (fate).
6 SB's "Primer of higher French syntax" is for Ussher's amusement. Xenien (1796) was a collection of satirical epigrams, written by Goethe and Schiller. Modeled on the epigrams of Martial, "each epigram is a classical distich, composed of hexameter and
648
father is "at rest".
I have seen nobody except the Sinclairs and shall continue
4
6
28 December 1938, Ussher
pentameter" (Henry Garland and Mary Garland, The Oxford Companion to Gennan Literature ! Oxford: Oxford University Press, 198611006).
SB's example becomes a part of his story "Premier Amour" (AMS, TxU, begun 28 October1946, completed12 November1946): "Ci-git qui y echappa tant/ Qu'il n'en echappe que maintenant" ("Hereunder lies the above who up below/ So hourly died that hesurvivedtillnow")(PremierAmour! Paris:LesEditionsdeMinuit,1970110;tr. bySamuel Beckett, "First Love" in First Love and Other Shorts ! New York: Grove Press, 1974112).
7 "Porte-toibien"(Lookafteryourself).
649
1939 January 27 January
28 February Early March
1 April
By 18 April
By 6June
14June
15June By 7July August 24August
1 September
CHRONOLOGY 1939
SBreturnstoParisviaLondon.
Asks Stanley Hayter to engrave a stone from the Liffey, a gift forJamesJoyce's 57th birthday.
Writing another "Petit Sot" poem in French, which he will send with other French poems to George Reavey when finished.
Ill with flu for two weeks. Writes to Joyce from 12 Square Port Royal, 5 March; possibly staying with Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil.
End of Spanish Civil War.
May Beckett sells Cooldrinagh with plan to build a smaller house nearby. First mention of Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil to Thomas McGreevy. Meets Alfred Peron every week to work on French translation of Murphy.
Sends a four-line poem to Blanaid Salkeld, following her request for a contribution to the Dublin Poets and Artists series of Gayfield Press.
Asks Reavey to return his only copy of "Petit Sot"; asks again on 16June.
Visits Brian Coffey in Dampierre.
Reavey returns "Petit Sot. "
SB in Dublin.
The Treaty of Non-Aggression is signed by Germany and the USSR.
Germany invades Poland.
651
Chronology 1939
3 September
4 September
By 26 September By 6 December
France as well as Britain, Australia, and New Zealand declare war on Germany. Ireland remains neutral.
SB returns to France.
Applies to serve France.
Expects to be called to active service as a vol unteer, but only receives acknowledgment of his willingness to serve. Has translated all but four chapters of Murphy into French.
652
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
28/2/39
dear George
6 Rue des Favorites [Paris) 15me
1
I am doing a second Petit Sot & shall send them, when it is
2
Hope you have good news ofPerquisitions. 3
Nothing doing here as far as I can see that couldn't be done
Thanks for letter & Bulletin.
finished, with the shorter poems.
4
Saw the Buckland(-)Wrights one evening chez eux. 5
as well in Beggar's Bush or the 7 Dials.
6
How is Gwynedd? When does she expect to go south? Give
7
Sam
ALS; 1 leaf, 1 side; TxU.
1 Reavey sent SB the most recent issue of London Bulletin in which was published SB's translation ofAndre Breton's essay "Wolfgang Paalen" (London Bulletin 10 [February 1939] 16-17).
2 SB'sfirstpoementitled"PetitSot"isincludedinaseriesoftwentybriefunpub lished poems in TMS (Putnam); for further details see Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 270-271. Regarding the short poems in French, see [after 24 October 19381, n. 4.
Sartre gave the nouvelle to Paulhan. But no news ofit yet.
her my love.
Yours ever
Le Petit Sot
je suis le petit sot
ii faut
etre grand pour etre malin
653
28 February 1939, Reavey
et se tenir bien
et faire comme eux et devenir heureux
SB may refer to an untitled and unpublished 24-line poem in French that begins "Jes joues rouges"; it includes a reference to "Petit Sot" (BIF, UoR, MS 2912, line 18).
3 Reavey,QuixoticPerquisitions.
4 Beggar'sBushisanoldsectionofDublin,aswellasthenameofapubthathas been located there for approximately 200 years, at 115 Haddington Road, Ballsbridge. The SevenDials, London WC2, an area adjacent to Covent Garden and Soho, where seven streets radiate from a central Doric Pillar which was originally topped by a clock with seven faces (Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert, eds. , The London Encyclopaedia
[London: Papermac, Macmillan, 1987] 779).
5 ThroughGeorgeReavey,SBhadmettheNew-Zealand-bornengraverandprintmaker John Buckland-Wright (1897-1954), who had illustrated Brian Coffey's Third Person as well as Reavey's QJ. tixotic Perquisitions in theEuropa Poets series. Buckland-Wright joined Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17 in Paris in 1933 and was appointed itsDirector in 1936.
"Chez eux" (at their home), the home of John and Mary Buckland-Wright (nee Anderson, 1907-1976).
6 Theauthorofthe"nouvelle"(story)inquestionisnotclear.
SB would not refer to Murphy in this way, and it is not apparent that he himself had written any new French fiction. SB mentions to Reavey that he is "halfway through a translation ofLove and Lethe" (after 24 October 1938), but no evidence has been found that SB had given this story to Sartre.
Jean Paulhan (1884-1968) was editor ofLa Nouvelle Revue Fran�aise from 1925 to 1940, and from 1946 to 1968.
7 When Gwynedd Reavey passed through Paris on her way to see the Geer van Veldes in Cagnes-sur-Mer, SB met her at St. Lazare station with John Buckland-Wright; on 5 March 1939, SB wrote to Reavey: "I was glad to see Gwynedd on her way through and was sorry she was not in better form. I had a note from her from Cagnes, where she seems to be getting rapidly back to her old form" (TxU).
Here SB spells "Gwynedd" correctly.
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
April 11! ! ! 1939
6 Rue des Favorites Paris 15me
DearTom
I am sony that we seem to have lost touch with one another &
1
ceasedtocorrespond. Ifeelthepoorerforit,thoughthatisnot
654
18 April 1939, McGreevy
what prompts me to write to you again now. I do not think there is any reason for an estrangement, certainly I do not know of any. I do not even feel that there is any question of an estrange ment. But I am insensitive to many things, and I may have done something to alienate you without my knowing what it is. IfI have I ask your forgiveness.
I know that on my side there is indolence & despondency & the stupid pride that curls up, and that these are things with which it is difficult for grown-up people to have patience. I know also that you have enough troubles without that of calling on your reserves of indulgence. But if our friendship means as much to you as it always has done to me, even when I may have appeared to neglect it, you will agree with me that it would be a great pity for perhaps a small thing to interrupt it.
So let us clear it up, if you will, whatever it is. Yours affectionately
Sam
ALS; 1 leaf. 1 side; TCD, MS 10402/167.
1 ThegapinSB'scorrespondencewithMcGreevymayhavebeenaslongaseight months; the previous extant letter to McGreevy was dated 14 August I 9381.
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
April 18! ! ! 1939 6 Rue des Favorites Paris 15me
dear Tom
I was very glad to hear from you again. I am sorry I gave you
that impression in London, & that it has remained so long 655
18 April 1939, McGreevy
uncorrected. 1 I did not feel at all that way where you were con cerned. But I have had a lot of things in the last year, good and bad, and I am not sorry that is over. I was 33 this week & wonder if the second half of the bottle will be any better than the first half. In the sense only I suppose that one has got used to the taste.
Lately I have not been well. [. . . ] I shall not be sorry I think this year to get to Ireland & the sea for a month or a month & a half. If there is a war, as I fear there must be soon, I shall place myself at the disposition of this country. 2
News from home is good. Mother has sold Cooldrinagh and
has bought a field nearby where she is going to build herself a
small bungalow. It is on the other side of the road and has a very
beautiful view, uninterrupted, across fields to the mountains. It
will hardly be ready before Xmas, if so soon. In the meantime
she is living in a little shanty on the harbour at Greystones, to
which she seems to have become very attached, chiefly I think
because she can see Redford cemetery from the sitting-room
window, on the slopes of Bray Head across the water. She is of
course lonely, but sees Frank & Jean fairly often. They are both
well and the infant flourishing apparently. Already when I saw
him last he was bothering about the possibility of war and
3
time before, being laid up just then. But he had been looking more & more poorly. I hardly ever seen [for see] the Duncans. 4
Brian has disappeared with Bridget to the tame wilds of Dampierre in the Vallee de Chevreuse and the pleasures of the
5
wondering what he would do.
You heard of course about Nick. I had not seen him for some
company of Mr McCalmon [for McAlmon], and never manifests. I see the Joyces now & then. I go every week to Ivry to visit Lucia, who I think gets slowly worse. She sees nobody but her father & myself. Helen also has been ill with a "nervous break down" for almost the past two months and shows no signs of
656
[sic] left their flat and are in the Hotel d'Iena for a few days while
the flat they have taken in Passy is being made ready. They
are as well as can be expected. He is worried about the
non-appearance of Finnegans Wake. Hubsch [for Huebsch] in
7
which I think you have already seen some. There are two very
long ones that do not belong at all to the series, being quite
straightforward descriptive poems (in French) ofepisodes in the
life of a child. I do not know what they are worth. The few people
8
I have a queer lot of pictures here now. A German surrealist
called Paalen gave me some kind of "automatic" affair that
amuses me, and I have started paying for a picture by a Polish
9
I lunch every Tuesday with Peron, and am very glad to have him. 10
There is a French girl also whom I am fond of, dispassion
11
knowing how long it may last.
And there are a few of my odds & ends. Maybe the wine is
New York seems to be doing the dirty.
I have no work to show beyond a few poems in French, of
18 April 1939, McGreevy 6
pullingoutofit. Giorgioishavingabadtime. Theparentshalf
I have shown them to liked them, but they are friends.
JewcalledAdlerthatIlikeverymuch. Theflatcontinuestobe very satisfactory. Is there no chance of you coming to stay with me for a while?
The hand will not be over bid. As we both know that it will come to an end there is no
ately, and who is very good to me.
not so bad as I feared.
Remember me to Hester. Is she cross with me? 12 Write again soon.
Affectionately Sam
I liked the Antonello very much.
13
657
18 April 1939, McGreevy
ALS; 4 leaves, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/168.
1 McGreevy'slettertoSBhasnotbeenfound.
2 SBplannedtovisithismotherinIrelandattheendofJuly1939;hewouldleave Ireland for France on 4 September 1939, the day after France and England declared war against Germany (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 273).
3 SBrefersto"NewPlace"inFoxrock. WilliamBeckettisburiedinRedfordceme tery near Greystones. Frank and Jean Beckett and their daughter Caroline lived in Killiney, 8 miles north of Greystones.
4 NickBalachef,whomSBhadmetthroughAlanandBelindaDuncan.
5 BrianandBridgetCoffeyhadmovedtothevillageofDampierreintheValleede Chevreuse, where Robert McA! mon lived.
6 LuciaJoycewasinamaisondesanteintheParissuburboflvry. AsPaulLeonwrote to Harriet Weaver on 2 April 1939: "Mr. Joyce continues his visits on Sundays [. . . ] Mr. Becket[t] has also been visiting her weekly but these are the only two persons who see her at all" Uoyce and Leon, The James Jayce - Paul Leon Papers, 76). For Helen Joyce's illness and its effect on her family, see this letter as well as Joyce, Letters of]ames Joyce, III, 438, 465; Guggenheim, Out ofThis Century: Confessions ofanArtAddict, 207-208.
5 PeggyGuggenheim'smemoirgivestheimpressionthatSBhadalreadysuggested an exhibition ofYeats's painting at Guggenheim Jeune, but thatYeats did not think his work was appropriate for her gallery (Guggenheim, Out ofthis Century: Confessions ofan Art Addict, 163-164).
McGreevy's Jack B. Yeats had not been accepted by Routledge.
6 Withregardtotheseplans:15June1938,n. 8.
7 Alfred de Vigny, Journal d'un poete, ed. Leon-Adolphe Gauthier-Ferrieres (Paris: Bibliotheque Larousse, 1913; rpt. 1919, 1920); the Journal was composed of extracts from the personal papers of Comte Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863) originally published by Louis Ratisbonne (1867).
Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions ofTristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-1767).
SB's long-considered play on Samuel Johnson, extant only as the fragment "Human Wishes. "
638
love, & to Hester & to Dilly. God's blessing
Ever Sam
5 August 1938, Reavey Although there are notes in the SeumasO'Sullivan papers on the subject ofOliver
Goldsmith, no such biography was published (TCD, MS 4056, 4260-4299, 4630-4649).
8 Cissie Sinclair had returned from South Africa in June. Morris Sinclair was resuming his studies at Trinity College Dublin. "Little Go" was the unofficial name of the Final Freshman examination at TCD.
9 SB refers to Harry Sinclair, in whose libel suit against Gogarty SB testified in November 1937.
10 Poet, biographer, and critic Anna Seward was a member of Lichfield's intellec tual circle and known as the "Swan of Lichfield" (Norma Clarke, "Anna Seward: Swan, Duckling or Goose? " New Rambler E. 7 [2003/2004] 54). SB transfers the appellation to Hester Thrale, whose home was in Streatham, and thence to Mary Manning Howe, whose novel Mount Venus was published in autumn 1938.
11 The annual Dublin Horse Show is a major social event of early August. The Abbey Theatre Festival (6 to 20 August 1938) included a lecture on 8 August by drama critic and journalist Andrew E. Malone (ne Laurence Patrick Byrne. 1888-1939) on the early history of the Abbey Theatre, a lecture on 11 August by F. R. Higgins on W. B. Yeats, as well as productions of several plays by Yeats: Cathleen ni Houlihan, Purgatory, and On Baile's Strand. The photographic studio Lafayette, 32 Westmoreland Street, Dublin, was credited with several portraits in the program, for which Lennox Robinson wrote the introduction ("Abbey Theatre Festival Souvenir" [19381). The excursion scheduled for 7 August 1937 was to Tara and the Boyne Valley.
12 Geoffrey and Ursula Thompson with whom SB had lunch in London on his way from Paris to Dublin. W. R. Bion, with whom SB had been in psychotherapy, was a colleague of Geoffrey Thompson; both took piano lessons for relaxation.
13 Thomas Holmes Ravenhill, whose sister's circumstance is unknown. Hester Dowden, Geraldine Cummins.
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
5! ! ! Aug 1938
6 Clare Street Dublin
dear George
Many thanks for information.
No, no news from Longman Green & Co. Nor ofSweeney.
I am lunching with Brian to-day. He says he is staying two
months here, the better to work . . .
1
639
5 August 1938, Reavey
I expect to be here about another fortnight. Then I don't know whether I shall go to Brittany to join up with Peron or straight back to Paris. 2
I hope to be here for the first night of Yeats's new play Purgatory next Wednesday week at the Abbey. I saw Jack yester day. He has some magnificent new pictures. 3
You might send me a couple of copies of Murphy. No
review appeared in Dublin Magazine. Austin Clarke had it for
review, having taken it from Sheehy who had it before that, but
4
1 JulieRemanatLongmanGreenandCompanyinNewYorkhadaskedtoreadMore Pricks Than Kicks and Murphy for possible publication in the United States.
American art critic James Johnson Sweeney (1900-1986) worked with Eugene Jolas on numbers 24-27 of transition (1936-1938) in the United States; Sweeney was Curator ofthe Museum ofModem Art in New York from 1935 to 1946, and later Director ofthe Guggenheim Museum in New York from 1952 to 1960. He was in Dublin in early August 1938 (Sweeney to George Reavey, 22 August 1937, TxU).
2 BrianCoffey. AlfredPeron.
3 The opening night of W. B. Yeats's play Purgatory as part of the Abbey Theatre Festival took place on 10 August 1938. The new paintings by Jack B. Yeats have not been identified.
4 AnunsignedreviewofMurphyappearedlaterinDublinMagazine14. 2(April-June 1939) 98: "Murphy comes in the guise of a novel. But it is more a study in words and phrases,thecharactersbeingsecondaryaffairs . . . Thewholethingisabizarrefantasy, with a nasty twist about it that its self-evident cleverness and scholarship cannot redeem . . . And the one really human character in the book is Celia, the lady of loose morals. "
Neither Edward Sheehy, an editor ofireland To-Day, nor Austin Clarke wrote a signed review Murphy. Austin Clarke had recently published Night and Morning: Poems (Dublin: Orwell Press, 1938).
5 "Abient6t"(tillsoon).
640
withheld his hand. He has published another book ofverse. Hope Gwynedd had a pleasant time in the country. Give her
my love & a bientot. 5 Yours ever
Sam
ALS; 1 leaf, 2 sides; TxU.
Friday {19 August 1938}, Reavey
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
Friday 38 [19 August 1938]
6 Clare St. [Dublin]
dear George
I was hoping to receive two copies of Murphy from you.
Or did you not get my letter? Anyway don't bother about them
1
them?
I am not yet quite sure whether I shall return directly
to Paris or go first to Brittany to visit Peron. Ussher also is in St Malo. In any case I shall not be more than a night in London.
I had a letter from Geer & Lisi. They seem to be enjoy
2
I enclose the usual from Julie Reman. 3 Love to Gwynedd
Ever Sam
ALS; 1 leaf, 2 sides; letterhead <THE DAWROS BAY HOTELS, ROSBEG, GLENTIES, co. DONEGAL>; enclosure not extant; TxU. Dating: SB WTote "38" on the date line of the letterhead; ins August 1938 SB had indicated that he planned to be in Dublin for about another fortnight; 19 August was a Friday in 1938.
1 SB'sletterof5August1938.
2 Geer and Lisi van Velde had moved to Cagnes-sur-Mer on the Cote d'Azur.
3 Julie Reman WTote on behalf of LongmanGreen and Company in New York, rejecting More Pricks Than Kicks and Murphy.
641
now as I expect to be in London early next week.
If any letters come for me in the meantime will you keep
ing themselves in Cagnes. They have conferred my name on a cat.
27 September 1938, Reavey
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
27th Sept 1938
6 Rue des Favorites Paris 15
Dear George
Thanks for letter & poem, which I like very much indeed.
I heard Adolf the Peacemaker on the wireless last night. And
thought I heard the air escaping - a slow puncture. But no matter how things go I shall stay on here, on the 7! h floor with my
handful of sand. 2 All I have to lose is legs, arms, balls[,] etc. , and I owe them no particular debt of gratitude as far as I know. The streets are full of khaki-cum-civils departing shabbily in requisi tioned trade vans - and at night horrible curfew lighting, like that through which Proust stumbled to the Temple of Delights. I have promised Peron, in event of mobilisation, to evacuate in his car his children, his mother-in-law, his aunt-in-law. 3
I have been running into Gore, flaxenly unshaven & wanly constructive, wondering is he on his way through from Athens
4
Otto Freundlich's ostentatious miseries. The last time I was
there I left behind me a pair of soiled drawers and Sartre's
Nausee. These at least I hope to recover. Adler has no news of
Geer, but talks of going down there & getting together. His latest
painting is distressing. I have no news of Geer either, except that
I hear the sister-in-law (not the Prague one, back in Prague) is
5
6
642
1
to . . Cork. Says art answers questions.
Adler calls for me this afternoon, to take me by the hand to
with them.
I had a good time in Normandy & Brittany before returning
to Paris.
No work. I read an average of an hour a day, after an hour
the illusion of comprehension ceases, Kant, Descartes, Johnson,
Renard and a kindergarten manual of science: "L'air est part
7
not accept. I suppose now more than ever it will come off on the g! ! ! _ Here there is great afflux of tenderness, even in the com
8
ordinary way, all the higher centres on the pillow, & woke up greatly refreshed to find my feet there. The perfect suicide: to somnambulate through the window. But would one wake up on the way down?
Love to Gwynedd yrs ever
Sam
ALS; 2 leaves, 2 sides; TxU.
1 Reavey's letter has not been found. The poem enclosed with it has not been identified.
2 Hitler had "ordered an 'historic manifestation' to the nation on the subject of Czechoslovakia" in the Berlin Sportspalast on 26 September 1938, and "the whole German people had been ordered to listen to a broadcast of his address" ("All Reich Rallied: 'Historic Manifestation' Tonight will Reply to a Czech Broadcast," The New York Times 26 September 1938: 1; also on this page is a summary of Hitler's memorandum of 23 September 1938 to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain [1869-1940] and a map of the Sudetenland; for full text: The New York Times, 27 September 1938: 17).
SB refers to his apartment at 6 Rue des Favorites.
3 In Le Temps retrouve Marcel during World War I walks through the darkened streets of Paris and unwittingly enters a male brothel seeking a drink and a place to rest; he leaves during a bombardment which plunges the streets into total blackness (Le Temps retrouve in A la recherche du temps perdu, N, 388-412); Time Regained in In Search of Lost Time, VI, 173-207).
Alfred Peron's family included his wife, Mania, their twin sons Michel and Alexis (b. 1932), Mania's mother Maria Lezine (nee Spiridonof, n. d. ), and her mother's sister Elizabeth Spiridonof (n. d. ).
27 September 1938, Reavey
out", "Le plomb est un metal lourd et tendre".
Brian sent me an invitation to his wedding, which I could
mune ofVaugirard.
I went to bed one night lately in even more than usual the
4 Gorehasnotbeenidentified.
643
27 September 1938, Reavey
5 Polish-bornartistJanke! Adler(1895-1949)hadbeenworkinginGermany,where he had been involved in the Rheinische Sezession and the Union of Progressive International Artists (1922); in 1933 his work was declared "entartet," and in 1934 he moved to Paris. There he was involved in 1937 with the studio of Stanley William Hayter (1901-1988),Atelier 17 Uankel Adler,JankelAdler, intro. Stanley William Hayter [London: Nicholson and Watson,1948] viii).
Otto Freundlich,who had been a friend ofAdler's since the 1920s in Berlin: 15 June 1938,n. 6.
Geer and Lisi van Velde were living in Cagnes-sur-Mer. Lisl's sister from Berlin was Anna MarieJoki (known as Moidi, 1911-2001); she and their sister from Prague (not identified) had visited the van Veldes in the summer of 1938.
6 AccordingtoaletterfromPeggyGuggenheimtoAmericanwriterEmilyColeman (nee Holmes,1899-1974),Guggenheim had lent SB her car to drive to Brittany (DeU: Coleman,[23 September 1939]; Knowlson,Damned to Fame, 265,674).
7 The specific books SB was reading by Immanuel Kant, Rene Descartes,Samuel Johnson,Jules Renard, as well as the basic science text, have not been identified. "L'air est partout" (air is everywhere); "Le plomb est un metal lourd et tendre" (lead is a soft
heavy metal).
8 The wedding of Brian Coffey and Bridget Baynes took place on 8 October 1938, St. Patrick's Church, Soho Square,London.
Vaugirard was the nearest metro station to SB's apartment.
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
[after 24 October 1938] 6 Rue des Favorites Paris 15
dear George
Many thanks for letter & order form. Put me down for
3 copies at 3/6, for which I enclose cheque for 11/9. It is very good of you to reserve me a special copy. Wish I was in a position
1
Dublin for a couple of weeks at Xmas. I would not stop in London
on the way through, but might on the way back, if Father Xmas
2
to do as much for you.
Nothing new here. It is just possible I may have to go to
was kind. I hope not to have to go at all.
644
[after 24 October 1938}, Reavey
Adler has left for Cagnes in a Simca. He lent me 3 pictures to keep during his absence. I fear he thinks I spend my time enter taining rich English & Yanks. They have something, the begin nings of a delectatio morosa. 3
I am halfway through a modified version in French of Love & Lethe. I don't know ifit is better than the English version or merely as bad. I have 10 Poems in French also, mostly short. When I have a few more I shall send them to Eluard. Or get Duchamp to do so. 4
I see Brian & Bridget occasionally. They are smelling after a
5
oranges were orange and the gnats gnats, & that he was working with both.
Poor Barlach is dead. Dans la misere. 6
Freundlich gave me a large aesthetic essay to read, all about
7
ALS; 1 leaf, 1 side; TxU. Dating: when SB wrote to Reavey on 27 September 1938, Adler was planning to go to Cagnes-sur-Mer to visit Geer van Velde; Ernst Barlach died on 24 October 1938.
1 SB ordered copies of Reavey's Quixotic Perquisitions, formally published in January 1939; he received his copies by 27 January 1939 (SB to George Reavey, 27 January 1939, TxU).
2 SB went to Dublin for Christmas and New Year; he wrote from Greystones to Brian and Bridget Coffey on 30 December 1938 that he expected to return to Paris at the end of the following week (DeU, MS 382, Brian Coffey Papers Supplement).
3 Janke! AdlerhadplannedtovisitGeerandLisivanVeldeinCagnes-sur-Mer. The three pictures lent to SB have not been identified. "Delectatio morosa" (morose delight). Adler's return to Paris is noted in SB to Reavey, 27 January 1939 (TxU).
4 "LoveandLethe"inMorePricksThanKicks,85-100;SB'sFrenchtranslationofthis story was unpublished.
645
flat at the Porte de Versailles.
I had a highly coloured card from Geer & Lisl, saying the
the absolute & the pananthropod.
Love to Gwynedd. I hope she is well again.
Ever Sam
[after 24 October 1938}, Reavey
SB refers to ten of the twelve poems published as "Poemes 38-39," Les Temps Modemes, 288-293. SB often played chess with French artist Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), also a friend ofEluard.
5 BrianandBridgetCoffey.
6 German sculptor Ernst Barlach died on 24 October 1938. "Dans la misere" (in poverty).
7 SBreadadraftofFreundlich'sessay"DerbildhafteRaum"(TheImaginableSpace) which formulates a social and aesthetic theory that announces abstraction as a uni versal language (Dr. Joachim Heusinger von Waldegg, Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Kiinste Karlsruhe, 16 February 1995). Observing that religions and myth ologies no longer filled the creative spaces between man and the universe, Freundlich proposed that art could respond to the intellectual crisis of modernity and could bring together two dynamics - man's instinct to form and cosmic formlessness - to make visible "the process of becoming rather than being. " The Fonds Otto Freundlich/ Archives IMEC has about half (pages 41-89) of Freundlich's draft of this essay dated 1 March 1938; there is also a carbon copy of what may be the full text, possibly prepared by another hand. A summary of those pages and other works written by Freundlich is published in Otto Freundlich, Otto Freundlich - Schrifien: Ein Wegbereiter der gegenstandslosen Kunst, ed. IBi Bohnen (Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag, 1982) 211-220.
SB shared his own essay "Les Deux Besoins" with Freundlich (NhD, Lawrence Harvey Papers, MS 661[2]: 27). SB wrote to John Fletcher on 3 June 1966 that it "was not on the van Veldes. It must have been written 1938 or early 1939 at latest. I remember showing it to the painter & sculptor Otto Freundlich since disappeared in the 'tourmente"' (TxU; TMS of "Les Deux Besoins," NhD, Beckett collection; Beckett, Disjecta, 55-57; see Freundlich's Profile in the Appendix; Alain Bonfand, Christophe Duvivier, Edda Maillet, Jerome Serri, and Guy Tosatto, Otto Freundlich [Rochechouart: Musee Departemental de Rochechouart, 1988] 82).
OTTO FREUNDLICH PAR! S
SB's errors of Gennan in this letter have not been corrected.
[autumn 1938]
[Paris]
Lieber Herr Freundlich
Ich bedaure sehr, heute morgen war ich nicht frei.
Samstag nachmittag zwischen 2 u. 4. werden Sie mich bei mir
finden, wenn Sie Lust haben,
646
28 December 1938, Ussher
dabei zu kommen - 1hr
Sam Beckett
ALS; 1 leaf, 1 side; Fonds Otto Freundlich/ Archives IMEC. Dating: the year ascribed to this letter is consistent with evidence of a growing acquaintance between SB and Freundlich in 1938. In view of the deepening relationship, it seems more likely that this note was written in the autumn of 1938, rather than earlier in that year.
[autumn 1938] [Paris]
Dear Mr Freundlich
I am very sorry, I was not available this morning.
You will find me at home on Saturday afternoon between
2 and 4, if you feel like coming by. Yours
Sam Beckett
ARLAND USSHER
[? CAPPAGH, CO. WATERFORD]
28/12/38
Greystones
Dear Arland
Thanks for papers. Glad to sea [sic] you are bursting into
print again. The "suspender" essay I always liked very much, and
1
ful abortion. It is only to keep my mother company during
the season of that other. And I hope soon to return to the
people where the little operation is cheap, safe, legal & popular.
more than ever in such sad company.
Do not imagine I am returned to the land of my unsuccess
"Curetage".
2
647
28 December 1938, Ussher
My mother has been wintering on this cote de misere since
September. What does not face north faces east. She is the worse
for it. But from the window she can see the cemetery where my
3
steadfastly in this course.
It is a long time since we had nothing to say to one another,
and if your progress has been anything like mine I should think we could now be united in a silence even more substantial - or as some would say, thick - than heretofore.
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that you will always be welcome in 6 rue des Favorites (formerly Impasse des Favorites, not far from the still existing Impasse de L'Enfant Jesus) should your Schicksal at any time allow you so much license. 5
I have begun a Primer of higher French syntax. It takes the form of Xenian. Here is one
Ci-git qui y echappa tant
Qu'il n'en echappe que maintenant.
Porte-toi bien7 Sam
ALS; 1 leaf. 2 sides; TxU.
1 SB refers to Ussher's essay "The Age of Shadows," in Nineteenth Century and After: 12 May 1938, n. 1.
2 "Curetage" (curettage).
3 MayBeckettmovedtoGreystonesinSeptember. HerviewincludedtheRedford cemetery, where William Beckett was buried. "Cote de misere" (Misery Coast).
4 CissieSinclairandherfamily.
5 SB'sapartmentonRuedesFavoriteswasofftheRuedeVaugirard,alongwhich was the Impasse de l'EnfantJesus. "Schicksal" (fate).
6 SB's "Primer of higher French syntax" is for Ussher's amusement. Xenien (1796) was a collection of satirical epigrams, written by Goethe and Schiller. Modeled on the epigrams of Martial, "each epigram is a classical distich, composed of hexameter and
648
father is "at rest".
I have seen nobody except the Sinclairs and shall continue
4
6
28 December 1938, Ussher
pentameter" (Henry Garland and Mary Garland, The Oxford Companion to Gennan Literature ! Oxford: Oxford University Press, 198611006).
SB's example becomes a part of his story "Premier Amour" (AMS, TxU, begun 28 October1946, completed12 November1946): "Ci-git qui y echappa tant/ Qu'il n'en echappe que maintenant" ("Hereunder lies the above who up below/ So hourly died that hesurvivedtillnow")(PremierAmour! Paris:LesEditionsdeMinuit,1970110;tr. bySamuel Beckett, "First Love" in First Love and Other Shorts ! New York: Grove Press, 1974112).
7 "Porte-toibien"(Lookafteryourself).
649
1939 January 27 January
28 February Early March
1 April
By 18 April
By 6June
14June
15June By 7July August 24August
1 September
CHRONOLOGY 1939
SBreturnstoParisviaLondon.
Asks Stanley Hayter to engrave a stone from the Liffey, a gift forJamesJoyce's 57th birthday.
Writing another "Petit Sot" poem in French, which he will send with other French poems to George Reavey when finished.
Ill with flu for two weeks. Writes to Joyce from 12 Square Port Royal, 5 March; possibly staying with Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil.
End of Spanish Civil War.
May Beckett sells Cooldrinagh with plan to build a smaller house nearby. First mention of Suzanne Deschevaux-Dumesnil to Thomas McGreevy. Meets Alfred Peron every week to work on French translation of Murphy.
Sends a four-line poem to Blanaid Salkeld, following her request for a contribution to the Dublin Poets and Artists series of Gayfield Press.
Asks Reavey to return his only copy of "Petit Sot"; asks again on 16June.
Visits Brian Coffey in Dampierre.
Reavey returns "Petit Sot. "
SB in Dublin.
The Treaty of Non-Aggression is signed by Germany and the USSR.
Germany invades Poland.
651
Chronology 1939
3 September
4 September
By 26 September By 6 December
France as well as Britain, Australia, and New Zealand declare war on Germany. Ireland remains neutral.
SB returns to France.
Applies to serve France.
Expects to be called to active service as a vol unteer, but only receives acknowledgment of his willingness to serve. Has translated all but four chapters of Murphy into French.
652
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
28/2/39
dear George
6 Rue des Favorites [Paris) 15me
1
I am doing a second Petit Sot & shall send them, when it is
2
Hope you have good news ofPerquisitions. 3
Nothing doing here as far as I can see that couldn't be done
Thanks for letter & Bulletin.
finished, with the shorter poems.
4
Saw the Buckland(-)Wrights one evening chez eux. 5
as well in Beggar's Bush or the 7 Dials.
6
How is Gwynedd? When does she expect to go south? Give
7
Sam
ALS; 1 leaf, 1 side; TxU.
1 Reavey sent SB the most recent issue of London Bulletin in which was published SB's translation ofAndre Breton's essay "Wolfgang Paalen" (London Bulletin 10 [February 1939] 16-17).
2 SB'sfirstpoementitled"PetitSot"isincludedinaseriesoftwentybriefunpub lished poems in TMS (Putnam); for further details see Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 270-271. Regarding the short poems in French, see [after 24 October 19381, n. 4.
Sartre gave the nouvelle to Paulhan. But no news ofit yet.
her my love.
Yours ever
Le Petit Sot
je suis le petit sot
ii faut
etre grand pour etre malin
653
28 February 1939, Reavey
et se tenir bien
et faire comme eux et devenir heureux
SB may refer to an untitled and unpublished 24-line poem in French that begins "Jes joues rouges"; it includes a reference to "Petit Sot" (BIF, UoR, MS 2912, line 18).
3 Reavey,QuixoticPerquisitions.
4 Beggar'sBushisanoldsectionofDublin,aswellasthenameofapubthathas been located there for approximately 200 years, at 115 Haddington Road, Ballsbridge. The SevenDials, London WC2, an area adjacent to Covent Garden and Soho, where seven streets radiate from a central Doric Pillar which was originally topped by a clock with seven faces (Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert, eds. , The London Encyclopaedia
[London: Papermac, Macmillan, 1987] 779).
5 ThroughGeorgeReavey,SBhadmettheNew-Zealand-bornengraverandprintmaker John Buckland-Wright (1897-1954), who had illustrated Brian Coffey's Third Person as well as Reavey's QJ. tixotic Perquisitions in theEuropa Poets series. Buckland-Wright joined Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17 in Paris in 1933 and was appointed itsDirector in 1936.
"Chez eux" (at their home), the home of John and Mary Buckland-Wright (nee Anderson, 1907-1976).
6 Theauthorofthe"nouvelle"(story)inquestionisnotclear.
SB would not refer to Murphy in this way, and it is not apparent that he himself had written any new French fiction. SB mentions to Reavey that he is "halfway through a translation ofLove and Lethe" (after 24 October 1938), but no evidence has been found that SB had given this story to Sartre.
Jean Paulhan (1884-1968) was editor ofLa Nouvelle Revue Fran�aise from 1925 to 1940, and from 1946 to 1968.
7 When Gwynedd Reavey passed through Paris on her way to see the Geer van Veldes in Cagnes-sur-Mer, SB met her at St. Lazare station with John Buckland-Wright; on 5 March 1939, SB wrote to Reavey: "I was glad to see Gwynedd on her way through and was sorry she was not in better form. I had a note from her from Cagnes, where she seems to be getting rapidly back to her old form" (TxU).
Here SB spells "Gwynedd" correctly.
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
April 11! ! ! 1939
6 Rue des Favorites Paris 15me
DearTom
I am sony that we seem to have lost touch with one another &
1
ceasedtocorrespond. Ifeelthepoorerforit,thoughthatisnot
654
18 April 1939, McGreevy
what prompts me to write to you again now. I do not think there is any reason for an estrangement, certainly I do not know of any. I do not even feel that there is any question of an estrange ment. But I am insensitive to many things, and I may have done something to alienate you without my knowing what it is. IfI have I ask your forgiveness.
I know that on my side there is indolence & despondency & the stupid pride that curls up, and that these are things with which it is difficult for grown-up people to have patience. I know also that you have enough troubles without that of calling on your reserves of indulgence. But if our friendship means as much to you as it always has done to me, even when I may have appeared to neglect it, you will agree with me that it would be a great pity for perhaps a small thing to interrupt it.
So let us clear it up, if you will, whatever it is. Yours affectionately
Sam
ALS; 1 leaf. 1 side; TCD, MS 10402/167.
1 ThegapinSB'scorrespondencewithMcGreevymayhavebeenaslongaseight months; the previous extant letter to McGreevy was dated 14 August I 9381.
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
April 18! ! ! 1939 6 Rue des Favorites Paris 15me
dear Tom
I was very glad to hear from you again. I am sorry I gave you
that impression in London, & that it has remained so long 655
18 April 1939, McGreevy
uncorrected. 1 I did not feel at all that way where you were con cerned. But I have had a lot of things in the last year, good and bad, and I am not sorry that is over. I was 33 this week & wonder if the second half of the bottle will be any better than the first half. In the sense only I suppose that one has got used to the taste.
Lately I have not been well. [. . . ] I shall not be sorry I think this year to get to Ireland & the sea for a month or a month & a half. If there is a war, as I fear there must be soon, I shall place myself at the disposition of this country. 2
News from home is good. Mother has sold Cooldrinagh and
has bought a field nearby where she is going to build herself a
small bungalow. It is on the other side of the road and has a very
beautiful view, uninterrupted, across fields to the mountains. It
will hardly be ready before Xmas, if so soon. In the meantime
she is living in a little shanty on the harbour at Greystones, to
which she seems to have become very attached, chiefly I think
because she can see Redford cemetery from the sitting-room
window, on the slopes of Bray Head across the water. She is of
course lonely, but sees Frank & Jean fairly often. They are both
well and the infant flourishing apparently. Already when I saw
him last he was bothering about the possibility of war and
3
time before, being laid up just then. But he had been looking more & more poorly. I hardly ever seen [for see] the Duncans. 4
Brian has disappeared with Bridget to the tame wilds of Dampierre in the Vallee de Chevreuse and the pleasures of the
5
wondering what he would do.
You heard of course about Nick. I had not seen him for some
company of Mr McCalmon [for McAlmon], and never manifests. I see the Joyces now & then. I go every week to Ivry to visit Lucia, who I think gets slowly worse. She sees nobody but her father & myself. Helen also has been ill with a "nervous break down" for almost the past two months and shows no signs of
656
[sic] left their flat and are in the Hotel d'Iena for a few days while
the flat they have taken in Passy is being made ready. They
are as well as can be expected. He is worried about the
non-appearance of Finnegans Wake. Hubsch [for Huebsch] in
7
which I think you have already seen some. There are two very
long ones that do not belong at all to the series, being quite
straightforward descriptive poems (in French) ofepisodes in the
life of a child. I do not know what they are worth. The few people
8
I have a queer lot of pictures here now. A German surrealist
called Paalen gave me some kind of "automatic" affair that
amuses me, and I have started paying for a picture by a Polish
9
I lunch every Tuesday with Peron, and am very glad to have him. 10
There is a French girl also whom I am fond of, dispassion
11
knowing how long it may last.
And there are a few of my odds & ends. Maybe the wine is
New York seems to be doing the dirty.
I have no work to show beyond a few poems in French, of
18 April 1939, McGreevy 6
pullingoutofit. Giorgioishavingabadtime. Theparentshalf
I have shown them to liked them, but they are friends.
JewcalledAdlerthatIlikeverymuch. Theflatcontinuestobe very satisfactory. Is there no chance of you coming to stay with me for a while?
The hand will not be over bid. As we both know that it will come to an end there is no
ately, and who is very good to me.
not so bad as I feared.
Remember me to Hester. Is she cross with me? 12 Write again soon.
Affectionately Sam
I liked the Antonello very much.
13
657
18 April 1939, McGreevy
ALS; 4 leaves, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/168.
1 McGreevy'slettertoSBhasnotbeenfound.
2 SBplannedtovisithismotherinIrelandattheendofJuly1939;hewouldleave Ireland for France on 4 September 1939, the day after France and England declared war against Germany (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 273).
3 SBrefersto"NewPlace"inFoxrock. WilliamBeckettisburiedinRedfordceme tery near Greystones. Frank and Jean Beckett and their daughter Caroline lived in Killiney, 8 miles north of Greystones.
4 NickBalachef,whomSBhadmetthroughAlanandBelindaDuncan.
5 BrianandBridgetCoffeyhadmovedtothevillageofDampierreintheValleede Chevreuse, where Robert McA! mon lived.
6 LuciaJoycewasinamaisondesanteintheParissuburboflvry. AsPaulLeonwrote to Harriet Weaver on 2 April 1939: "Mr. Joyce continues his visits on Sundays [. . . ] Mr. Becket[t] has also been visiting her weekly but these are the only two persons who see her at all" Uoyce and Leon, The James Jayce - Paul Leon Papers, 76). For Helen Joyce's illness and its effect on her family, see this letter as well as Joyce, Letters of]ames Joyce, III, 438, 465; Guggenheim, Out ofThis Century: Confessions ofanArtAddict, 207-208.
