And the hero is
suggested
admirably, almost a
physical weight on the page, all thighs and sex, palpitant, like
Aminta or a Marivaux pretendant, nothing ofthe volupte pensee
and pensante of Diderot.
physical weight on the page, all thighs and sex, palpitant, like
Aminta or a Marivaux pretendant, nothing ofthe volupte pensee
and pensante of Diderot.
Samuel Beckett
MS 10842/31).
The present letter indicates that it has been over three weeks since SB has seen Grayson about Dream of Fair to Middling Women, and SB's letter to McGreevy of8 October 1932 mentions that it has been "over 6 weeks.
"
122
and Monk Gibbon seek on the bank a definition of obscenity. I wish I had seen "Things that are Caesar's"[. ] "Temporal Powers"
1 "Grinds"(colloq. ,tutoringjobs). SBhadrepresentedRudmose-BrownasthePolar Bear in Dream ofFair to Middling Women.
2 SB wrote on Saturday [3 September 1932] to McGreevy: "I saw the Brothers G. a fortnight ago now in London and they promised me a speedy decision. I don't know whether to think the delay good or bad. " In the same letter, SB said of the poems: "I don't expect them to be taken on by Wishart, but I wish I had sent them earlier and that I had seen Rickword in London. It was Grayson put me on to them" (TCD, MS 10402/31).
London publisher Ernest Edward Wishart (1902-1987). In 1932, the English poet and critic Edgell Rickword (1898-1982) worked occasionally for Wishart, and had not yet joined the firm full-time: he had just translated Marcel Coulon, Poet under Saturn: The Tragedy ofVerlaine (1932).
3 In February 1932, SB had proposed a monograph on Gide to Charles Prentice; Prentice responded: "Your idea of a short study of Gide is a most attractive one, but we don't see how we could be of any use to you about it just now," suggesting that SB write "the essay as a long article to appear in two or more parts" (8 February 1932, UoR, MS 2444 CW letterbook 136/513). SB pursued the matter with Ellis Roberts at the New Statesman (SB to McGreevy, 18 [August 1932], n. 8). SB wrote to McGreevy: "I'm afraid to start anything on Gide, though I have all the notes & quotations I want without opening a text": he added: "How would 'paralysed in ubiquity' do for Gide? " (SB to McGreevy, Saturday [3 September 1932], TCD, MS 10402/31).
4 SBwrotetoMcGreevy:"Typingoutthepoemsyetagainandfiddlingaboutwith them I felt more than ever that all the early ones - al! the Caravan ones - were fake and that nothing could be done with them and that it was only a partir de Whoroscope that they began to be worth anything. I know you are good enough to disagree with me, but I felt it more & more" (Saturday [3 September 1932], TCD, MS 10402/31). "A partir de Whoroscope" (from Whoroscope on). "Home Olga" was written for Joyce and submitted to Stuart Gilbert, Editor of Contempo. The new poem is a draft of "Serena l" (Beckett, Echo's Bones [15-271).
5 For SB, The Entombment (NG! 214) by Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) was "extraordi nary. I never saw such blue & purple, such lyrical colour" (Saturday [3 September 1932], TCD, MS 10402/31). In the German room were A Peasant Wedding (NGI 911) by Pieter Brueghel the younger (c. 1564 - c. 1638), and Christ in the House ofMartha and Mary (NGI 513) by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) with Jan Brueghel (1568-1625). SB also mentions Portrait ofan Old Lady (NG! 903) by the early Flemish painter known as the Master of the Tired Eyes (fl. c. 1540) and A Portrait of a Young Lady (NG! 808) by Harmensz Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669). The painter of Scenes from the Life of St. Augustine (NG! 823) is identified in the 1945 catalogue of the National Gallery oflreland as the Master of the Silver Windows (c. 1550); later catalogues identify him as the Master of St. Augustine (c. 1500) (Thomas MacGreevy, Pictures in the Irish National Gallery [London: B. T. Batsford, 1945] 11-12; James White, ed. , National Gallery ofIreland: Catalogue ofthe Paintings [Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland, 1971] 197; National Gallery of Ireland: Illustrated Summary Catalogue ofPaintings, intro. Homan Potterton [Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1981] 107).
6 CissieSinclairreturnedtoKasselwithheryoungestdaughterDeirdre;herdaugh ter Sally remained in Dublin. The Moira Hotel and Restaurant, 15 Trinity Street, Dublin.
123
13 {September 1932}, McGreevy
13 {September 1932}, McGreevy
7 The first collection of Northern Irish poet R. N. D. Wilson (ne Robert Noble Denison Wilson 1899-1953) was The Holy Wells of Oms and other Poems (1927); John Hewitt's obituary describes Wilson as a "small dark man with something of the appearance of a little bird full chested with its song" (Dublin Magazine 28. 2 ! April-June 1952] 54-55). SB compares Wilson's poetry to that of AE. SB met Wilson at the Dublin home of Percival Arland Ussher' (known as Percy to mid-1937, then as Arland, 1899-1980), Irish writer and philosopher.
The home of William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), "Riversdale," Willbrook, Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin, had a croquet lawn where Yeats played with enthusiasm that AE, among other regular guests, "rearranged their visiting hours to avoid a game" (Ann Saddlemyer, Becoming George: The Life of Mrs. W. B. Yeats [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002] 453-454). SB also refers to poets Austin Clarke and William Monk Gibbon (1896-1987).
8 Things That are Caesar's by Irish playwright Paul Vincent Carroll (1900-1968) opened on 15 August and won the Abbey Theatre Prize in 1932. Temporal Powers by Teresa Deevy (1894-1963) opened at the Abbey Theatre on 12 September; Joseph Holloway said that none of the characters "became real on the stage" (Holloway,
JosephHolloway'sIrishTheatre,II:1932-1937,ed. HoganandON' eill,216).
9 InMay1932SBhadundertakenthetranslationofArthurRimbaud's"LeBateau ivre" ("The Drunken Boat") for Edward Titus; SB had received payment, but no word of publication (for further background see Samuel Beckett, Drunken Boat, ed. James Knowlson and Felix Leakey [Reading: Whiteknights Press, 1976] 7-10).
More recently, SB had translated poems and essays for the surrealist number of This Quarter 5. 1 ! September 19321), guest-edited by Andre Breton (1896-1966) (for a list of SB's translations:Raymond Federrnan and John Fletcher, Samuel Beckett: His Works and His Critics, An Essay in Bibliography ! Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1970] 92-93).
SB had also submitted his story "Dante and the Lobster" to Titus. 10 "Allesgut"(allthebest).
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
8/10/32 Cooldrinagh Foxrock
Co Dublin
DearReavey
Thank you for your letter. I'll excavate for a poem for
you one of these dies diarrhoeae. I suppose it's the usual case of honour and glory. So much piss. I have an idea I enshrined
124
Primrose Hill and Crystal Palace seen thence, as though I were
Marcel Schwob peering through incipient cataract at a red moutier,
in a long sad one that does me great credit. Tres emouvant. There
1
into Dublin stutter.
The novel doesn't go. Shatton & Windup thought it was
wonderful but they couldn't they simply could not. The Hogarth
Private Lunatic Asylum rejected it the way Punch would. Cape
was ecoeure in pipe & cardigan and his Aberdeen terrier agreed
with him. Grayson has lost it or cleaned himself with it. Kick his
3
stranger's bike.
Beautiful greetings to Bronowski when and if and tell him
I had a simply wonderful time in Ampton St till a coinmate poor
fellow whose need was quicker than mine happened to come
across a five pun note tossing and turning in my Milner valise
4
5
1 "Diesdiarrhoeae"(literally,daysofdiarrhea,echoingtheDiesIraeoftherequiem Mass).
SB refers to his poem "Serena l" in which he mentions London's Primrose Hill (London NW, north ofRegent"s Park Zoo) and the Crystal Palace (built for The Great Exhibition of 1851, and in 1854 moved to Sydenharn Hill in London SW).
Mayer-Andre-Marcel Schwob (1867-1905), French medievalist, critic, short-story writer, and translator. In his journal, Premieres Esquisses, Schwob writes: "Je connais deux especes de gens; des hornrnes-rnicroscopes et des hornrnes[-]telescopes" (I know two types of people: microscope-men and telescope-men); according to Schwob,
125
8 October 1932, Reavey
isalsoadrill'sarseandDanielDefoe. Theycoexistveryamiably. All Uebersetzungen gratefully received & done in the eye
2
balls off, they are all over 66 Curzon St, W. 1.
I'll be here till I die, creeping along genteel roads on a
and - what do you think - took it unto himself. Ergo . . .
Things to see: Desmond Savage Hazlitt Lamb Wodehouse
Milton Makepeace Maccarthy and the sparrows at the Spaniards. Salut
s/ Sam Beckett
TIS; 1 leaf; 1 side; TxU.
8 October 1932, Reavey
microscope men could drown in a glass of water, telescope men find outlines in every thing (Pierre Champion, Marcel Schwab et son temps ! Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1927] 26-27). Schwob's story "L'Etoile de bois" describes a village in minute detail, including a mon astery seen in a vision of rosy mist: "un moutier, semblable a une brume vermeille ebarbee, 011 Saint-Georges, arme de sang, plongeait sa lance dans la gueule d'un dragon de gres rouge" (a monastery, like a neatly trimmed rosy mist where St. George, armed with blood, was plunging his lance into the mouth of a red sandstone dragon) (Cosmopolis 8 [22 October 1897] 104; rpt. L'Etoile de bois ! Paris: Editions du Boucher, 2003] 13).
"Serena l" ends with "peering," a close-up image of a housefly on a window.
"Tres emouvant" (very moving). The poem mentions "the burning b. t. m. of George the drill" (a West African species of baboon) as well as British novelist and essayist Daniel Defoe (ne Foe, 1660-1731). "B. t. m. " (children's language, bottom).
2 "Uebersetzungen" (translations).
3 ChattoandWindus,theHogarthPress,JonathanCape,andGraysonandGrayson had turned down or failed to respond to SB's Dream ofFair to Middling Women. Jonathan Cape was "ecoeure" (disgusted). Rupert Grayson had not yet replied.
The London weekly satirical magazine Punch was published from 1841 to 1992 and from 1996 to 2002.
4 Bronowski had suggested that SB stay with Mrs. Southon in Ampton Street. A manufacturer of safes by the name of Milner has been identified, but not of valises or briefcases.
"Pun" (Ir. colloq. , pound).
5 ReaveyhadbegunhisBureauLitteraireEuropeeninParisandwasdevelopingan office in London for his several publishing ventures (18 April 1986: notes of Emile Delavenay). Delavenay (1905-2000) was French Lecteur from the Ecole Normale Superieure at Gonville and Caius College Cambridge {1927-1929) where he met Reavey who was then a student. When Reavey went to France, Delavenay introduced Reavey to Thomas McGreevy (Emile Delavenay, Temoignage: d'un village savoyard au village mondial {1905-1991/ [La Calade: Diffusion EDISUD, 1992] 117). In his draft memoirs, Reavey says, however, that he met McGreevy through Alan Duncan (TxU).
SB facetiously gives to Desmond Maccarthy the names of English writers: Richard Savage (1697-1743), William Hazlitt (1778-1830), Charles Lamb (1775-1834), P. G. Wodehouse (ne Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, 1881-1973), John Milton (1608-1674), William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863).
The Spaniards Inn on Hampstead Heath was built in 1585 as a residence for the Spanish Ambassador; it was opened as an inn in the middle of the eighteenth century by two Spanish brothers and later became well known as a pub. Nearby streets are named for it.
6 "Salut" (greetings).
THOMAS McGREEVY TARBERT, CO. KERRY
8/10/32 Cooldrinagh Foxrock [Co. Dublin]
126
8 October 1932, McGreevy
Dear Tom
Forgive me for not answering the first of your last two
letters. I did write, but it turned out such a jeremiad that
I refrained from posting it. Don't for God's sake bother your
head about the 2 quid. Frank is not in that hurry. Wait for a
flusher time. I got a few grinds and am doing a few at the moment
and will get paid one ofthese fine days, early next week probably,
and can let you have then what I owe you, which is about one
quid ten as well as I remember. It is rotten to hear things are so
difficult and that the book has slowed down again. I don't think
you would have stuck the Irish Press very long, but it would have
1
Frank had to go down to Galway on a job and he very dec ently stood me the trip with him and so I saw Galway at last. A grand little magic grey town full of sensitive stone and bridges and water. We went on to Mallaranny and spent a day walking on Achill right out over the Atlantic. We came back all along L. Mask and right through the mountainous Joyce's country and between L. s [sic] Mask and Corrib. Everywhere we went Croagh Patrick was standing up over everything, with an Arrarat [for Ararat] cloud always somewhere near the chapel on the summit. Altogether it was an unforgettable trip and much too short, through bog and mountain scenery that was somehow far more innocent and easy and obvious than the stealthy secret variety we have here. I would like to go back to Galway and spend a little time there. There was some damn retreat on the Saturday morning we were there so we couldn't get into the Dominican and Franciscan churches where there are supposed to be some remarkable mosaics. But we saw
127
beensomethingtobegoingonwith. Dublinstagnatesasusual. I occasionally go in on the bike for the ride and the wayside pubs, but seldom, and on the surface at least she seems unmoved by all the goingson.
8 October 1932, McGreevy
St Nicholas's which is charming and where they say Cristoforo C.
2
Yes, I had that letter from Reavey. He also condescended to
mention that he had heard "rumours" of my novel when speaking
to publishers and that he would have some translations for me in
3
I tell you Gilbert acknowledged Home Olga at last with assurance of
its inclusion among the suceculeries of Contempo? Hope ev[e]ry
4
[ . . . ] Cissie has gone back to her Mann, bringing the big Ibach with her. It had all that salt air for nothing. They have found a new flat now, with twice the sun and half the rent. She says there is a chaise longue there for me. But I don't know what that means. Peggy read the transition sublimen and said for God's sake to spell pfennig with two enns next time! I had a letter from Nancy from Lot, on her way back to Paris, wanting to get
in touch. Perhaps she has some work. Titus's quick little blurb in
7
had a dish of mass before committing his indiscretion.
thenearfutureiflwaswiseenoughtokeepintouchwithhim. Did
onemaybepleased. AndthatTituswroteaboutDanteandtheL. which he says pleased him and which he proposes to run in his next number? 5 Nothing at all from Grayson. It is now well over 6 weeks since he viva voce assured me a speedy decision. I wrote him a polite note a fortnight and more ago which he did not acknowl edge. So by this same post he is getting a stinger and may the devil look after his own and take the hindmost and in fact do all the parlour tricks that may be necessary. I have an idea he may try and do the dirty. He has no background and I have nothing to show that he has any of my property. Titus enquired after the book and suggested my sending it to him. Better that than gar nix. But I'd rather send him the poems. Rickword never acknowledged them. 6 To hell with them all. Titus has benn [sic] a monument of courtesy compared with the most of them.
his preface to his surrealiste number might get me some clients.
128
8 October 1932, McGreevy
This obstinate sobriety in all modes here is beginning to hurt seriously, but I haven't the guts to make a dash for it again out into the cold cold world. You must manage at least one evening in Dublin if you are going through. I want very much to see you and talk over the prospects in Paris.
[. . . ]
I'm enclosing the only bit of writing that has happened to
me since Paris and that does me no particular credit as far as
I can judge. 8 I'm enchanted with Joseph Andrews, Jacques and
9
the Vicar of W. in one.
The reminiscences of Diderot interest
me very much, the ironical replis and giving away of the show
pari passu with the show, as when he executes a purely profes
sional apostrophe to Vanity and then observes that something
had to be done to spin out a chapter that otherwise would have
been too short.
And the hero is suggested admirably, almost a
physical weight on the page, all thighs and sex, palpitant, like
Aminta or a Marivaux pretendant, nothing ofthe volupte pensee
and pensante of Diderot. Such a thing never to have read! I think
10
I put pen to this
vague carmen that
is so much pleasanter easier
more'n my line nor prose
and my kakoethes or as they say evil propensity ain't got Gott sei dank no butt
what I mean is I don't love her
the very short chapters are an idea.
Can you recommend me an informative book on Dutch
painting? 11
Love ever
s/ Sam
129
8 October 1932, McGreevy
nor scape of land sea or sky
nor our Saviour particularly
I haven't signed any contract either I couldn't quite bring it off no my algos is puss in the corner I just feel fervent
ardent in a vague general way
and my lil erectile brain God help her
thuds like a butcher's sex
without the grand old British Museum
Thales and the Aretino
on the bosom of the Regent's Park the phlox
crackles under the thunder
scarlet beauty in our world dead fish adrift
all things full of gods
pressed down and bleeding a weaver bird is tangerine
the harpy is past caring
the condor likewise in his mangy boa
they stare out across monkey-hill the elephants Ireland
the light creeps down their old home canyon sucks me aloof to that old reliable
the burning b. t. m. of George the drill
ah across the way an adder
broaches her rat
white as snow
in her dazzling oven strom of peristalsis
limae labor
ah father father that art in heaven
I find me taking the Crystal Palace
for the Isles of the Blest from Primrose Hill alas I must be that kind of person
130
8 October 1932, McGreevy my quiet breath in the midst of thickets
none but the most quarried lovers
I surprise me moved by the many a funnel hinged for the obeisance to Tower Bridge
the viper's curtsey to and from the City
until at dusk a lighter
blind with pride
tosses aside the scarf of the bascules
then in the grey hold of the ambulance
throbbing on the brink ebb of sighs
then I hug me below among the people
until a guttersnipe blast his cerned eyes
demanding have I done with the Mirror
I stump off in a fearful rage under Married Men's Quarters Bloody Tower
and afar off at all speed screw me up Wren's giant bully and wish to Christ caged panting on the platform
the urn beacon aloft
that I were Daniel Defoe no less
hence in Ken Wood who shall find me
but then again as I say
who is likely to run across me in Ken Wood
my brother the fly
common house-fly
creeping out of darkness into light fastens on his place in the sun
whets his six legs
revels in his planes his poisers
it is the autumn of his life
he could not serve typhoid and mammon
131
8 October 1932, McGreevy
TIS; 4 leaves, 4 sides; includes untitled poem, later published as "Serena 1" (with the omission of the first stanza; there are variants with respect to published version); TCD, MS 10402/33.
1 McGreevywasworkingonhisnovel;hehadhopedtodosomewritingforTheIrish Press, but had not yet begun (SB to McGreevy, 8 November 1931, n. 4).
2 ConnemaraisadistrictinthewestofCountyGalway. Mallarannyisthetownto the east of Achill Island, the largest island off the Irish coast, west of the Curraun Peninsula. The Joyce country is to the north and west of Galway, a desolate land of rock, bog, and mountain that includes Lough Mask and Lough Corrib; it is named for the Joyce family of this region, not for James Joyce. Croagh Patrick (2,510 feet), known as the "holy mountain" because of the associations with St. Patrick; a church at its summit is a place ofpilgrimage. Ararat alludes to the mountain on which Noah's ark is said to have come to rest.
The Franciscan Friary and the Dominican church (St. Mary's on the Hill) in Galway are not notable for mosaics, but the Dominican church in nearby Claddagh has a mosaic depicting a church on a hill, a boat, and a young man and woman. Galway's St. Nicholas-of-Myra church, founded in 1320, is the largest medieval church in Ireland; while myth has it that Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) prayed there before sailing to America, it is more likely he stopped in Galway during a voyage to Iceland in 1477 (Gianni Granzotto, Christopher Columbus, tr. Stephen Sartarelli [Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985[ 36-37).
3 ReaveyhadmovedtoLondon. Reavey'slettertoSBhasnotbeenfound.
4 StuartGilberteditedContempo(1931-1934)inChapelHill,NorthCarolina;"Home Olga," written for James Joyce's birthday in 1932, was published in the last issue of Contempo (3. 13 [February 1934] 3).
"Suceculeries" (bumsuckings).
5 Edward Titus published "Dante and the Lobster" in This Quarter 5. 2 (December
1932) 222-236.
6 SB'sstingertoGraysonisnotextant. Attheveryleast,SBwantedhismanuscript returned so that he could send it to Titus. "Gar nix" (Ger. colloq. , from "gar nichts" [nothing at all]); see also Pilling, A Companion to "Dream ofFair to Middling Women," 37.
Rickword still had the manuscript of the poems sent on 30 August 1932.
7 TheSinclairs'pianowasanIbach.
Peggy Sinclair's comment refers to SB's story "Sedendo et Quiescendo," which describes Smeraldina approaching Belacqua's train; SB writes that her platform ticket had cost "ten Pfenigs" (for "Pfennige" [pennies! ) (transition 21 [March 1932] 13).
The texts that Nancy Cunard wanted SB to translate were related to Nancy Cunard, ed. , Negro, Anthology Made by Nancy Cunard, 1931-1933 (London: Published by Nancy Cunard at Wishart and Co. , 1934).
In his introduction to the surrealist number of This Quarter, Edward Titus wrote: "We shall not speak of the difficulties experienced in putting the material placed at our disposal into English, but we cannot refrain from singling out Mr. Samuel Beckett's work for special acknowledgement. His rendering of the Eluard and Breton poems in particular is characterizable only in superlatives" ("Editorially: By the Way of Introducing This Surrealist Number," 5. 1 [September 1932] 6).
132
18 October 1932, McGreevy
8 Mostofthepoemenclosedwaspublishedas"Serena1. "
9 The Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his Friend, Mr Abraham Adams (1742) by English novelist Henry Fielding (1701-1754) is compared bySB to Jacques le fataliste et son maftre (1796; Jacques, the Fatalist), a novel by French writer Denis Diderot (1713-1784) and
The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), a novel by Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774).
10 SB refers toJoseph Andrews. Fielding's novel is divided into four books, each with short chapters; the self-referential narrator weighs his narrative choices as well as his readers' possible responses. "Replis" (foldings, meanderings). Both chapter headings and narrative interruptions point to the events before they unfold.
In the apostrophe "OVanity! " introduced at the end ofBook I, chapter 15, the narrator writes: "Nor will it give me any Pain, if thou [Vanity] should'st prevail on theReader to censure this Digression as errantNonsense: for know to thy Confusion, that I have introduced thee for no other Purpose than to lengthen out a short Chapter; and so I return to my History" (Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews, ed. Martin C. Battestin [Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967] 69-70).
SB's comparison of Joseph Andrews with the character of Arninta may refer to the pastoral play, L'Aminta (1581), by Italian author Torquato Tasso (1544-1595), or to a " pre tendant" (suitor) ofFrench dramatist Pierre Carlet de Charnblaine deMarivaux (1688-1763).
"Palpitant" (quivering). "Volupte pensee and pensante" (voluptuousness as thought, voluptuousness as thinking).
11 ItisnotknownifMcGreevymadeasuggestion.
THOMAS McGREEVY TARBERT, CO. KERRY
18th Oct. 32
Cooldrinagh Foxrock [Co. Dublin]
My dear Tom
To know you like the poem cheers me up.
1
Genuinely my
impression was that it was of little worth because it did not
represent a necessity. I mean that in some way it was 'facultatif'
and that I would have been no worse off for not having written
it. Is that a very hairless way of thinking of poetry? Quoi qu'il
2
133
en soit I find it impossible to abandon that view of the matter. Genuinely again my feeling is, more and more, that the greater part of my poetry, though it may be reasonably felicitous in its choice of terms, fails precisely because it is facultatif. Whereas
18 October 1932, McGreevy
the 3 or 4 I like, and that seem to have been drawn down against
the really dirty weather ofone ofthese fine days into the burrow
ofthe 'private life', Alba & the long Enueg & Dortmunder & even
Moly, do not and never did give me that impression of being
3
Quel est le role de la racine?
Le desespoir a rompu tous ses liens.
I'm not ashamed to stutter like this with you who are used to my wild way offailing to say what I imagine I want to say and who understand that until the gag is chewed fit to swallow or spit out the mouth must stutter or rest. And it needs a more stoical mouth than mine to rest.
There is a kind of writing corresponding with acts of fraud &
debauchery on the part of the writing-shed. The moan I have
more & more to make with mine is there - that it is nearly all
trigged up, in terrain, faute d'orifice, heat of friction and not the
spontaneous combustion of the spirit to compensate the pus &
the pain that threaten its economy, fraudulent manoeuvres to
make the cavity do what it can't do - the work of the abscess. 5
I don't know why the Jesuitical poem that is an end in itself and
justifies all the means should disgust me so much. But it does -
again - more & more. I was trying to like Mallarme again the other
day, & couldn't, because it's Jesuitical poetry, even the Swan &
6
construits. Icannotexplainverywelltomyselfwhattheyhave that distinguishes them from the others, but it is something arborescent or of the sky, not Wagner, not clouds on wheels; written above an abscess and not out ofa cavity, a statement and not a description of heat in the spirit to compensate for pus in the spirit. Is not that what Eluard means?
4
I suppose I'm a dirty low-church P. even in poetry, concerned with integrity in a surplice. I'm in mourning for the integrity of a pendu's emission of semen, what I find in Homer &
134
Herodiade.
Dante & Racine & sometimes Rimbaud, the integrity ofthe eyelids coming down before the brain knows of grit in the wind. 7
Forgive all this? Why is the spirit so pus-proof and the wind so avaricious of its grit?
I never see nor write to nor hear from nor am seen by Ethna Mace. now. 'Tis better thus! ' I incline to the opinion that when it is not possible to see people simply it is more satisfactory to wait till they tum up in the memory. I can't see her and I can't imagine her. Occasionally it happens that I remember her and then, presto! I had nothing up my sleeve nor she in her amethyst bodice. 8
The Grayson Bros. were stimulated by my multicuspid
stinker to return my MS. 'circumscribed appeal . . Gratuitous
"strength"'! What is that? I replied soliciting favour of readers[']
reports. Reply to the effect that there was no written record
of condemnation, that my book, an unusual, he might say,
privilege, had been read by 3 most distinguished readers and
discussed verbally with the Fratellacci; that their advice to me
frankly and without the least desire to wound was to lay aside
Dream altogether, forget it ever happened, be a good boy in future
9
Another scribble from Nancy from the Cunegonde on sub ject of touch. She has some Breton & Eluard MSS. I wrote saying it was always a pleasure to translate Eluard & Breton. 11
I'm sorry I can't enclose what I would like to in this letter, because I have not yet touche the filthy commodity. 12 As soon as I do I will.
Talking with a French woman here, Mme. Redmond, married to a Doctor, I was advised to address myself to Mr Blumenfeld,
135
18 October 1932, McGreevy
and compose what I was well-fitted to compose - a best-seller. When I had done that they would be interested to hear from me again. So I dried my eyes and sent it off to Titus, who has not acknowledged it yet. I tremble lest I should push him too far. 10
18 October 1932, McGreevy
editor of Daily Express, who is a bussom friend of hers and to
whom she would be most happy to give me a letter ofintroduction
overflowing with boniments of all kinds. Acting on same I com
posed last night an irresistible document. I may post it to-day - and
13
They are doing Romeo & Juliet at the Gate when they have
finished idealizing Wilde's husband. I lacked the spunk to go to Peer
Gynt. Such wonderful lighting, my dear, all coming from behind
instead of in front. Imagine that! And Grieg without mercy. 15
16
I may not.
of minuses is beginning to bow me down. I walk immeasurably & unrestrainedly, hills and dales, all day, and back with a couple of pints from the Powerscourt Arms under my Montpamasse belt through the Homer dusk. Often very moving and it helps to swamp the usual palpitations. But I disagree with you about the gardenish landscape. The lowest mountains here terrify me far more than anything I saw in Connemara or Achill. Or is it that a garden is more frightening than a waste? I walked across Prince William's Seat, a low mountain between the Glencullen & Glencree rivers, and was reduced almost to incontinence by the calm secret hostility. I ran down into Enniskerry. 14
My cuticle urges me to hibernate here, but the weight
Donagh Bryan is dead. Sam
Love ever.
ALS; 2 leaves. 4 sides: McGreevy. TCD. MS 10402/34.
1 Withhisletterof8October1932. SBhadsentMcGreevyanuntitledpoem. later published (without the first stanza) as '"Serena 1. ""
2 "Facultatif"" (optional).
""Quoi qu"il en soit"" (Whatever the case).
3 The poems "Alba. "" "Enueg 1. "" and "Dortmunder" were published in Echo"s Bones ([18]. [12-15], and [191). "Moly"" was published under the title ""Yoke of Liberty"' (Harvey, Samuel Beckett, 314; as "Moly,"" this poem is in the archives of Poetry Magazine (ICU) and in the A. J. Leventhal collection (TxU).
"Construits" (deliberately constructed).
136
4 SB alludes to the work of Richard Wagner.
These lines are from a poem by French surrealist poet Paul Eluard (1895-1952), "L'Invention" (Paul Eluard, Capitale de la douleur [Paris: Gallimard. 1964] 12-13); they are translated by SB as "What is the role of the root'? / Despair has broken all his bonds" (Paul Eluard, Thorns of Thunder: Selected Poems, tr. Samuel Beckett, Denis Devlin, David Gascoyne et al. , ed. George Reavey [London: Europa Press and Stanley Nott, 1936] 8).
5 "Terrain" (soil or ground); "faute d'orifice" (for want of an orifice).
6 PoemsofStephaneMallarme(1842-1898). "Swan"referstothesonnet,"Levierge,le vivace et le be! aujourd'hui" (The Virgin, Beautiful and Lively Day) (Oeuvres completes, I, ed. Bertrand Marchal, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade [Paris: Gallirnard, 1998] 36-37; "Sonnet" in Stephane Mallarrne, New and Collected Poems, tr. Roger Fry, with commentaries by Charles Mauron, The New Classics Series [New York: New Directions Books, 1951] 67). Mallarme·s "Herodiade" exists in several forms (Oeuvres completes, I, 17-22, 85-89, 135-152).
7 P. is Protestant. "Pendu" (hanged man).
8 Ethna Maccarthy. "Tis better thus" may allude to the play All for Love by John Dryden (1631-1700); referring to Antony, who is dead, Cleopatra says: "And, oh! 'tis better far to have him thus. / Than see him in her arms" Uohn Dryden, All for Love and The Spanish Fryar, ed. William Strunk, Jr. [Boston, D. C. Heath and Company, 1911] 144).
9 Although Charles Prentice wrote to Richard Aldington that he had heard Grayson and Grayson were going to publish Dream of Fair to Middling Women, they did not (5 September 1932, ICSo, Aldington 68/6/8). SB's letters to Grayson and Grayson are not extant. "Fratellacci" (wretched brothers).
10 SB sent Dream ofFair to Middling Women to Edward Titus, who was Editor of This Quarter from 1929 through 1932, and Editor of the Black Manikin Press from mid-1926 to spring 1932.
11 CunardwrotetoSBfromCuneges. intheDordogne. conflatedbySBwithCunegonde, a character in Candide ou l'optimisme (1759) by Voltaire (ne Fran,;:ois-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778). SB translated "Murderous Humanitarianism" by the "Surrealist Group" in Paris, a group which included Andre Breton and Paul Eluard (Cunard, ed. , Negro, Anthology, 574-575). Although SB writes to McGreevy that Cunard plans to send him "Eluard & Breton," as she does in December 1932 (21 November 1932, TCD, MS 10402/38), there is no indication that SB translated other work by either writer for Cunard. He had translated their writing for the surrealist number of This Qj. ulrter (see 13 [September 1932], n. 9).
12 "Touche" (got my hands on).
13 Mme. Marie Redmond (nee Robinson, known as Elsie, 1885-1976), married to Dr. H. E. Redmond (1882-1951), was born in Paris of English parents and had grown up there. In Dublin she was the "go to" person for French lessons and taught SB. In later years, she would say, "That Beckett fellow has done quite well, it seems" (Annick O'Meara, 17 October 2007).
Ralph D. Blumenfeld (1864-1948), the American-born Editor of the Daily Express (London) from 1902 to 1932, was a family friend of Mme. Redmond's parents.
"Boniments" (sales talk or puffs).
14 PrinceWilliam'sSeatisapromontorysouthofDublinontheWicklowWay;the town of Enniskerry lies north of it in the direction of Foxrock.
137
18 October 1932, McGreevy
18 October 1932, McGreevy
15 Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) opened at Dublin's Gate Theatre on 1 November 1932. Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband had played there from 18 October; prior to that, from 27 September to 15 October, the Gate produced a revival of Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906). Hilton RobertEdwards (1903-1982), a founder of the Gate Theatre, had directed the original production in October 1928; his revival was "improved" with the scenic concept of light coming from the back of the stage (The Irish Times 29 September 1932: 4).
Incidental Music to Peer Gynt for SoloVoices, Orchestra and Chorus, op. 23, by Norwegian composerEdvard Hagerup Grieg (1843-1907).
16 J. D.
122
and Monk Gibbon seek on the bank a definition of obscenity. I wish I had seen "Things that are Caesar's"[. ] "Temporal Powers"
1 "Grinds"(colloq. ,tutoringjobs). SBhadrepresentedRudmose-BrownasthePolar Bear in Dream ofFair to Middling Women.
2 SB wrote on Saturday [3 September 1932] to McGreevy: "I saw the Brothers G. a fortnight ago now in London and they promised me a speedy decision. I don't know whether to think the delay good or bad. " In the same letter, SB said of the poems: "I don't expect them to be taken on by Wishart, but I wish I had sent them earlier and that I had seen Rickword in London. It was Grayson put me on to them" (TCD, MS 10402/31).
London publisher Ernest Edward Wishart (1902-1987). In 1932, the English poet and critic Edgell Rickword (1898-1982) worked occasionally for Wishart, and had not yet joined the firm full-time: he had just translated Marcel Coulon, Poet under Saturn: The Tragedy ofVerlaine (1932).
3 In February 1932, SB had proposed a monograph on Gide to Charles Prentice; Prentice responded: "Your idea of a short study of Gide is a most attractive one, but we don't see how we could be of any use to you about it just now," suggesting that SB write "the essay as a long article to appear in two or more parts" (8 February 1932, UoR, MS 2444 CW letterbook 136/513). SB pursued the matter with Ellis Roberts at the New Statesman (SB to McGreevy, 18 [August 1932], n. 8). SB wrote to McGreevy: "I'm afraid to start anything on Gide, though I have all the notes & quotations I want without opening a text": he added: "How would 'paralysed in ubiquity' do for Gide? " (SB to McGreevy, Saturday [3 September 1932], TCD, MS 10402/31).
4 SBwrotetoMcGreevy:"Typingoutthepoemsyetagainandfiddlingaboutwith them I felt more than ever that all the early ones - al! the Caravan ones - were fake and that nothing could be done with them and that it was only a partir de Whoroscope that they began to be worth anything. I know you are good enough to disagree with me, but I felt it more & more" (Saturday [3 September 1932], TCD, MS 10402/31). "A partir de Whoroscope" (from Whoroscope on). "Home Olga" was written for Joyce and submitted to Stuart Gilbert, Editor of Contempo. The new poem is a draft of "Serena l" (Beckett, Echo's Bones [15-271).
5 For SB, The Entombment (NG! 214) by Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) was "extraordi nary. I never saw such blue & purple, such lyrical colour" (Saturday [3 September 1932], TCD, MS 10402/31). In the German room were A Peasant Wedding (NGI 911) by Pieter Brueghel the younger (c. 1564 - c. 1638), and Christ in the House ofMartha and Mary (NGI 513) by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) with Jan Brueghel (1568-1625). SB also mentions Portrait ofan Old Lady (NG! 903) by the early Flemish painter known as the Master of the Tired Eyes (fl. c. 1540) and A Portrait of a Young Lady (NG! 808) by Harmensz Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669). The painter of Scenes from the Life of St. Augustine (NG! 823) is identified in the 1945 catalogue of the National Gallery oflreland as the Master of the Silver Windows (c. 1550); later catalogues identify him as the Master of St. Augustine (c. 1500) (Thomas MacGreevy, Pictures in the Irish National Gallery [London: B. T. Batsford, 1945] 11-12; James White, ed. , National Gallery ofIreland: Catalogue ofthe Paintings [Dublin: National Gallery of Ireland, 1971] 197; National Gallery of Ireland: Illustrated Summary Catalogue ofPaintings, intro. Homan Potterton [Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1981] 107).
6 CissieSinclairreturnedtoKasselwithheryoungestdaughterDeirdre;herdaugh ter Sally remained in Dublin. The Moira Hotel and Restaurant, 15 Trinity Street, Dublin.
123
13 {September 1932}, McGreevy
13 {September 1932}, McGreevy
7 The first collection of Northern Irish poet R. N. D. Wilson (ne Robert Noble Denison Wilson 1899-1953) was The Holy Wells of Oms and other Poems (1927); John Hewitt's obituary describes Wilson as a "small dark man with something of the appearance of a little bird full chested with its song" (Dublin Magazine 28. 2 ! April-June 1952] 54-55). SB compares Wilson's poetry to that of AE. SB met Wilson at the Dublin home of Percival Arland Ussher' (known as Percy to mid-1937, then as Arland, 1899-1980), Irish writer and philosopher.
The home of William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), "Riversdale," Willbrook, Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin, had a croquet lawn where Yeats played with enthusiasm that AE, among other regular guests, "rearranged their visiting hours to avoid a game" (Ann Saddlemyer, Becoming George: The Life of Mrs. W. B. Yeats [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002] 453-454). SB also refers to poets Austin Clarke and William Monk Gibbon (1896-1987).
8 Things That are Caesar's by Irish playwright Paul Vincent Carroll (1900-1968) opened on 15 August and won the Abbey Theatre Prize in 1932. Temporal Powers by Teresa Deevy (1894-1963) opened at the Abbey Theatre on 12 September; Joseph Holloway said that none of the characters "became real on the stage" (Holloway,
JosephHolloway'sIrishTheatre,II:1932-1937,ed. HoganandON' eill,216).
9 InMay1932SBhadundertakenthetranslationofArthurRimbaud's"LeBateau ivre" ("The Drunken Boat") for Edward Titus; SB had received payment, but no word of publication (for further background see Samuel Beckett, Drunken Boat, ed. James Knowlson and Felix Leakey [Reading: Whiteknights Press, 1976] 7-10).
More recently, SB had translated poems and essays for the surrealist number of This Quarter 5. 1 ! September 19321), guest-edited by Andre Breton (1896-1966) (for a list of SB's translations:Raymond Federrnan and John Fletcher, Samuel Beckett: His Works and His Critics, An Essay in Bibliography ! Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1970] 92-93).
SB had also submitted his story "Dante and the Lobster" to Titus. 10 "Allesgut"(allthebest).
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
8/10/32 Cooldrinagh Foxrock
Co Dublin
DearReavey
Thank you for your letter. I'll excavate for a poem for
you one of these dies diarrhoeae. I suppose it's the usual case of honour and glory. So much piss. I have an idea I enshrined
124
Primrose Hill and Crystal Palace seen thence, as though I were
Marcel Schwob peering through incipient cataract at a red moutier,
in a long sad one that does me great credit. Tres emouvant. There
1
into Dublin stutter.
The novel doesn't go. Shatton & Windup thought it was
wonderful but they couldn't they simply could not. The Hogarth
Private Lunatic Asylum rejected it the way Punch would. Cape
was ecoeure in pipe & cardigan and his Aberdeen terrier agreed
with him. Grayson has lost it or cleaned himself with it. Kick his
3
stranger's bike.
Beautiful greetings to Bronowski when and if and tell him
I had a simply wonderful time in Ampton St till a coinmate poor
fellow whose need was quicker than mine happened to come
across a five pun note tossing and turning in my Milner valise
4
5
1 "Diesdiarrhoeae"(literally,daysofdiarrhea,echoingtheDiesIraeoftherequiem Mass).
SB refers to his poem "Serena l" in which he mentions London's Primrose Hill (London NW, north ofRegent"s Park Zoo) and the Crystal Palace (built for The Great Exhibition of 1851, and in 1854 moved to Sydenharn Hill in London SW).
Mayer-Andre-Marcel Schwob (1867-1905), French medievalist, critic, short-story writer, and translator. In his journal, Premieres Esquisses, Schwob writes: "Je connais deux especes de gens; des hornrnes-rnicroscopes et des hornrnes[-]telescopes" (I know two types of people: microscope-men and telescope-men); according to Schwob,
125
8 October 1932, Reavey
isalsoadrill'sarseandDanielDefoe. Theycoexistveryamiably. All Uebersetzungen gratefully received & done in the eye
2
balls off, they are all over 66 Curzon St, W. 1.
I'll be here till I die, creeping along genteel roads on a
and - what do you think - took it unto himself. Ergo . . .
Things to see: Desmond Savage Hazlitt Lamb Wodehouse
Milton Makepeace Maccarthy and the sparrows at the Spaniards. Salut
s/ Sam Beckett
TIS; 1 leaf; 1 side; TxU.
8 October 1932, Reavey
microscope men could drown in a glass of water, telescope men find outlines in every thing (Pierre Champion, Marcel Schwab et son temps ! Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1927] 26-27). Schwob's story "L'Etoile de bois" describes a village in minute detail, including a mon astery seen in a vision of rosy mist: "un moutier, semblable a une brume vermeille ebarbee, 011 Saint-Georges, arme de sang, plongeait sa lance dans la gueule d'un dragon de gres rouge" (a monastery, like a neatly trimmed rosy mist where St. George, armed with blood, was plunging his lance into the mouth of a red sandstone dragon) (Cosmopolis 8 [22 October 1897] 104; rpt. L'Etoile de bois ! Paris: Editions du Boucher, 2003] 13).
"Serena l" ends with "peering," a close-up image of a housefly on a window.
"Tres emouvant" (very moving). The poem mentions "the burning b. t. m. of George the drill" (a West African species of baboon) as well as British novelist and essayist Daniel Defoe (ne Foe, 1660-1731). "B. t. m. " (children's language, bottom).
2 "Uebersetzungen" (translations).
3 ChattoandWindus,theHogarthPress,JonathanCape,andGraysonandGrayson had turned down or failed to respond to SB's Dream ofFair to Middling Women. Jonathan Cape was "ecoeure" (disgusted). Rupert Grayson had not yet replied.
The London weekly satirical magazine Punch was published from 1841 to 1992 and from 1996 to 2002.
4 Bronowski had suggested that SB stay with Mrs. Southon in Ampton Street. A manufacturer of safes by the name of Milner has been identified, but not of valises or briefcases.
"Pun" (Ir. colloq. , pound).
5 ReaveyhadbegunhisBureauLitteraireEuropeeninParisandwasdevelopingan office in London for his several publishing ventures (18 April 1986: notes of Emile Delavenay). Delavenay (1905-2000) was French Lecteur from the Ecole Normale Superieure at Gonville and Caius College Cambridge {1927-1929) where he met Reavey who was then a student. When Reavey went to France, Delavenay introduced Reavey to Thomas McGreevy (Emile Delavenay, Temoignage: d'un village savoyard au village mondial {1905-1991/ [La Calade: Diffusion EDISUD, 1992] 117). In his draft memoirs, Reavey says, however, that he met McGreevy through Alan Duncan (TxU).
SB facetiously gives to Desmond Maccarthy the names of English writers: Richard Savage (1697-1743), William Hazlitt (1778-1830), Charles Lamb (1775-1834), P. G. Wodehouse (ne Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, 1881-1973), John Milton (1608-1674), William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863).
The Spaniards Inn on Hampstead Heath was built in 1585 as a residence for the Spanish Ambassador; it was opened as an inn in the middle of the eighteenth century by two Spanish brothers and later became well known as a pub. Nearby streets are named for it.
6 "Salut" (greetings).
THOMAS McGREEVY TARBERT, CO. KERRY
8/10/32 Cooldrinagh Foxrock [Co. Dublin]
126
8 October 1932, McGreevy
Dear Tom
Forgive me for not answering the first of your last two
letters. I did write, but it turned out such a jeremiad that
I refrained from posting it. Don't for God's sake bother your
head about the 2 quid. Frank is not in that hurry. Wait for a
flusher time. I got a few grinds and am doing a few at the moment
and will get paid one ofthese fine days, early next week probably,
and can let you have then what I owe you, which is about one
quid ten as well as I remember. It is rotten to hear things are so
difficult and that the book has slowed down again. I don't think
you would have stuck the Irish Press very long, but it would have
1
Frank had to go down to Galway on a job and he very dec ently stood me the trip with him and so I saw Galway at last. A grand little magic grey town full of sensitive stone and bridges and water. We went on to Mallaranny and spent a day walking on Achill right out over the Atlantic. We came back all along L. Mask and right through the mountainous Joyce's country and between L. s [sic] Mask and Corrib. Everywhere we went Croagh Patrick was standing up over everything, with an Arrarat [for Ararat] cloud always somewhere near the chapel on the summit. Altogether it was an unforgettable trip and much too short, through bog and mountain scenery that was somehow far more innocent and easy and obvious than the stealthy secret variety we have here. I would like to go back to Galway and spend a little time there. There was some damn retreat on the Saturday morning we were there so we couldn't get into the Dominican and Franciscan churches where there are supposed to be some remarkable mosaics. But we saw
127
beensomethingtobegoingonwith. Dublinstagnatesasusual. I occasionally go in on the bike for the ride and the wayside pubs, but seldom, and on the surface at least she seems unmoved by all the goingson.
8 October 1932, McGreevy
St Nicholas's which is charming and where they say Cristoforo C.
2
Yes, I had that letter from Reavey. He also condescended to
mention that he had heard "rumours" of my novel when speaking
to publishers and that he would have some translations for me in
3
I tell you Gilbert acknowledged Home Olga at last with assurance of
its inclusion among the suceculeries of Contempo? Hope ev[e]ry
4
[ . . . ] Cissie has gone back to her Mann, bringing the big Ibach with her. It had all that salt air for nothing. They have found a new flat now, with twice the sun and half the rent. She says there is a chaise longue there for me. But I don't know what that means. Peggy read the transition sublimen and said for God's sake to spell pfennig with two enns next time! I had a letter from Nancy from Lot, on her way back to Paris, wanting to get
in touch. Perhaps she has some work. Titus's quick little blurb in
7
had a dish of mass before committing his indiscretion.
thenearfutureiflwaswiseenoughtokeepintouchwithhim. Did
onemaybepleased. AndthatTituswroteaboutDanteandtheL. which he says pleased him and which he proposes to run in his next number? 5 Nothing at all from Grayson. It is now well over 6 weeks since he viva voce assured me a speedy decision. I wrote him a polite note a fortnight and more ago which he did not acknowl edge. So by this same post he is getting a stinger and may the devil look after his own and take the hindmost and in fact do all the parlour tricks that may be necessary. I have an idea he may try and do the dirty. He has no background and I have nothing to show that he has any of my property. Titus enquired after the book and suggested my sending it to him. Better that than gar nix. But I'd rather send him the poems. Rickword never acknowledged them. 6 To hell with them all. Titus has benn [sic] a monument of courtesy compared with the most of them.
his preface to his surrealiste number might get me some clients.
128
8 October 1932, McGreevy
This obstinate sobriety in all modes here is beginning to hurt seriously, but I haven't the guts to make a dash for it again out into the cold cold world. You must manage at least one evening in Dublin if you are going through. I want very much to see you and talk over the prospects in Paris.
[. . . ]
I'm enclosing the only bit of writing that has happened to
me since Paris and that does me no particular credit as far as
I can judge. 8 I'm enchanted with Joseph Andrews, Jacques and
9
the Vicar of W. in one.
The reminiscences of Diderot interest
me very much, the ironical replis and giving away of the show
pari passu with the show, as when he executes a purely profes
sional apostrophe to Vanity and then observes that something
had to be done to spin out a chapter that otherwise would have
been too short.
And the hero is suggested admirably, almost a
physical weight on the page, all thighs and sex, palpitant, like
Aminta or a Marivaux pretendant, nothing ofthe volupte pensee
and pensante of Diderot. Such a thing never to have read! I think
10
I put pen to this
vague carmen that
is so much pleasanter easier
more'n my line nor prose
and my kakoethes or as they say evil propensity ain't got Gott sei dank no butt
what I mean is I don't love her
the very short chapters are an idea.
Can you recommend me an informative book on Dutch
painting? 11
Love ever
s/ Sam
129
8 October 1932, McGreevy
nor scape of land sea or sky
nor our Saviour particularly
I haven't signed any contract either I couldn't quite bring it off no my algos is puss in the corner I just feel fervent
ardent in a vague general way
and my lil erectile brain God help her
thuds like a butcher's sex
without the grand old British Museum
Thales and the Aretino
on the bosom of the Regent's Park the phlox
crackles under the thunder
scarlet beauty in our world dead fish adrift
all things full of gods
pressed down and bleeding a weaver bird is tangerine
the harpy is past caring
the condor likewise in his mangy boa
they stare out across monkey-hill the elephants Ireland
the light creeps down their old home canyon sucks me aloof to that old reliable
the burning b. t. m. of George the drill
ah across the way an adder
broaches her rat
white as snow
in her dazzling oven strom of peristalsis
limae labor
ah father father that art in heaven
I find me taking the Crystal Palace
for the Isles of the Blest from Primrose Hill alas I must be that kind of person
130
8 October 1932, McGreevy my quiet breath in the midst of thickets
none but the most quarried lovers
I surprise me moved by the many a funnel hinged for the obeisance to Tower Bridge
the viper's curtsey to and from the City
until at dusk a lighter
blind with pride
tosses aside the scarf of the bascules
then in the grey hold of the ambulance
throbbing on the brink ebb of sighs
then I hug me below among the people
until a guttersnipe blast his cerned eyes
demanding have I done with the Mirror
I stump off in a fearful rage under Married Men's Quarters Bloody Tower
and afar off at all speed screw me up Wren's giant bully and wish to Christ caged panting on the platform
the urn beacon aloft
that I were Daniel Defoe no less
hence in Ken Wood who shall find me
but then again as I say
who is likely to run across me in Ken Wood
my brother the fly
common house-fly
creeping out of darkness into light fastens on his place in the sun
whets his six legs
revels in his planes his poisers
it is the autumn of his life
he could not serve typhoid and mammon
131
8 October 1932, McGreevy
TIS; 4 leaves, 4 sides; includes untitled poem, later published as "Serena 1" (with the omission of the first stanza; there are variants with respect to published version); TCD, MS 10402/33.
1 McGreevywasworkingonhisnovel;hehadhopedtodosomewritingforTheIrish Press, but had not yet begun (SB to McGreevy, 8 November 1931, n. 4).
2 ConnemaraisadistrictinthewestofCountyGalway. Mallarannyisthetownto the east of Achill Island, the largest island off the Irish coast, west of the Curraun Peninsula. The Joyce country is to the north and west of Galway, a desolate land of rock, bog, and mountain that includes Lough Mask and Lough Corrib; it is named for the Joyce family of this region, not for James Joyce. Croagh Patrick (2,510 feet), known as the "holy mountain" because of the associations with St. Patrick; a church at its summit is a place ofpilgrimage. Ararat alludes to the mountain on which Noah's ark is said to have come to rest.
The Franciscan Friary and the Dominican church (St. Mary's on the Hill) in Galway are not notable for mosaics, but the Dominican church in nearby Claddagh has a mosaic depicting a church on a hill, a boat, and a young man and woman. Galway's St. Nicholas-of-Myra church, founded in 1320, is the largest medieval church in Ireland; while myth has it that Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) prayed there before sailing to America, it is more likely he stopped in Galway during a voyage to Iceland in 1477 (Gianni Granzotto, Christopher Columbus, tr. Stephen Sartarelli [Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985[ 36-37).
3 ReaveyhadmovedtoLondon. Reavey'slettertoSBhasnotbeenfound.
4 StuartGilberteditedContempo(1931-1934)inChapelHill,NorthCarolina;"Home Olga," written for James Joyce's birthday in 1932, was published in the last issue of Contempo (3. 13 [February 1934] 3).
"Suceculeries" (bumsuckings).
5 Edward Titus published "Dante and the Lobster" in This Quarter 5. 2 (December
1932) 222-236.
6 SB'sstingertoGraysonisnotextant. Attheveryleast,SBwantedhismanuscript returned so that he could send it to Titus. "Gar nix" (Ger. colloq. , from "gar nichts" [nothing at all]); see also Pilling, A Companion to "Dream ofFair to Middling Women," 37.
Rickword still had the manuscript of the poems sent on 30 August 1932.
7 TheSinclairs'pianowasanIbach.
Peggy Sinclair's comment refers to SB's story "Sedendo et Quiescendo," which describes Smeraldina approaching Belacqua's train; SB writes that her platform ticket had cost "ten Pfenigs" (for "Pfennige" [pennies! ) (transition 21 [March 1932] 13).
The texts that Nancy Cunard wanted SB to translate were related to Nancy Cunard, ed. , Negro, Anthology Made by Nancy Cunard, 1931-1933 (London: Published by Nancy Cunard at Wishart and Co. , 1934).
In his introduction to the surrealist number of This Quarter, Edward Titus wrote: "We shall not speak of the difficulties experienced in putting the material placed at our disposal into English, but we cannot refrain from singling out Mr. Samuel Beckett's work for special acknowledgement. His rendering of the Eluard and Breton poems in particular is characterizable only in superlatives" ("Editorially: By the Way of Introducing This Surrealist Number," 5. 1 [September 1932] 6).
132
18 October 1932, McGreevy
8 Mostofthepoemenclosedwaspublishedas"Serena1. "
9 The Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his Friend, Mr Abraham Adams (1742) by English novelist Henry Fielding (1701-1754) is compared bySB to Jacques le fataliste et son maftre (1796; Jacques, the Fatalist), a novel by French writer Denis Diderot (1713-1784) and
The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), a novel by Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774).
10 SB refers toJoseph Andrews. Fielding's novel is divided into four books, each with short chapters; the self-referential narrator weighs his narrative choices as well as his readers' possible responses. "Replis" (foldings, meanderings). Both chapter headings and narrative interruptions point to the events before they unfold.
In the apostrophe "OVanity! " introduced at the end ofBook I, chapter 15, the narrator writes: "Nor will it give me any Pain, if thou [Vanity] should'st prevail on theReader to censure this Digression as errantNonsense: for know to thy Confusion, that I have introduced thee for no other Purpose than to lengthen out a short Chapter; and so I return to my History" (Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews, ed. Martin C. Battestin [Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967] 69-70).
SB's comparison of Joseph Andrews with the character of Arninta may refer to the pastoral play, L'Aminta (1581), by Italian author Torquato Tasso (1544-1595), or to a " pre tendant" (suitor) ofFrench dramatist Pierre Carlet de Charnblaine deMarivaux (1688-1763).
"Palpitant" (quivering). "Volupte pensee and pensante" (voluptuousness as thought, voluptuousness as thinking).
11 ItisnotknownifMcGreevymadeasuggestion.
THOMAS McGREEVY TARBERT, CO. KERRY
18th Oct. 32
Cooldrinagh Foxrock [Co. Dublin]
My dear Tom
To know you like the poem cheers me up.
1
Genuinely my
impression was that it was of little worth because it did not
represent a necessity. I mean that in some way it was 'facultatif'
and that I would have been no worse off for not having written
it. Is that a very hairless way of thinking of poetry? Quoi qu'il
2
133
en soit I find it impossible to abandon that view of the matter. Genuinely again my feeling is, more and more, that the greater part of my poetry, though it may be reasonably felicitous in its choice of terms, fails precisely because it is facultatif. Whereas
18 October 1932, McGreevy
the 3 or 4 I like, and that seem to have been drawn down against
the really dirty weather ofone ofthese fine days into the burrow
ofthe 'private life', Alba & the long Enueg & Dortmunder & even
Moly, do not and never did give me that impression of being
3
Quel est le role de la racine?
Le desespoir a rompu tous ses liens.
I'm not ashamed to stutter like this with you who are used to my wild way offailing to say what I imagine I want to say and who understand that until the gag is chewed fit to swallow or spit out the mouth must stutter or rest. And it needs a more stoical mouth than mine to rest.
There is a kind of writing corresponding with acts of fraud &
debauchery on the part of the writing-shed. The moan I have
more & more to make with mine is there - that it is nearly all
trigged up, in terrain, faute d'orifice, heat of friction and not the
spontaneous combustion of the spirit to compensate the pus &
the pain that threaten its economy, fraudulent manoeuvres to
make the cavity do what it can't do - the work of the abscess. 5
I don't know why the Jesuitical poem that is an end in itself and
justifies all the means should disgust me so much. But it does -
again - more & more. I was trying to like Mallarme again the other
day, & couldn't, because it's Jesuitical poetry, even the Swan &
6
construits. Icannotexplainverywelltomyselfwhattheyhave that distinguishes them from the others, but it is something arborescent or of the sky, not Wagner, not clouds on wheels; written above an abscess and not out ofa cavity, a statement and not a description of heat in the spirit to compensate for pus in the spirit. Is not that what Eluard means?
4
I suppose I'm a dirty low-church P. even in poetry, concerned with integrity in a surplice. I'm in mourning for the integrity of a pendu's emission of semen, what I find in Homer &
134
Herodiade.
Dante & Racine & sometimes Rimbaud, the integrity ofthe eyelids coming down before the brain knows of grit in the wind. 7
Forgive all this? Why is the spirit so pus-proof and the wind so avaricious of its grit?
I never see nor write to nor hear from nor am seen by Ethna Mace. now. 'Tis better thus! ' I incline to the opinion that when it is not possible to see people simply it is more satisfactory to wait till they tum up in the memory. I can't see her and I can't imagine her. Occasionally it happens that I remember her and then, presto! I had nothing up my sleeve nor she in her amethyst bodice. 8
The Grayson Bros. were stimulated by my multicuspid
stinker to return my MS. 'circumscribed appeal . . Gratuitous
"strength"'! What is that? I replied soliciting favour of readers[']
reports. Reply to the effect that there was no written record
of condemnation, that my book, an unusual, he might say,
privilege, had been read by 3 most distinguished readers and
discussed verbally with the Fratellacci; that their advice to me
frankly and without the least desire to wound was to lay aside
Dream altogether, forget it ever happened, be a good boy in future
9
Another scribble from Nancy from the Cunegonde on sub ject of touch. She has some Breton & Eluard MSS. I wrote saying it was always a pleasure to translate Eluard & Breton. 11
I'm sorry I can't enclose what I would like to in this letter, because I have not yet touche the filthy commodity. 12 As soon as I do I will.
Talking with a French woman here, Mme. Redmond, married to a Doctor, I was advised to address myself to Mr Blumenfeld,
135
18 October 1932, McGreevy
and compose what I was well-fitted to compose - a best-seller. When I had done that they would be interested to hear from me again. So I dried my eyes and sent it off to Titus, who has not acknowledged it yet. I tremble lest I should push him too far. 10
18 October 1932, McGreevy
editor of Daily Express, who is a bussom friend of hers and to
whom she would be most happy to give me a letter ofintroduction
overflowing with boniments of all kinds. Acting on same I com
posed last night an irresistible document. I may post it to-day - and
13
They are doing Romeo & Juliet at the Gate when they have
finished idealizing Wilde's husband. I lacked the spunk to go to Peer
Gynt. Such wonderful lighting, my dear, all coming from behind
instead of in front. Imagine that! And Grieg without mercy. 15
16
I may not.
of minuses is beginning to bow me down. I walk immeasurably & unrestrainedly, hills and dales, all day, and back with a couple of pints from the Powerscourt Arms under my Montpamasse belt through the Homer dusk. Often very moving and it helps to swamp the usual palpitations. But I disagree with you about the gardenish landscape. The lowest mountains here terrify me far more than anything I saw in Connemara or Achill. Or is it that a garden is more frightening than a waste? I walked across Prince William's Seat, a low mountain between the Glencullen & Glencree rivers, and was reduced almost to incontinence by the calm secret hostility. I ran down into Enniskerry. 14
My cuticle urges me to hibernate here, but the weight
Donagh Bryan is dead. Sam
Love ever.
ALS; 2 leaves. 4 sides: McGreevy. TCD. MS 10402/34.
1 Withhisletterof8October1932. SBhadsentMcGreevyanuntitledpoem. later published (without the first stanza) as '"Serena 1. ""
2 "Facultatif"" (optional).
""Quoi qu"il en soit"" (Whatever the case).
3 The poems "Alba. "" "Enueg 1. "" and "Dortmunder" were published in Echo"s Bones ([18]. [12-15], and [191). "Moly"" was published under the title ""Yoke of Liberty"' (Harvey, Samuel Beckett, 314; as "Moly,"" this poem is in the archives of Poetry Magazine (ICU) and in the A. J. Leventhal collection (TxU).
"Construits" (deliberately constructed).
136
4 SB alludes to the work of Richard Wagner.
These lines are from a poem by French surrealist poet Paul Eluard (1895-1952), "L'Invention" (Paul Eluard, Capitale de la douleur [Paris: Gallimard. 1964] 12-13); they are translated by SB as "What is the role of the root'? / Despair has broken all his bonds" (Paul Eluard, Thorns of Thunder: Selected Poems, tr. Samuel Beckett, Denis Devlin, David Gascoyne et al. , ed. George Reavey [London: Europa Press and Stanley Nott, 1936] 8).
5 "Terrain" (soil or ground); "faute d'orifice" (for want of an orifice).
6 PoemsofStephaneMallarme(1842-1898). "Swan"referstothesonnet,"Levierge,le vivace et le be! aujourd'hui" (The Virgin, Beautiful and Lively Day) (Oeuvres completes, I, ed. Bertrand Marchal, Bibliotheque de la Pleiade [Paris: Gallirnard, 1998] 36-37; "Sonnet" in Stephane Mallarrne, New and Collected Poems, tr. Roger Fry, with commentaries by Charles Mauron, The New Classics Series [New York: New Directions Books, 1951] 67). Mallarme·s "Herodiade" exists in several forms (Oeuvres completes, I, 17-22, 85-89, 135-152).
7 P. is Protestant. "Pendu" (hanged man).
8 Ethna Maccarthy. "Tis better thus" may allude to the play All for Love by John Dryden (1631-1700); referring to Antony, who is dead, Cleopatra says: "And, oh! 'tis better far to have him thus. / Than see him in her arms" Uohn Dryden, All for Love and The Spanish Fryar, ed. William Strunk, Jr. [Boston, D. C. Heath and Company, 1911] 144).
9 Although Charles Prentice wrote to Richard Aldington that he had heard Grayson and Grayson were going to publish Dream of Fair to Middling Women, they did not (5 September 1932, ICSo, Aldington 68/6/8). SB's letters to Grayson and Grayson are not extant. "Fratellacci" (wretched brothers).
10 SB sent Dream ofFair to Middling Women to Edward Titus, who was Editor of This Quarter from 1929 through 1932, and Editor of the Black Manikin Press from mid-1926 to spring 1932.
11 CunardwrotetoSBfromCuneges. intheDordogne. conflatedbySBwithCunegonde, a character in Candide ou l'optimisme (1759) by Voltaire (ne Fran,;:ois-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778). SB translated "Murderous Humanitarianism" by the "Surrealist Group" in Paris, a group which included Andre Breton and Paul Eluard (Cunard, ed. , Negro, Anthology, 574-575). Although SB writes to McGreevy that Cunard plans to send him "Eluard & Breton," as she does in December 1932 (21 November 1932, TCD, MS 10402/38), there is no indication that SB translated other work by either writer for Cunard. He had translated their writing for the surrealist number of This Qj. ulrter (see 13 [September 1932], n. 9).
12 "Touche" (got my hands on).
13 Mme. Marie Redmond (nee Robinson, known as Elsie, 1885-1976), married to Dr. H. E. Redmond (1882-1951), was born in Paris of English parents and had grown up there. In Dublin she was the "go to" person for French lessons and taught SB. In later years, she would say, "That Beckett fellow has done quite well, it seems" (Annick O'Meara, 17 October 2007).
Ralph D. Blumenfeld (1864-1948), the American-born Editor of the Daily Express (London) from 1902 to 1932, was a family friend of Mme. Redmond's parents.
"Boniments" (sales talk or puffs).
14 PrinceWilliam'sSeatisapromontorysouthofDublinontheWicklowWay;the town of Enniskerry lies north of it in the direction of Foxrock.
137
18 October 1932, McGreevy
18 October 1932, McGreevy
15 Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) opened at Dublin's Gate Theatre on 1 November 1932. Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband had played there from 18 October; prior to that, from 27 September to 15 October, the Gate produced a revival of Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906). Hilton RobertEdwards (1903-1982), a founder of the Gate Theatre, had directed the original production in October 1928; his revival was "improved" with the scenic concept of light coming from the back of the stage (The Irish Times 29 September 1932: 4).
Incidental Music to Peer Gynt for SoloVoices, Orchestra and Chorus, op. 23, by Norwegian composerEdvard Hagerup Grieg (1843-1907).
16 J. D.
