No More Learning

MORR ISSI NCLAIR DUB L I N
[after 13 July - before 2 August 1934]
48 Paulton's Square (London] S W 3
Cher Arni
Ravidetesavoirrer;:u,etsieminemment(. ]1 L'avenirt'appar­
tient, a condition que tu ne prenne [for prennes] jamais au serieux ce que je te dis. Car je suis comedien.
Ne crois pas que le ballet soit de la musique. C'est precise­ ment parce que la musique y joue un role subordonne que le
2
ballet m'irrite. Car la musique serieuse ne peut pas servir. Representer une musique d'une maniere particuliere, par [for au] moyen de danse, gestes, decors, costumes, etc. , c'est la
213
[after 13 July - before 2 August 1934}, Morris Sinclair
degrader, en en reduisant la valeur a une simple anecdote. 11 ya des gens qui ne savent se satisfaire que visuellement. Quant a moi, et pour mon malheur sans doute,je ne peux partir que les paupieres fermees.
Content de savoir que Boss ne m'en veut pas. Mais je le savais d'avance. 3
Jus est une jolie expression. �a graisse le siege de la vie, organe dontje n'aijamais pu determiner la position.
Je suppose que tu vas t'installer dans Trinity. Pense-tu etudier
4
le droit? Fai;:on de gagner la vie evidemment. Sonst . . .
Malgre ce que je t'ai ecrit touchant l'impossibilite de tra­
vailler, je viens de me livrer a des efforts d'enrage pour ecrire ce 5
quepersonneneveutentendre. N'est-cepasqu'onadesidees insensees, rien mains que des aberrations [sic].
Le soirje me promene pendant des heures, dans I'espoir de me faire un sommeil d'epuise. Et avec d'autant plus de satis­ faction que le mouvement tout seul constitue une espece d'anesthesie.
La douce lumiere d'un Velasquez dans ma chambre ce
6
Sam
ALS; 2 leaves, 2 sides; Sinclair. Dating: examination results were not yet announced when SB wrote to Morris Sinclair on 13 July 1934, for he asks "Is Sizarship result out yet? " SB left London on 2 August, and he wrote to McGreevy on 3 August from Cooldrinagh (TCD, MS 10402/59).
[after13July-before2August1934] 48Paulton'sSquare [London] S W 3
214
matin. Maisdansl'apresmidiceseraunfour. Tout a toi, et, encore une fois felicitations.
[after 13 July - before 2 August 1934}, Morris Sinclair 1
Dear Sunny,
Delighted that you have got it, and so splendidly. The
future belongs to you, provided that you never take seriously what I tell you. For I am a player.
Do not believe that ballet is music. It is precisely because
2
music has a subordinate part in it that ballet annoys me. For serious music cannot be of use. To represent a piece of music in a particular way, by means of dancing, gestures, settings, cos­ tumes, etc. , is to degrade it by reducing its value to mere anec­ dote. There are people who cannot achieve satisfaction unless they can see. As for me, to my misfortune no doubt, I cannot go off unless my eyes are closed.
Glad to hear that Boss bears me no ill-will. But that I knew
3
organ whose exact position I have never been able to determine.
I suppose that you are going to take rooms in Trinity. Do you
think you will read Law? A way of making a living obviously.
4
of working, I have just been making the most outlandish efforts
5
In the evenings I walk for hours, in the hope of tiring myself out in order to sleep. And enjoying it all the more since motion itself is a kind of anaesthesia.
A soft Velazquez light in my room this morning. But in the afternoon it will be an oven.
Ever and all yours, and, again, congratulations. Sam
215
beforehand.
Juice is a pretty expression. It lubricates the seat of life, an
Sonst . . .
In spite of what I wrote to you concerning the impossibility
to write what nobody wants to hear. We do have mad ideas, don't we, nothing short of aberrations.
[after 13 July - before 2 August 1934}, Morris Sinclair
1 Morris Sinclair was awarded the Sizarship in 1934; he is identified in the 1934-1935 Calendar as a Rising Junior Freshman Sizar. Sizarships awarded by Trinity College Dublin are scholarships that exempt students from tuition and commons fees, based upon the results of a competitive examination; sizarships are tenable for four years.
2 On13July1934,SBhadwrittentoMorrisSinclair:"Alsosawafewballets,among which de Falla's Tricorne, with Picasso decor & costumes. You would have loved it. " Le Tricome (1919; The Three-cornered Hat), with set and costumes by Picasso and choreogra­ phy by Leonide Massine (ne Leonid Fyodorovich Myasin, 1896-1979), and with Massine in his original role as the Miller. The ballet was in repertory at Covent Garden Theatre beginning on 19 June 1934, with a performance that night and on 13 July 1934.
3 Thepublicationof"TheSmeraldina'sBilletDoux"inMorePricksThanKicksupset Peggy Sinclair's parents Cissie and Boss Sinclair (see Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 176-177).
4 Sinclairdidnottakeupthestudyoflaw. "Sonst" (otherwise).
5 SB had written to Morris Sinclair on 13 July 1934: "I can't do any work, no more than a man can pick his snout and thread a needle at the same time. So I've nearly given up trying" (Sinclair).
THOMAS McGREEVY LONDON
Tuesday [7 August 1934]
Beckett & Medcalf, Quantity Surveyors Frank E. Beckett. B. A. I. 6, Clare Street,
Dublin
My dear Tom
Your letter this morning. Somehow things at home seem to
be simpler, I seem to have grown indifferent to the atmosphere of coffee-stall emotions [. . . ] But people's feelings don't seem to matter, one is nice ad lib. to all & sundry, offender & offended, with a basso profundo ofprivacy that never deserts one. It is only now that I begin to realize what the analysis has done for me.
216
[. . . ] And now I am obliged to accept the whole panic as
psychoneurotic- which leaves me in a hurry to get back & get
on. Had a long walk with Geoffrey Sunday to Enniskerry & got
1
[. . . ]
I suppose it is always gratifying to know that one is missed. I
seem to be sailing dangerously near Gide's BANAL. All that you
see fit to Hester. Beef on the Tiles is cowardly composition, like
2
I hear some creature called Kirwan (if that is how he spells it) has been abusing me right, left & centre all over London, but with particular emphasis in the Cafe Royal. A translator. I never heard of him. 3
I saw Yeats's two latest- Resurrection & the King of the Ould Clock Tower at the Abbey Saturday. The ancient Hemolater at play. Balbus building his wall would be more dramatic. And the Valois rolling her uterine areas with conviction. And Dolan chanting what Yeats, greatly daring, can compose in the way of blasphemy, making the Christ controvert the Plato. 4
A/fhe difference between the cities: Dublin consumes one's impatience, London one's patience. Which is the worse incendie? 5 With no Npers, and all the journalists creeping about mis­ erably, or filing mountains of copy that will never become
public, Dublin is at her humanest. 6
I think what you find cold in Milton I find final, for himself
at least, conflagrations of conviction cooled down to a finality of literary emission. With Laurence [for Lawrence] it is the conflagration transmitted telle quelle, which could never mean anything, even if the conflagration were a less tedious
217
Tuesday {7 August 1934}, McGreevy
soaked. Helikesyouverymuch&hopestobewritingtoyou soon.
allthepainting&writinginthisplace. Theterrorofoutline. I have it myself, but at least I know that I have.
Tuesday {7 August 1934), McGreevy
kindling of damp to begin with. 7 But I know that very often what I like to call the signs of enthusiasm you call the wreck of enthusiasm.
The Bookman writes, postponing all articles on Gide,
Rimbaud & kindred dangers, in favour of one on the wicked
Censorship in Ireland. By all means. I tried to get the Criminal
Law Amendment Act, but it has not yet been issued in the form of
8
ALS; 2 leaves, 4 sides; letterhead, A date by SB; env to Thomas McGreevy Esq, 15 Cheyne Gardens, Chelsea, London S. W. 3; pm 8-8-34, Dublin; TCD, MS 10402/60. Dating: pm 8 August 1934 was a Wednesday, and so the previous Tuesday was 7 August 1934.
1 Arthur Geoffrey Thompson• (known as Geoffrey, 1905-1976) was a pupil with SB at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, Ulster, and later at Trinity College Dublin where he qualified in Medicine in 1928. From 1930 he was a Physician at Baggot Street Hospital in Dublin, and then in 1934 he went to London to study psychoanalysis.
2 Inhisessay"De! 'influenceenlitterature,"AndreGidewrote:"Ungrandhomme n'a qu'un souci: devenir le plus humain possible, - disons mieux: DEVENIR BANAL" ("A great man has only one care: to become as human as possible, - I would rather say: TO BECOME BANAL") (Andre Gide, Oeuvres completes d'Andre Gide, III, ed. Louis Martin-Chauffier [Paris: Nouvelle Revue Fran�aise, 1933[ 262; in HJagopJ J. Nersoyan, Andre Gide: The Theism ofan Atheist [Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1969] 193).
Hester Dowden, with whom McGreevy stayed in London.
SB's reference to Beefon the Tiles in the context of Irish painting and writing is not clear, although his mention ofan outline suggests Jean Cocteau's scenario LeBoeufsur le toit ou The Nothing Doing Bar (1920; The Ox on the Roo_n for the ballet composed by Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) as Le Boeufsur le toit, op. 58.
3 PatrickKirwan(n. d. ),afriendofRupertGrayson,translator,andauthorofBlack Exchange (1934), published by Grayson and Grayson. The Cafe Royal, 68 Regent Street, London.
4 The Abbey Theatre production of The Resurrection and The King of the Great Clock Tower by W. B. Yeats opened on 30 July 1934. The "ancient Hemolater" refers to Christ; astonished characters, who have been discussing the Resurrection, observe of the ghostly figure of Christ in the play: "the heart of a phantom is beating" (W. B. Yeats, The Collected Plays ofW. B. Yeats, 2nd edn. [New York: Macmillan and Co. ,
218
a bill, or even taken shape as such according to Eason's expert. Love ever. Write soon
Sam
Frank & Geoffrey send salutations.
8 September 1934, McGreevy
1952] 372; see also Holloway. Joseph Holloway's Irish Theatre, II 1932-1937, ed. Hogan and O'Neill, 35).
The historical Lucius Cornelius Balbus (first century BC), a Phoenician who became a Roman consul and member ofthe first triumvirate, was a chiefofengineers. In Portrait oftheArtist as a YoungMan. Joyce describes a drawing on the door ofa water closet"ofa bearded man in a Roman dress with a brick in each hand and underneath was the
name of the drawing: Balbus was building a wall" Uoyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 43-44); this sentence was a common example in Latin textbooks (Mary Colum, Life and the Dream [Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co. , 1947] 357).
Irish-born dancer, teacher, and choreographer Ninette de Valois (neeEdris Stannus, 1898-2001), who had been a soloist with the Ballets Russes (1923-1926) of Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev (1872-1929), was Principal ofthe Abbey Theatre School ofBallet. Yeats dedicated The King ofthe Great Qock Tower to her ("Asking pardon for covering her expressive face with a mask"); she performed the role ofthe Queen who dances with the severed head ofthe Stroller (The Collected Plays ofW. B. Yeats, 397, 400).
Actor and Manager of the Abbey Theatre Michael J. Dolan (1884-1954) played the role ofMusician in The Resurrection. At the close ofthe play, the Musican sings, "Odour ofblood when Christ was slain/ Made all Platonic tolerance vain/ And vain all Doric discipline" (The Collected Plays of W. B. Yeats, 373).
5 SBwrote"A"over"The"andjoinedthemwithabracket. "Incendie" (fire).
6 AnewspaperstrikebeganinDublinon26Julyandendedon29September1934 (The Times 27 July 1934: 16; The Times 29 September 1934: 12).
7 SBcomparesJohnMilton(1608-1674)andD. H. Lawrence. "Telle quelle" Uust as it is).
8 TheBookman(London,1891-1934).
Although the Criminal Law Amendment Act, which sought to protect young girls and suppress brothels and prostitution, was introduced in the Dail Eireann on 21 June 1934, it was not enacted until 28 February 1935. The proposed Act did not affect the censorship laws except to close a "loophole in the Censorship of Publications Act (1929), which outlawed the advertisement ofcontraceptives while not legally pro­ scribing their importation or sale" Games M. Smith, "The Politics ofSexual Knowledge: The Origins oflreland's Containment Culture and 'The Carrigan Report' (1931). " Journal ofthe History ofSexuality 13. 2 [April 2004] 213).
Eason and Sons, bookseller, manufacturing stationer, and publisher. 70 and 80-82 Middle Abbey Street, Dublin.
THOMAS McGREEVY TARBE R T,CO- KERRY
34 Gertrude Street [London] S. W. 10
219
8/9/34
8 September 1934, McGreevy
My dear Tom
Glad to hear from you & that all is well. My kindest respects
to your Mother & sister. I hope you have the quiet time & rest that I know you are in need of & that your botherations will leave you quite alone. 1[. . . ] Glad to hear Higgins hasn't got his prop ofsong in pickle for me, the Olympic mistletoe one doesn't mind. 2
I think I like this place, Mrs Frost (nee Queeney from dear
old Athlone among the bushes) & Mr Frost, retired chauffeur &
maid to some of the extinct nobility, know all about pipes of
port & China tea, Fred Frost Jr. dentist's mechanic & person of
incredible handiness about a house, installing baths & closets
without the least aid or assistance, has just fixed up a reading
lamp for me with which I can visit the remotest comers of the
room, & Queeney Frost, the midinette complete with weak eyes
3
abeyance. MrsF. isakindofmotherondraught,youpullthe
pull & she appears with tea, Sanatogen, hot water to stupe a stye,
every variety ofabstract succour & a heavy sane willing presence
altogether. 5 I am made free of the kitchen regions, which is
better than a million golden gas-rings, & my collapses into an
atmosphere of home-made jam & the Weekly Telegraph are
encouraged without being solicited. A plaster for panic at all
times, if it's only Mr F. 's snoring next door in the small hours or
the young married couple upstairs (waiter at the Cadogan &
maid to one of the somnolent furies at the Hans Crescent) wak­
6
thatIhadgivenupallhopeof. Alarvalpianoinfrontdrawing room with the first note of Jeune Fille Aux Cheveux alas in
4
ingupforaquickone. Bigbigroomwithplentyofspacetopace the masterpieces up & down & linoleum like Braque seen from a great distance. Rent same as at P. S. , extras haply very much less. 7 I take nearly all my meals downstairs in the kitchen & she didn't
220
flinch when I produced my Lapsang in favour of her Lipton's. For the moment at least all is well.
I got your letter this afternoon when I called round to 15.
I looked in on Thursday for a tune but found the Steinway
comme un pretre mis en morceaux & a man with a green baize
cache-sexe-a-peine combing the wreck for moths. It was reas­
sembled this morning but N. wouldn't hear ofit being touched
8
I rang up Bookman with my larynx quivering with sneers &
girds, but Ross Williamson the Younger poured such ecstasies
down the wire that I couldn't place one. The article on the
Censorship had doubled him up with Hodder & Stoughton sat­
isfactions, his brother was at that very moment en train de baver
la-dessus (meaning that they were very doubtful about its propri­
ety), they were living in the hope ofluring (who has been getting
at them? ) me out to Hammersmith, Norah Maguinness [for
9
221
8 September 1934, McGreevy
tillthetunercameonMon.
Iprotestedtherewouldbenoharm trying but she swelled & perspired visibly on the right side of the threshold & I went off to the gallery in a pet. However I had already collected books & coat.
Since when no proofs bad cess to them & no invite thank God. Then I went to see Goldsmith. La gueule rose et grave a en mourir. He had no news ofthe verges, i. e. bad news, so I didn't apply for particulars. Richard was back at the gears en route for the Loire. 10 I said that when a man had got into the habit, as I would have seemed to, of estimating his life in terms of apprehending (the eyes closed at this first sign ofdanger & the wary wobble of the jowls) & the motive for living as the impulse to understand perhaps a little improvement on self-justification in the sphere of welfare­ working, the only calamity was suspension of the faculty or, worse still, the need, to apprehend & understand. He stood up:
McGuinness] was on the verge of return, goodbye.
8 September 1934, McGreevy
Some people apprehend too much, goodbye, know there's no good asking you for dinner, lunch some day, goodbye.
The covey seemed nice after the rest from him & we got
going again. I had an appointment yesterday, but had to put him
offon account ofmy eye which has been rather bad but which is
all right to-day more or less, thanks to stuping, eye-shade &
11
What a reliefthe Mont Ste. Victoire after all the anthropo­
morphised landscape - van Goyen, Avercamp, the Ruysdaels,
Hobbema, even Claude, Wilson & Crome Yellow Esq. , or paran­
thropomorphised by Watteau so that the Debarquement seems
an illustration of "poursuivre ta pente pourvu qu'elle soit en
montant", or hyperanthropomorphized by Rubens - Tellus in
record travail, or castrated by Corot; after all the landscape "pro­
moted" to the emotions of the hiker, postulated as concerned
with the hiker (what an impertinence, worse than Aesop & the
12
Also one ofthe more endearing derivatives ofimpetigo on my lip, where there is quite a little colony of erectile tissue as I discovered during my holiday. I have hopes ofanalysis going a bit faster now. IfI could get it over by Xmas I'd be crowned.
optrex.
animals), alive the way a lap or a fist (Rosa) is alive.
Cezanne
seems to have been the first to see landscape & state it as material
of a strictly peculiar order, incommensurable with all human
expressions whatsoever. Atomistic landscape with no velleities
of vitalism, landscape with personality a la rigueur, but per­
13
Ruysdael's [for Ruisdael's] Entrance to the Forest - there is no
entrance anymore nor any commerce with the forest, its dimen­
14
standing ofthe term "natural" for idiot.
So the problem (as it would seem to preoccupy perhaps
the least stultified of the younger Dublin decorators, viz.
222
sonality in its own terms, not in Pelman's, landscapality.
sions are its secret & it has no communications to make. Cezanne leaves landscape maison d'alienes & a better under­
15
8 September 1934, McGreevy
McGonigail [for MacGonigal]) of how to state the emotion of
Ruysdael in terms of post-impressionist painting must disappear
as a problem as soon as it is realised that the Ruysdael emotion is
no longer authentic & Cuyp's cows as irrelevant as Salomon's
urinator in Merrion Square except as a contrivance to stress the
discrepancy between that which cannot stay still for its phases &
that which can. I felt that discrepancy acutely this last time in
Dublin, myself as exhausted of meaning by the mountains, my
16
sadness at being chained to the oar of my fidgets.
And the
Impressionists darting about & whining that the scene wouldn't
rest easy! How far Cezanne had moved from the snapshot puer­
ilities of Manet & Cie when he could understand the dynamic
intrusion to be himself & so landscape to be something by
definition unapproachably alien, unintelligible arrangement of
atoms, not so much as ruffled by the kind attentions of the
17
itch to animise than the etat d'ame balls, banquets & parties.
Or - after Xerxes beating the sea, the Lexicographer kicking the
stone & the Penman under the bed during the thunder - any
irritation more mievre than that of Sade at the impossibilite
18
beginning to be dehumanised as the individual feels himself more & more hermetic & alone & his neighbour a coagulum as alien as a protoplast or God, incapable of loving or hating any­ one but himself or of being loved or hated by anyone but himself.
19
Reliability Joneses.
Could there be any more ludicrous rationalisation of the
d'outrager la nature. A. E. 's Gully would have thrilled him. Perhaps it is the one bright spot in a mechanistic age - the deanthropomorphizations of the artist. Even the portrait
God love thee & forgive the degueulade. Ever
sf Sam
223
8 September 1934, McGreevy
The Folies Bergeres [for Bergere] was looking unspeakable but
20
TLS; 2 leaves, 3 sides; A env to Thomas McGreevy Esq, Tarbert, Limerick, Irish Free State;
pm 10-9-34, London; TCD, MS 10402/63.
1 McGreevy is in Tarbert with his mother and one of his sisters. McGreevy had deferred his holiday due to work in London; he was also worried about his mother's and his own health (McGreevy to his mother, 29 August 1934 and 23 September 1934, TCD, MS 10381/70 and /71).
2 Irish critic and poet Frederick Robert Higgins (1896-1941) advocated that Irish poets write from folk materials. In his "Recent Irish Poetry," published in The Bookman under the pseudonym of Andrew Belis, SB admired the "good smell of dung" in Higgins's poetry but placed him among the "antiquarians"; in this essay SB quoted the poem that Higgins addresses "To my blackthorn stick": "'And here, as in green days you were the perch, /You're now the prop of song"' (The Bookman 86. 515 [August 19341 235-236); F. R. Higgins, Arable Holdings: Poems [Dublin: The Cuala Press, 1933] 7-8).
SB's essay had "raised a stonn" in Dublin: according to a letter from Denis Devlin to McGreevy: "It appears Yeats was furious: it appears that Austin Clarke [. . . J will pursue Sam to his grave; it appears Seamas [for Seumas! O'Sullivan thought he might have been mentioned at least"; while Higgins was "glad 'he got off so lightly'" (31 August 1934, TCD, MS 8112/5).
3 SB had just moved from Paultons Square to 34 Gertrude Street, Chelsea, two blocks north of the World's End pub on King's Road. Mrs. Frost was from Athlone, Co. Westmeath, Ireland.
"Pipes of port" refers to a measure for 550 litres of port; "midinette" (shopgirl).
4 A"larval"pianoisonewithwoodworminthesoundingboard(EdwardBeckett). The first note of Debussy's "Jeune Fille aux cheveux de Jin" is D-flat.
5 Sanatogenwasthetradenameofglycerophosphatedcasein,aproteinsupplement advertised as a nerve tonic to increase appetite and red blood corpuscles if taken daily.
6 TheWeeklyTelegraph(1862-1951),aSaturdaynewspaperwithnationalcirculation produced by The Sheffield Telegraph, with offices in London and Sheffield.
The Cadogan Hotel. 75 Sloane Street. London SWl; The Hans Crescent Hotel and Service Flats, 1 Hans Crescent, Belgravia, London SWl.
7 GeorgesBraque(1882-1963),Frenchfauvist/cubistpainter. P[aultonsj S[quarej.
8 15CheyneGardens,Chelsea,homeofMrs. HesterDowden. N. isMrs. Neighbour (n. d. ), her housekeeper (Edmund Bentley, Far Horizon: A Biography of Hester Dowden, Medium and Psychic Investigator [London: Rider and Company. 1951144).
"Comme un pretre mis en morceaux" (like a priest torn to pieces); "cache-sexe-. i­ peine" (a string that couldn't even be called G).
9 InresponsetotherequestofBookman,asSBreportedtoMcGreevy,"Igroundout miserably 1800 words on Censorship for Bookman, which they will surely reject" (28 [for 27j August 1934, TCD, MS 10402/62).
224
the Umbrellas lovely.
The Editor of The Bookman from 1930 to spring 1934 was Hugh Ross Williamson (1901-1978); he was succeeded by his younger brother Reginald Pole Ross Williamson (1907-1966). The journal was in financial difficulty, so the publishers Hodder and Stoughton decided to halt publication; although the Williamson brothers then tried to buy the journal, the final issue of The Bookman was that of December 1934.
"En train de baver la-dessus" (slobbering over it). Reginald Ross Williamson lived in Hammersmith.
Irish-born painter, book illustrator, and designer Norah McGuinness (1901-1980) had studied in Paris and lived in London at this time.
10 Goldsmith has not been identified.
"La gueule rose et grave a en mourir" (all pink faced and desperately solemn). "Verges" (penises, i. e. pricks [More Pricks Than Kicks]).
Richard Aldington had spent June through early September in Austria recovering from an automobile accident, and now was driving to France.
11 "Covey," SB's usual nickname for W. R. Bion, is a variant on the slang "cove" (bloke).
Optrex was a commercial eye drop.
12 SB's reference to Mont. Sainte-Victoire by Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) is to La Montagne Sainte-Victoire au Grand Pin (Venturi 454) from the collection of Samuel Courtauld (1876-1947); it was on loan to the National Gallery, London, from March 1934 and would have been on public display through that year Uacqueline Mccomish, The National Gallery, 26 April 1994).
Dutch artistsJan van Goyen (1596-1656), Hendrik Avercamp (1585-1634), Salomon van Ruysdael (c. 1600-1670), Meindert Hobbema (1638-1709); French artist Claude (le) Lorrain (neClaudeGeleeorGellee,c. 1604-1682);WelshpainterRichardWilson(c. 1713-1782)SB may refer to English artist John Crome (1768-1821) as "Crome Yellow Esq. "
The landscape by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), Pelerinage ii l'ile de Cythere (1717; known as Embarkation for the Island of Cythera, Louvre 8525); since 1961 it has been suggested that the theme of the painting is actually departure from the island of Cythera (Michael Levey, "The Real Theme of Watteau's Embarkation for Cythera," Burlington Magazine 103. 698 [May 1961] 180-185; Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Pierre
Rosenberg,Watteau, 1684-1721 [Washington,DC:NationalGalleryofArt,1984]399-401). "Poursuivre ta pente pourvu qu'elle soit en montant" (follow your incline so long as it is uphill), possibly from Andre Gide, Les Faux-Monnayeurs: "11 est bon de suivre sa pente, pourvu que ce soit en montant" (It's a good thing to follow one's inclination, provided it leads upward) (Romans: redts et soties, oeuvres lytiques, ed. Yvonne Davet and Jean-Jacques Thierry. Bibliotheque de la Pleiade [Paris: Gallimard, 1958) 1215; The
Counteefeiters, tr. Dorothy Bussy [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927) 327).
SB characterizes the landcapes ofRubens in terms of Tellus, the Roman goddess of nature, in "travail" (labor). French realist painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875). In the fables attributed to Aesop (629-560 BC). animals have human
attributes. Italian baroque painter, Salvator Rosa (1615-1673).
13 "A la rigueur" Uust about, perhaps).
W. J. Ennever (1869-1947) founded the Pelman Institute for the Scientific Development of Mind, Memory, and Personality in 1989 in London; Pelmanism was a memory theory based on association which was applied specifically to language learn­ ing; the method was widely advertised as a means to develop the mind's latent powers.
225
8 September 1934, McGreevy
8 September 1934, McGreevy
14 SBreferstoapainting,notbySalomonvanRuysdaelbutbyJacobvanRuisdael (1628/1629-1682), Entrance to the Forest (National Gallery, London. 2563). Although identified as such in the National Gallery Illustrations: Continental Schools (excluding Italian) ([London: Printed for the Trustees. 19371 326), the attribution to Jacob van Ruisdael is now considered dubious; the painting appears as Ford in a Wood near a Church in Seymour Slive,Jacob van Ruisdael: A Complete Catalogue ofHis Paintings, Drawings and Etchings (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001) 638.
15 "Maisond'alienes"(lunaticasylum).
16 Irish landscape painter Maurice J. MacGonigal (1900-1979). Dutch landscape painter Aelbert Cuyp (1620-1691). The Halt (1667, NG! 507) by Salomon van Ruysdael includes a figure urinating against a wall on the far right side of the painting.
The National Gallery of Ireland is on Merrion Square.
17 "Manet&Cie"referstoEdouardManet(1832-1883)andhisfellowimpressionists.
SB substitutes "Reliability" for "Capability" and conflates the name ofEnglish land- scape architect Capability Brown (ne Lancelot Brown, 1716-1783) with that ofEnglish architect Inigo Jones (1573-1652).
18 "Etatd'ame"(mood).
Xerxes the Great (519-465 BC), King of Persia from 486 to 465 BC, built a bridge across the Strymon and two bridges of ships across the Hellespont; when these were destroyed by a storm, he had the sea whipped.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) refuted Bishop Berkeley's argument "to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal" by "striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone" Games Boswell, Boswell's Life of]ohnson, Together with Boswell'sJournal ofa Tour to the Hebrides andJohnson's Diary ofa Journey into North Wales, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, rev. and enlarged L. F. Powell, I, The Life {1709-1765} [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934] 471).
The "Penman" James Joyce feared thunderstorms: "The thunderstorm as a vehicle of divine power and wrath moved Joyce's imagination so profoundly that to the end of his life he trembled at the sound" (Ellmann,Jamesjoyce, 25).
"Mievre" (childishly vapid).
The Marquis de Sade (ne Donatien-Alphonse-Fran�ois, Comte de Sade, 1740-1814), wrote, for example, in La Nouvelle Justine ou, Les Malheurs de la vertu (1797): "l'impossibi­ lite d'outrager la nature est, selon moi, le plus grand supplice de l'homme" (the impossibility of an outrage against nature is, for me, man's greatest torment) (Marquis de Sade, Oeuvres completes du Marquis de Sade, VI, ed. Annie Le Brun and Jean-Jacques Pauvert [Paris: Pauvert, 1987] 281).
AE's Seascape: The Gully (Municipal Gallery ofModern Art, now the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, no. 243) shows two female figures upon a rock, surrounded by the rush and eddy ofthe surf.
19 "Degueulade"(longpuke).
20 Manet'sUnBarauxFolies-BergerewasonexhibitattheNationalGalleryfromthe collection of Samuel Courtauld from 1 March 1934. The painting had been in such poor condition that, when shown in the Manet Exhibition in Paris (1932), it was placed in a specially designed box that controlled conditions; after two years ofrestoration by Kennedy North, it was lent to the National Gallery (Frank Rutter, "Manet's 'Bar aux Folies-Bergere,"' Apollo 19. 113 [May 19341 244-247).
226
Sunday {16 September 1934}, McGreevy
Les Parap! uies (The Umbrellas; National Gallery 3268) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was part of the Hugh Lane bequest to the National Gallery that was disputed because of an unwitnessed codicil that altered his bequest to the National Gallery of London in favor of the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin.
THOMAS McGREEVY TARBERT,CO. KERRY
Sunday [16 September 1934) 34 Gertrude Street London S. W. 10
My dear Tom
Glad you had such a pleasant time at Dunquin & that your
Mother is happy. I feel your holiday has been a great success so far & may it end with the beam in your mind that will make such
1
morning. Unfortunately he is only staying the week-end. But he will be telling you his plans himself. It seems on the cards that you will cross together -- 2
I am all right, belting along with the covey with great free­ dom of indecency & conviction. No work for myself -
I do not see any possibility of relationship, friendly or unfriendly, with the unintelligible, and what I feel in Cezanne is precisely the absence of a rapport that was all right for Rosa or Ruysdael for whom the animising mode was valid, but would have been false for him, because he had the sense of his incom­ mensurability not only with life of such a different order as land­ scape but even with life of his own order, even with the life - one feels looking at the self-portrait in the Tate, not the Cezanne chauve but with the big hat - operative in himself. 3 I can under­ stand the humility in terms of "there but for the grace of G. "
227
a difference to you.
Geoffrey is crossing Friday next & I am seeing him Saturday
Sunday {16 September 1934], McGreevy
or "there but for the disgrace ofthis old bastard", humility before
the doomed & the assumed, but before the panoplies of blank­
ness . . . comprends pas. No doubt I exaggerate the improbability
of turning into landscape one very fine day, is that why the
Ghirlandaio Dafne means so much to me? " But from one's
own ragbag of dissociations to the pantheistic monism of the
5
stituted the devoir de discretion for the folie pour rien should be so true now: "La vie d'un homme etait une suite de hasards. Maintenant la civilisation a chasse le hasard, plus d'imprevu. "6
I must think of Rousseau as a champion of the right to be
alone and as an authentically tragic figure in so far as he was
denied enjoyment ofthe right, not only by a society that consid­
ered solitude as a vice (il n'y a que le mechant qui soit seul) but by
the infantile aspect, afraid of the dark, of his own constitution.
And he knew it himself, that he would always fall for a show of
tenderness as being more like the genuine uterine article than
the face ofeven the Ile de St. Pierre: "Mon plus grand malheur fut
7
how to trim his sails between the two positions he would have
suffered less. And why not whimper under the bougie? 8 I haven't
read the Contrat, but I suppose [J! ! i� at least is an attempt to
resolve the dichotomy or make the passage between its terms
9
Metamorphoses is a saut too perilleux altogether. Alas that Stendhal's thesis that the world had lost its energy when it sub­
toujoursdenepouvoirresisteraux'caresses'". Ifhehadknown
lessofagauntlet&moreofaright-of-way. Butalwaystheback ground of promeneur solitaire, micturating without fear or favour in a decor that does not demand to be entertained, & I think the freedom ample enough to allow of that would not object to Diderot's unbuttoning himself in a select public. A society that can be induced to put up with the "douceur du desoeuvrement" will put up with anything. 10
228
Sunday {16 September 1934}, McGreevy
Herewith divil the much better than nothing. Shall send a quid to-morrow or next day to await you chez Geoffrey. 11
Love ever Sam -
Haven't yet been round to see Hester. 12
ALS; 2 leaves. 4 sides; PS, upper left top margin ofside 1, written perpendicularly to the page; env to Thomas McGreevy Esq. , Tarbert, Limerick, Irish Free State; pm 16-9-34, London; TCD, MS 10402/64. Dating: pm; 16 September 1934 was Sunday.
1 Dunquin,Co. Kerry,isacliff-topvillageoverlookingtheBlasketIslands,nearthe Dingle Peninsula.
2 McGreevy returned to London from Dublin by 22 September (McGreevy to his mother, 23 September 1934, TCD, MS 10381/71). Geoffrey Thompson.
3 SBreferstoaPortraitofCezanne(1879-1882,Venturi366,inthecollectionofLord Ivor Spencer Churchill), on loan to the Tate Gallery from February 1934 to February 1935 Oane Ruddell, Tate GalleryArchive, 23 March 1994). Cezanne's Self-Portrait with Olive Wallpaper (sometimes called Cezanne chauve, 1880-1881, Venturi 365) was acquired by the Tate in 1926 through the Courtauld Fund, but is now in the National Gallery, London (NGL 4135).
4 SBwrote"<his>intermsof. "
"Comprends pas" ([! ] don't understand).
Florentine painter Domenico Ghirlandaio (c. 1448-1494) did no painting of Daphne.
SB may be referring to Apollo and Daphne (1470-1480, NGL 928), painted byAntonio Pollaiuolo (c. 1432-1498), which depicts the dynamics ofthe chase just asApollo has seized Daphne, whose arms have turned to tree branches so that she cannot be carried off by him. "Dafne" is the Italian spelling of"Daphne. "
5 TheMetamorphosesofOvid(nePubliusOvidiusNaso,43BC-AD? 17). "Pantheistic monism" is a term used by Baruch Spinoza (also Benedict de Spinoza, 1632-1677).
"Saut" (leap); "perilleux" (dangerous); SB separates the constituents of "saut peril­ leux" (acrobat's leap).
6 BeforeheseducesMathilde(Mlle. delaMole),Julienconsiders:"Sonpremierdevoir etait la discretion" (His first duty was to be discreet) (Stendhal, Le Rouge et le noir: chronique du XIXe siecle [Paris; Llbrairie Gamier Freres, 1925; rpt.