SB read and made notes from Nordau's
Degeneration
(translator not indicated [London: William Heinemann, 1895]; see Pilling, ed.
Samuel Beckett
But the Joyce bit that comes next seems to be more suitable for a long work than a short one, & anyhow it's not his own style, & the best parts, though there are some supreme times in them, dribble through one's hands in a way that cannot be wholly inten tional" (3 August 1931, TCD, MS 8092/50).
The story that SB calls "They Go Out for the Evening" became the next section ofDream ofFair to Middling Women (74-99).
2 SBmetPrenticeinLondonon28July1931ashetraveledfromFrancetoDublin. As SB explained to McGreevy: "A very pleasant evening with Charles Prentice. His voice slows down your heart and tires your eyes. I brought him round the ? next day though I hadn't meant to. Haven't heard anything since. Proposed a Dostoievski for the sake of something to say more than anything else & knowing bloody well I would (could) never do it. Fortunately the partner refrained from being interested" ([? after
82
apex and then I hope it will develop seven spectral petals.
5
It yielded so
[? after 15 August 1931}, McGreevy
2 August to 8 August 1931], TCD, MS 10402/12). Prentice wrote to McGreevy: "He didn't formally submit the story, but he allowed me personally to see it - yet I fear that the firm won't do it, if it were offered to them" (3 August 1931, TCD. MS 8092/50).
3 "WalkingOut"waspublishedasastoryinMorePricksThanKicks(London:Chatto and Windus, 1934). "Whore's get" (Ir. slang, lowest of the low).
4 "Dada"(colloq. ,hobbyhorse).
The seven spectral petals suggest the women in the amphitheatre of Paradise, who sit at Mary's feet; Rachel with Beatrice, Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, and Ruth are enthroned on the rose, dividing those who believe in the Christ yet to come from those who held their eyes on the Christ already come (Dante, The Divine Comedy, III. Paradiso. tr. John D. Sinclair [London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1946, rev. 1948] Canto XXXII, lines 7-18, 463).
5 Charles Prentice had sent SB his copy of D. H. Lawrence's Apocalypse, edited by Richard Aldington (Florence: G. Orioli, 1931); Lawrence's commentary on the Book of Revelation had been published in this limited edition on 3 June 1931; trade editions did not follow until November 1931 (New York: Knopf) and May 1932 (London: Secker). Prentice replied to SB: "By all means. keep 'Apocalypse' until you have properly finished with it. There is no hurry, but when you have finished with it I shall be glad to have it back again" (18 August 1931, UoR. MS 2444 CW letterbook 133/708).
THOMAS McGREEVY LE CAN ADE L, VAR
[? after 15 August 1931] T. C. D. [Dublin]
Dear Tom
May all things come right somehow and you be happy some
how[. ] 1
No news from outside or inside. Charles Prentice sent my
thing back with a covering letter putting charming and gracious relations before me. He is very nice. Pinker sent back a short story
2
I'm very tired, tired - enough to slip back into the embarrassed
respirations. Herewith. I can't write like Boccaccio and I don't
3
witharejectionslip. Idon'tknowwhetherheisveryniceornot.
wanttowritelikeBoccaccio. I'llstayintownandtakedownthe petites merdes de mon ame. No I never did the T. S. E. Telegraphie
83
{? after 15 August 1931}, McGreevy
4
settle in Ireland with the two youngest children. Boss won't leave
sansether. NothingmoreaboutLeipzig. Cissiemaybecomingto
the sinking ship - because ofthe virgins on board. 5 I was reading 6
yourcabpoem. Wentupinaspasmisagreatphrase. Yes,Night
of the Rabblement is good. Silence Exile and Cunning isn't quite
H. C. E. However I don't feel there's anything wrong anywhere.
He's getting a great name for himself in Dublin by the way. The
cute thing to do now would be to write the Prolegomena ofW. I. P.
Do you feel like collelaborating? And what about making a book
on the title? 7 I have not yet said anything to Ruddy about fucking
the field. He wanted me to apply for a job, oh a very good job, in
Capetown or for a job, oh quite a good job, in Cardiff, where I could
lie with Rikky. Starkie will probably be appointed at Oxford -
he was first man out last time, and then my dear Sam of course
they'll appoint you Professor of Italian Literature juxta Dublin
8
fricatrix on her bicycle, the sabreflat fricatrix, for dear death
pedalling faster and faster, her mouth ajar and her nostrils
dilated. Daddy says come off it for the love of God, come out
and dine, I'll give you a drink, kiss and make friends. God bless
dear Daddy Mummy Frank Bibby and all that I love and make
9
juxta Dublin. That'll be the real pig's back. I'll feel like a
me a good boy for Jesus Christ's sake armen.
So I said some
thing quiet and flat and blank but I won't. No sir. Nothing
would induce me to. Pelorson was glad to hear about Grasset.
He is very mou and I don't see enough of him. Like one of his
10
TL; 1 leaf, 1 side; TCD, MS 10402/25. Dating: follows SB to Charles Prentice 15 August 1931 which indicates that Pinker had returned the story.
84
own policepigeons - mous et lourds sur les toits du monde. Dear Tom forgive and forget this pestilential letter. I feel
hollow.
Beautiful greetings to Richard and Bridget [for Brigit]11
and love ever
[? after 15 August 1931}, McGreevy
1 RichardAldington,withwhomMcGreevywasstayinginLeCanadel,wasunwell, as was McGreevy's mother. Offurther concern to McGreevy was where he would go when Aldington left the south of France; he confided to Prentice that staying with Hester Dowden• (1868-1949) in London would be impossible because the forthcoming marriage of her daughter Dolly Travers-Smith to Lennox Robinson "has been rather a knock out" (29July 1931, UoR, MS 2444 CW 41/2).
2 Prentice'slettertoSBhasnotbeenfoundintheChattoandWindusfiles(UoR), which suggests that it was a personal letter covering the return ofthe stories.
3 SB sent "Walking Out" to McGreevy. Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), Italian author best known for the Decameron (1349-1351).
4 "Petitesmerdesdemoname"(droppingsfrommysoul).
SB did not write the review of McGreevy's Thomas Stearns Eliot, nor of Eliot's trans lation ofAnabase by St. ·John Perse.
SB spins T. S. E. (Eliot's initials) into "Telegraphie sans ether" (literally, telegraphy without ether), playing on "Telegraphie Sans Fil" (wireless), commonly referred to in France as TSF.
5 SBhadbeenthinkingofgoingtoLeipzig(see112September1931I). CissieSinclair considered leaving Germany and returning to Ireland with her two youngest children, Deirdre and Morris (1918-2007); however, her husband, Boss, was unwilling to leave Kassel because their older daughters Annabel Lilian (known as Nancy, 1916-1969), Sara Estella (known as Sally, 1910-1976), and Peggy wanted to remain in Germany where they had boyfriends (Morris Sinclair, 10 August 2004).
6 McGreevy's "cab poem" is "Cron Trath Na nDeithe" (Twilight ofthe Gods); the phrase is from part III: "When the Custom House took fire / Hope slipped off her green petticoat / The Four Courts went up in a spasm / Moses felt for Hope" (MacGreevy, Collected Poems of Thomas MacGreery, 19, 107-122; the translation of the Irish title is supplied by Susan Schreibman with an explanation ofits context, 109).
7 "Night of the Rabblement" plays on the title of an indignant essay by James Joyce about the parochialism of the Irish Literary Theatre, "The Day of the Rabblement" (15 October 1901);Joyce's essay was rejected by St. Stephen's, a magazine published by students ofUniversity College. Joyce protested to the President of the University, and, in the end, the essay was privately printed (F. J. C. Skeffington and James Joyce, Two Essays: A Forgotten Aspect of the University Question, and The Day of the Rabblement [Dublin: Gerrard Brothers, 19011 7-8; rpt. in The Critical Writings of]ames Joyce, ed. Ellsworth Mason and Richard Ellmann ! Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1959] 68-72).
Near the end ofJoyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the character Stephen
Dedalus avows: "I will try to express myselfin some mode oflife or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use - silence, exile, and cunning" (247).
Padraic Colum (1881-1972) reviewed Joyce's Haveth Childers Everywhere ("From a Work in Progress," Dublin Magazine 6. 3 [July-September 1931] 33-37); a review of Stuart Gilbert's study James Joyce's "Ulysses" had appeared in the previous issue of Dublin Magazine (6. 2 [April-June 1931] 64-65). The London wedding ofJames and Nora Joyce received mention in The Irish Times (4 July 1931: 6; 11 July 1931: 6). SB proposes that he and McGreevy write a preface or introduction to Work in Progress, or a book on the (as yet unannounced) title of the novel.
85
[? after 15 August 1931], McGreevy
8 "Fucking the field": SB's grotesque English-literal adaptation of the dead French metaphor "foutre le camp" (get away quickly). Rudmose-Brown encouraged SB to seek academic positions in Cape Town, SouthAfrica, and at the University of Cardiff, Wales. Leopold John Dixon Richardson (known as Reeky, called by SB "Rikky," 1893-1979), who had won highest honors in Classics at Trinity College Dublin; he was lecturer inLatin at the University of Cardiff.
Walter Starkie had been a Visiting Professor at the University of Madrid (1928-1929) and may have been considered for a position at Oxford, but he remained at TCD until 1940, when he became Director of the British Institute in Madrid.
9 TheimageofthesabreflatfricatrixappearsinDreamofFairtoMiddlingWomenas "the hard breastless Greek Slave or huntress" (83); the phrase "his mouth ajar and his nostrils dilated" appears in the opening of this novel (1). The prayer beginning "God bless" is found in Dream of Fair to Middling Women (8); Bibby was SB's nanny (Bridget Bray, n. d. ) (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 35-36, 134-135).
10 SB had written to thank McGreevy for sending on the manuscript of Georges Pelorson's novel "Claudiurnales" to Henri Muller (1902-1980); Muller, a friend of Pelorson, worked directly with Bernard Grasset (1881-1955), the founder and editor of Les Editions Grasset, Paris. SB commented to McGreevy: "Neither do I think Grasset will take it" ([after 2August - before 8August 1931] TCD, MS 10402/12). Pelorson had typed the novel on SB's typewriter, and sent it to McGreevy at SB's insistence; the manuscript was indeed refused (Belmont, Souvenirs d'outre-monde, 415-416).
"Mou" (soft); "mous et lourds sur Jes toits du monde" (soft and heavy on the roofs of the world). Pelorson said he saw a similarity between the walk of an Irish policeman and the strutting of pigeons (interview 2 November 1990).
11 Richard Aldington, Brigit Patmore. SB wrote "<theAldingtons> Richard and Bridget. "
SAMUEL PUTNAM PA R! S
[before 7 September 1931] [Dublin]
[no greeting]
Many thanks for N. R. and for including my lovely lovely poem
1
and for somebody's obliging observations on my Proust turd. Hoping to send you sometime something very nice.
Tanti saluti to the thousands of them that love me. 2 Yrs ever
86
Samuel Beckett
Saturday {12 September 1931}, McGreevy
ACS; 1 leaf, 1 side; NjP, New Review Correspondence of Samuel Putnam, COl 11/1/9. Dating: before 7 September 1931, when Prentice sent SB a copy of Richard Thoma's "Island Without Serpents. " a review of McGreevy's Thomas Steams Eliot (The New Review 1. 3 [August-September-October 1931] 119-121; UoR, MS 2444 CW! etterbook 133/944).
1 TheNewReview1. 3(August-September-October1931)includedSB'spoem"Return to the Vestry," as well as a note by Samuel Putnam announcing that SB's Proust would be reviewed in the following issue, "along with Ernest Seilliere's new Proust. Need we say that we prefer Beckett? " (98-99, 124).
2 "Tantisaluti"(manygreetings). SBechoesExodus20:6.
THOMAS McGREEVY LE LAVANDOU, VA R
Saturday [12 September 1931]
39 T. C. D. [Dublin]
Dear Tom
Many thanks for your letter and then for Thoma's article in
the New Review that Prentice sent along and that I had already read, Putnam having sent me a copy ofthe New Review, and that
1
I don't thing [for think] need detain us. I was very pleased to know that you liked the Albas. No, nothing either very new or very beautiful, when I come to think of it. They came together one on top of the other, a double-yoked orgasm in months of aspermatic nights & days. I sent them 3 weeks ago to Seumas O'Sullivan. So far he has not acknowledged their receipt. I'm afraid the 'Give us a wipe' class of guttersnippet continues to please me, or at least to recommend itself to me in as much as 'true. '2 One has to buckle the wheel of one's poem somehow, nicht wahr? Or run the risk ofNordau's tolerance. 3
And most affectionate gratias tibi for offering to mitigate my distress a paraitre with a share ofyour substance. You're the kindest offriends and ifl knew you were in Paris I would be very much less concerned about going to Leipzig. But Paris (as such)
87
Saturday {12 September 1931}, McGreevy
gives me the chinks at the moment and it's about the last place in
the world I want to go. Too many Frenchmen in the wrong streets.
Anyhow I've no idea when I'll get away or if I ever shall. Said
nothing to Ruddy- the old cowardice of keeping one[']s hand off
the future. 4 And I'm too tired and too poor in guts or spunk or
whatever the stuffis to endow the old corpse with a destination &
5
Pelorson has some good stuff in his new book that I think I spoke to you of and that he has just finished. He'll be off very soon, not that I see much of him now anymore (the only reason Ihopebeingthatheisnotasfreeasheusedtobe. )6 Iamfondof Leventhal for no reason good bad or indifferent which is surely the only possible way ofbeing fond ofanybody, and I see a little of him. I had an invitation from J[. J B. Yeats to go round some Saturday but I haven't had the courage to go so far. Frank emerges now & then from the fading fact of my family. Then there are sometimes the green tulips and always the quiet life (after the pubs close. )7
Do write and tell me how yourself goes & how yr. work goes.
8
ALS; 1 leaf, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/24. Dating: after 7 September 1931, when Charles Prentice forwarded Thoma's review of McGreevy's Thomas Stearns Eliot to SB. On 7 August 1931, the "Albas" were submitted to Seumas O'Sullivan. At the time of this
88
buy a ticket & pack up here. The 'pottamus waits for his angels. And really I can't seriously suppose that there's anything I want to rid myself of or acquire, no growth of freedom or property that can't be shed or assumed with as absurd a coefficient of plausi bility here in the miasma as anywhere else. Nothing is so attrac tive anyhow as abstention. A nice quiet life punctuated with involuntary exonerations (Albas). And isn't my navel worth 10 of anyone else's, even though I can't get a very good view of it.
SchonegriissetoR. &B. Andloveever Sam
Saturday {12 September 1931], McGreevy
letter to McGreevy, SB did not yet know that one of the poems would be published by Seumas O'Sullivan in Dublin Magazine.
1 American writer Richard Thoma (1902-1974), along with Samuel Putnam and Harold]. Salemson (1910-1988), wrote the "Direction" manifesto (1930) in response to transition's call for a revolution in writing; it formed the editorial basis for The New Review, edited by Putnam with Thoma as an Associate Editor. Thoma's review was critical of McGreevy's parochialism, his preoccupation with Catholicism, and his "rambling, pedantic, speculative, dilettantish" style ("Island Without Serpents," 119-121). George Reavey wrote a riposte ("Letter to Richard Thoma," The New Review 1. 4 [Winter 1931-1932] 397).
2 SBsent"theAlbas"toSeumasO'Sullivanon7August1931aswellastoMcGreevy. There is no manuscript of either poem in the archives of Dublin Magazine (TCD). SB's reference to the phrase "'give us a wipe guttersnippet"' in the rejected "Alba" indicates that it is the poem later retitled "Enueg 2. "
3 MaxSimonNordau(1849-1923),Hungarian-bornphilosopher,literarycritic,and Zionist. His two-volume study Entartung (1892; Degeneration) tried to demonstrate that many artists and authors share mental features with the criminal and the insane.
SB read and made notes from Nordau's Degeneration (translator not indicated [London: William Heinemann, 1895]; see Pilling, ed. , Beckett's Dream Notebook, 89-97).
"Nicht wahr? " (isn't that so? ).
SB is presumably referring to the twist or surprise of the poem Uohn Pilling, March 2005).
4 SBoriginallywrote"if! "andchangeditto"whenI'llgetaway. "
"Gratias tibi" (thanks to you).
"A paraitre" (that lies ahead).
SB had mentioned Leipzig as a destination in previous letters to McGreevy; he had
not yet spoken to Rudmose-Brown about his thought of leaving Trinity College Dublin (see [after 15 August 1931], n. 8).
5 SBreferstoT. S. Eliot'spoem"TheHippopotamus"(T. S. Eliot,CompletePoemsand Plays: 1909-1950 [New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1952[ 30-31).
6 BeforeleavingDublinintheautumnof1931,accordingtowhathelaterwrote, Pelorson had been trying feverishly to finish his third manuscript, which he called "l'espece de true sans denomination" (the sort of nameless something-or-another): he had "un demi-cahier de poemes, un roman acheve" (half a notebook of poems, a finished novel) as well as the new work. At the same time, he was preoccupied with his then secret marriage to Marcelle Graham (1900-? ), the complications of resigning from the Ecole Normale Superieure, and the need to support himself in France or elsewhere (Belmont, Souvenirs d'outre-monde, 324, 333-334).
7 FrankBeckett. SBevokes"thetulipsoftheevening/thegreentulips"inhispoem "Enueg 2" (Echo's Bones, [16-17]; rpt. Beckett, Poems 1930-1989, 16). SB explained to scholar and biographer Lawrence Harvey (1925-1988), who had asked him about the color: "Those sky tulips I called green because I saw them that colour & the flower" (8 March 1965, NhD, MSS 661, Lawrence Harvey collection).
8 "SchoneGriisse"(warmgreetings)toRichardAldingtonandBrigitPatmore.
89
Tuesday [c. 22 September 1931}, McGreevy
THOMAS McGREEVY PARIS
Tuesday [c. 22 September 1931]
Trinity College [Dublin]
My dear Tom
Many thanks for your envoi. Frankly I much prefer your
Eliot, which simply means I suppose, that I am more in sympathy
1
for me really the most lamentable stuff". 2 What I did enjoy
was the rhythm of your phrase that always charms me and the
lassoo [sic] leaps of your mind capturing analogies all round you.
The carelessly disposed of parallel between Aldington & Lur�at as
the adepts of Natures Vivantes I found very effective. But d'une
3
I was glad to know what your plans were, even in vague outline. Here is the address of the people in Florence.
Signorina Ottolenghi via Campanella 14
They charged me 30 lire a day (3 meals) and are cultured decent
people - and it[']s a quiet part ofFlorence, offthe Piazza Oberdamm
[for Oberdan] & not far from the Campo di Marte. You would
probably find something near for L 30 or L 35. I'll ask my Father
4
gal[l]op through Berard's Odyssey. He certainly makes it easy to read,andIreallyrecoveredsomethingoftheoldchildishabsorb tion [sic] with which I read Treasure Island & Oliver Twist and many others - free of all pilfering velleities. But I dislike very
90
withonesubjectthanwiththeother. Thepoetryyouquoteis
fa�on generale I find the book less dense and rapid than the Eliot. Don't mind this from me - I'm suffering from literary caries.
next time I see him. I see him very seldom.
I have done nothing at all except booze my heart quiet and
Tuesday [c. 22 September 1931}, McGreevy
much his Alexandrine diction, and if that kind of hemistich
neuralgia exasperates me what would it be like for a
Frenchman? He has some most wonderful glittering phrases:
La quenouille[,] chargee de laine purpurine - ! Et tout le jour le
5
but he wouldn't touch the other. He didn't like 'Give us a wipe' &
6
only a few adhesions will be ruptured. I see something of
Leventhal and like him, though I'm aware & frightened of the
sterile formulae of his attitude. I've done nothing further about
7
masterandadvocateGoligher. Iamveryangrybutmusttakeit all smiling as long as I'm 'assisting' and paralysed by shilly shally. I probably won't afford Germany at Xmas. Do write & love ever and don't think me too splenetic.
Sam
Amities a Beaufret et Thomas si tu les vois. 9
ALS; 2 leaves. 2 sides; PS, upper left margin side 1; TCD, MS 10402/13. Dating: McGreevy's book, Richard Aldington: An Englishman, was published by Chatto and Windus on 17 September 1931, and the Tuesday following was 22 September 1931 (Charles Prentice to McGreevy. 23 August 1931, TCD 8092/53). SB's poem "Alba" was published in Dublin Magazine 6. 4 (October-December 1931) 4.
1 SBhasreceivedhiscopyofMcGreevy'sRichardAldington:AnEnglishman.
2 McGreevy quotes numerous passages from Aldington's poetry. but without always indicating their titles; the first pagination given in what follows refers to the texts as published in The Complete Poems of Richard Aldington (London: Allan Wingate, 1948), and the second, to the pagination of the passages in McGreevy's book.
From Images: "In the Old Garden" (34; 12-13); "Choricos" (21-23; 14-15); "Lesbia" (28; 18); "After Two Years" (44; 18); "Amalfi" (35; 19); "At Mitylene" (26; 19); "In the Tube" (49; 23-24); "Inarticulate Grief' (64; 25-26); "Captive" (68; 26-27); "Sunsets" (68; 26-27); "The Faun Captive" (69-70; 27-28).
91
joug tressauta sur les cous.
Seumas O'Sullivan condescends to publish the 'sheet' Alba,
he didn't like the anthrax.
Georges leaves early next week and I see so little of him that
getting away. Ruddy loads me with the invigilations that he can't find time to accomplish in person, and those of his fucking
8
Tuesday [c. 22 September 1931}, McGreevy
From Images ofWar: "Taintignies" (108; 28); "Bombardment" (105; 29); "A Village" (90-91; 29-30); "Machine Guns" (93; 33-34); "Epitaph (2)" (106-107; 34); "Insouciance" (80; 35).
From "A Fool i' the Forest" (193-239), McGreevy uses several passages: (194; 42); (198; 420); (202; 43); and two sections (206; 43).
From "Short Poems" (numbered with both arabic and roman numerals): 4 (295-296; 65); IV (297; 65).
3 McGreevynotesthatAldingtonandFrenchartistJeanLu�at(1892-1966),bothof whom were marked by their experiences in World War I, share a commitment to depicting what he calls "natures vivantes," whereas T. S. Eliot "was painting verbal natures mortes" (31). McGreevy argues that the War caused Aldington and Lur<;:at to "bring their work closer to objective reality," but without the danger of nineteenth-century realism, both because "their technical point of departure is not realistic" and because "the principal reality that has been impelling them to expression is so vast and so terrible to look back on" (32).
"D'une fa;:on generale" (in a general way).
4 SBlocatesthepensioneinwhichhestayedwhenhewasinFlorencein1927,the summer prior to his undergraduate examinations in French and Italian (see Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 83-86). The Campo di Marte is near the Piazza Oberdan in Florence. SB's father, William Beckett* (1871-1933), a quantity surveyor, would have paid the bill.
5 Victor Berard (1864-1931) presents his French translation of The Odyssey, attrib uted to Horner (eighth century BC), as "poesie homerique" (Horner, L'Odyssee, tr. Victor Berard [Paris: Societe d'edition "Les Belles lettres," 19241). Berard's introduction explains: "Que ! 'on supprirne la rime qui jalonne de douze en douze syllabes cette 'diction alexandrine' et ! 'on aura, je crois, un rnodele de la prose que ! 'on peut concevoir pour obtenir en fram;:ais un rythrne equivalent . i celui du texte hornerique" (xxxii) (If we take away the rhyme which marks, in the succession of twelve syllables, this 'alexandrine diction,' we shall have, I think, a model of the prose that can be imagined in order to obtain in French a rhythm equivalent to that of the Homeric text).
A hemistich is the half, or section, of a line of verse as divided by the caesura.
"La quenouille, chargee de Laine purpurine" (The distaff, laden with crimson wool) (I, 82). The second line, "Et tout le jour le joug tressauta sur ! es cous" (And all day long the yoke rose and fell on the necks), is not an exact quotation of the phrase which appears three times in the translation: "Le joug, sur leurs deux cous, tressauta tout le jour" (The yoke, on their two necks, rose and fell all day long) (I, 75; I, 116; II, 205).
McGreevy had recommended Berard's translation, saying that it read like a novel, one that he could read and read again (Richard Aldington: An Englishman, 17). Treasure Island (1883) by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894). Oliver Twist (1837-1839) by Charles Dickens (1812-1870). For SB's reading notes from Berard's translation: Pilling, ed. , Beckett's Dream Notebook, 102-103.
6 "Alba,"DublinMagazine4. FordiscussionofthetwoAlbapoems:7August1931, n. 1.
7 SBwrote"<terrifying>"andinsertedaboveit"sterile. "
Georges Pelorson's arrangements following his marriage to Marcelle Graham may have delayed his departure plans; in his memoir he writes that he did not leave Dublin until shortly before mid-October 1931 (Souvenirs d'outre-monde, 332-334).
8 SBassistedRudrnose-Brownwithteaching,whichincludedinvigilatingexamina tions for him as well as for William Alexander Goligher (1870-1941), Registrar from 1930 to 1937; Goligher is described as one who "commanded respect" and enjoyed the
92
"substance ofpower," but whose remarks were often "caustic or cynical" (R B. McDowell and D. A. Webb, Trinity College Dublin, 1592-1952: An Academic History [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982] 442).
9 "AmitiesaBeaufretetThomassituJesvois. "(GreetingstoBeaufretandThomasif you see them. )
THOMAS McGREEVY PARIS
8/11/31 39 Trinity College Dublin
My dear Tom
One letter - yours - last week and none more welcome. lt is a
more than usually implacable Dublin Sunday. Mist & rain &
chimes & teetotal. Last Sunday I took myself for a walk - from
Rathfarnham to Enniskerry, through the Pine Forest. All beautiful
and lancinant, and the limp down the hill in the dark to
1
You seem to be installed quite comfortably at the Trianon. I'll be surprised if Chatto & Windus rise to it & publish your verse. I hope they do. Don't be so vague about your book. Ou en es-tu? 3 I'll send you an Irish Press. 4 Delighted to rescue your dishes if I can. Where do I go?
I'm right in a dead spot, one of the knots in my life teak but I suppose I'll get clear sooner or later. I can't write anything at all, can't imagine even the shape of a sentence, nor take notes (though God knows I have enough 'butin verbal' to strangle any thing I'm likely to want to say), nor read with understanding, gout
93
8 November 1931, McGreevy
Enniskerry&flatstoutinthePowerscourtArms. Pelorsonsays he understands Rimbaud who used to compose poems walking. But for me, walking, the mind has a most pleasant & melancholy limpness, is a carrefour of memories, memories of childhood mostly, moulin a larmes. 2 But to-day everything is dripping & there is nothing at all to be done and nobody at all to go and see.
8 November 1931, McGreevy
or degout. 5 I was presented with a lovely polyglot edition of Horace, and I haven't the guts to start into it. 6 I read two books ofPowys: Mark Only and Mr Tasker's Gods, not knowing his work at all, & was very disappointed. Such a fabricated darkness & painfully organised unified tragic completeness. The Hardy vice caricatured. Everybody had been telling me what a great writer he was. And what a style! 7 Everything is very grey & identical, spe cially ton serviteur. I was hoping to get away at Xmas - even to Paris if not to Germany- but what with the pound & an overdraft & petty debts & the remoteness of my cheque, I don't think it can be done. I don't think I'll ever get away now. I'll be renominated (sauf scandale) this time 2 years & settle down to professorial incompe tence. I really believe so. Without very much regret. 8
They are giving Ruddy a D. Litt. Stip. Cond. at next com mencement. Together with Curtis & Allison [for Alison] Phillips. Gracious & nugatory. 9 [•••]
[. . . ]
I suppose you have no news of the new Transition. They have stuff of mine - carmina quae legunt cacantes. 10
Dear Tom, I wish I could write you a cheerful easy newsy letter like yours to me. I'm inextricably morveux and I beg your pardon. I underestimated this terrible Dublin.
11
1 SBwalkedfromRathfarnham,southofcentralDublin,tothePowerscourtArms Hotel in Enniskerry in Co. Wicklow, a distance of about 10 miles. The forest, Tibradden, is approximately 21⁄2 miles south ofRathfarnham, Co. Dublin.
"Lancinant" (poignant).
94
Pourvu que cela ne t'empeche pas de re[e]crire.
God bless. Is there no chance of seeing you here soon?
Love ever Sam
ALS; 1 leaf, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/21.
8 November 1931, McGreevy
2 "Carrefour" (crossroads); moulin a larmes (tearmill, adapted from "moulin a vent" [windmill! ).
3 McGreevywaslivingattheTrianon-PalaceHotel,1bis-3RuedeVaugirard,Paris 6. He had been encouraged by Charles Prentice to send his poems to Chatto and Windus, and he did so: however, as Prentice wrote to Richard Aldington, Chatto and Windus was unlikely to publish them (3 November 1931, ICSo, Aldington 68/6/5). McGreevy contin ued to work on his novel (see TCD, MS 8039-55).
"Ou en es-tu? " (How far have you got? )
4 TheIrishPresscommencedpublicationinDublinon5September1931,propos ing to represent "an Irish Ireland, an Ireland aware of its own greatness, sure of itself, conscious of the spiritual forces which have formed it into a distinct people having its own language and customs and a traditionally Christian philosophy of life": its motto was: "Truth in news" (5 September 1931: 5). McGreevy's first contri bution was "A Great Christian Drama for Irish Players" (The Irish Press 28 December 1932: 6, 11).
5 "Butinverbal"(verbalbooty),areferencetoSB's"note-snatching"(seePilling, ed. , Beckett's Dream Notebook, xvi-xviii).
"Gout or degoiit" (taste or distaste).
6 Horace. Oeuvres completes d'Horace . . . French tr. Jean-Baptiste Monfalcon, Spanish tr. Javier de Burgos, Italian tr. Tommaso Gargallo, English tr. Philip Francis; German tr. Christoph Martin Wieland and Johann Henrich Voss, Polyglotte edn. [Latin text with translations into French, Spanish, Italian, English. and German] (Paris and Lyon: Connon et Blanc, 1834).
7 TheodoreFrancisPowys(1875-1953)wroteMarkOnly(1924)andMr. Tasker'sGods (1924); both were published by Chatto and Windus.
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928).
8 "Ton serviteur" (your servant); "sauf scandale" (barring a scandal). The British pound went off the gold standard on 21 September 1931, and then the pound fell by 25 percent; the Saorstat pound was set against the British pound.
9 Trinity College Dublin conferred the title of Doctor of Letters on Rudmose-Brown, Edmund Curtis (1881-1943), Professor of Irish History, and Walter Alison Phillips (1864-1950), Lecky Professor of Modern History and Chief Assistant Editor, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edn.
10 There was a hiatus in the publication of transition: numbers 19-20 were pub lished as a single issue in June 1930 and number 21 in March 1932; the latter published SB's story "Sedendo and Quiesciendo" [for Quiescendo] (13-20).
SB quotes from an epigram by Martial (ne Marcus Valerius Martialis, first century AD): "carmina quae legunt cacantes" (poems which people read at stool) (Martial. Epigrams, II, tr. Walter C. A. Ker (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press: London: Heinemann. 1968] XII. 61: line 10, 362-363). It is cited by SB from The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) by Robert Burton (1577-1640) (see Pilling, ed. . Beckett's Dream Notebook, 104).
11 "Morveux"(snotty-nosed).
2 SBmetPrenticeinLondonon28July1931ashetraveledfromFrancetoDublin. As SB explained to McGreevy: "A very pleasant evening with Charles Prentice. His voice slows down your heart and tires your eyes. I brought him round the ? next day though I hadn't meant to. Haven't heard anything since. Proposed a Dostoievski for the sake of something to say more than anything else & knowing bloody well I would (could) never do it. Fortunately the partner refrained from being interested" ([? after
82
apex and then I hope it will develop seven spectral petals.
5
It yielded so
[? after 15 August 1931}, McGreevy
2 August to 8 August 1931], TCD, MS 10402/12). Prentice wrote to McGreevy: "He didn't formally submit the story, but he allowed me personally to see it - yet I fear that the firm won't do it, if it were offered to them" (3 August 1931, TCD. MS 8092/50).
3 "WalkingOut"waspublishedasastoryinMorePricksThanKicks(London:Chatto and Windus, 1934). "Whore's get" (Ir. slang, lowest of the low).
4 "Dada"(colloq. ,hobbyhorse).
The seven spectral petals suggest the women in the amphitheatre of Paradise, who sit at Mary's feet; Rachel with Beatrice, Sarah, Rebecca, Judith, and Ruth are enthroned on the rose, dividing those who believe in the Christ yet to come from those who held their eyes on the Christ already come (Dante, The Divine Comedy, III. Paradiso. tr. John D. Sinclair [London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1946, rev. 1948] Canto XXXII, lines 7-18, 463).
5 Charles Prentice had sent SB his copy of D. H. Lawrence's Apocalypse, edited by Richard Aldington (Florence: G. Orioli, 1931); Lawrence's commentary on the Book of Revelation had been published in this limited edition on 3 June 1931; trade editions did not follow until November 1931 (New York: Knopf) and May 1932 (London: Secker). Prentice replied to SB: "By all means. keep 'Apocalypse' until you have properly finished with it. There is no hurry, but when you have finished with it I shall be glad to have it back again" (18 August 1931, UoR. MS 2444 CW letterbook 133/708).
THOMAS McGREEVY LE CAN ADE L, VAR
[? after 15 August 1931] T. C. D. [Dublin]
Dear Tom
May all things come right somehow and you be happy some
how[. ] 1
No news from outside or inside. Charles Prentice sent my
thing back with a covering letter putting charming and gracious relations before me. He is very nice. Pinker sent back a short story
2
I'm very tired, tired - enough to slip back into the embarrassed
respirations. Herewith. I can't write like Boccaccio and I don't
3
witharejectionslip. Idon'tknowwhetherheisveryniceornot.
wanttowritelikeBoccaccio. I'llstayintownandtakedownthe petites merdes de mon ame. No I never did the T. S. E. Telegraphie
83
{? after 15 August 1931}, McGreevy
4
settle in Ireland with the two youngest children. Boss won't leave
sansether. NothingmoreaboutLeipzig. Cissiemaybecomingto
the sinking ship - because ofthe virgins on board. 5 I was reading 6
yourcabpoem. Wentupinaspasmisagreatphrase. Yes,Night
of the Rabblement is good. Silence Exile and Cunning isn't quite
H. C. E. However I don't feel there's anything wrong anywhere.
He's getting a great name for himself in Dublin by the way. The
cute thing to do now would be to write the Prolegomena ofW. I. P.
Do you feel like collelaborating? And what about making a book
on the title? 7 I have not yet said anything to Ruddy about fucking
the field. He wanted me to apply for a job, oh a very good job, in
Capetown or for a job, oh quite a good job, in Cardiff, where I could
lie with Rikky. Starkie will probably be appointed at Oxford -
he was first man out last time, and then my dear Sam of course
they'll appoint you Professor of Italian Literature juxta Dublin
8
fricatrix on her bicycle, the sabreflat fricatrix, for dear death
pedalling faster and faster, her mouth ajar and her nostrils
dilated. Daddy says come off it for the love of God, come out
and dine, I'll give you a drink, kiss and make friends. God bless
dear Daddy Mummy Frank Bibby and all that I love and make
9
juxta Dublin. That'll be the real pig's back. I'll feel like a
me a good boy for Jesus Christ's sake armen.
So I said some
thing quiet and flat and blank but I won't. No sir. Nothing
would induce me to. Pelorson was glad to hear about Grasset.
He is very mou and I don't see enough of him. Like one of his
10
TL; 1 leaf, 1 side; TCD, MS 10402/25. Dating: follows SB to Charles Prentice 15 August 1931 which indicates that Pinker had returned the story.
84
own policepigeons - mous et lourds sur les toits du monde. Dear Tom forgive and forget this pestilential letter. I feel
hollow.
Beautiful greetings to Richard and Bridget [for Brigit]11
and love ever
[? after 15 August 1931}, McGreevy
1 RichardAldington,withwhomMcGreevywasstayinginLeCanadel,wasunwell, as was McGreevy's mother. Offurther concern to McGreevy was where he would go when Aldington left the south of France; he confided to Prentice that staying with Hester Dowden• (1868-1949) in London would be impossible because the forthcoming marriage of her daughter Dolly Travers-Smith to Lennox Robinson "has been rather a knock out" (29July 1931, UoR, MS 2444 CW 41/2).
2 Prentice'slettertoSBhasnotbeenfoundintheChattoandWindusfiles(UoR), which suggests that it was a personal letter covering the return ofthe stories.
3 SB sent "Walking Out" to McGreevy. Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), Italian author best known for the Decameron (1349-1351).
4 "Petitesmerdesdemoname"(droppingsfrommysoul).
SB did not write the review of McGreevy's Thomas Stearns Eliot, nor of Eliot's trans lation ofAnabase by St. ·John Perse.
SB spins T. S. E. (Eliot's initials) into "Telegraphie sans ether" (literally, telegraphy without ether), playing on "Telegraphie Sans Fil" (wireless), commonly referred to in France as TSF.
5 SBhadbeenthinkingofgoingtoLeipzig(see112September1931I). CissieSinclair considered leaving Germany and returning to Ireland with her two youngest children, Deirdre and Morris (1918-2007); however, her husband, Boss, was unwilling to leave Kassel because their older daughters Annabel Lilian (known as Nancy, 1916-1969), Sara Estella (known as Sally, 1910-1976), and Peggy wanted to remain in Germany where they had boyfriends (Morris Sinclair, 10 August 2004).
6 McGreevy's "cab poem" is "Cron Trath Na nDeithe" (Twilight ofthe Gods); the phrase is from part III: "When the Custom House took fire / Hope slipped off her green petticoat / The Four Courts went up in a spasm / Moses felt for Hope" (MacGreevy, Collected Poems of Thomas MacGreery, 19, 107-122; the translation of the Irish title is supplied by Susan Schreibman with an explanation ofits context, 109).
7 "Night of the Rabblement" plays on the title of an indignant essay by James Joyce about the parochialism of the Irish Literary Theatre, "The Day of the Rabblement" (15 October 1901);Joyce's essay was rejected by St. Stephen's, a magazine published by students ofUniversity College. Joyce protested to the President of the University, and, in the end, the essay was privately printed (F. J. C. Skeffington and James Joyce, Two Essays: A Forgotten Aspect of the University Question, and The Day of the Rabblement [Dublin: Gerrard Brothers, 19011 7-8; rpt. in The Critical Writings of]ames Joyce, ed. Ellsworth Mason and Richard Ellmann ! Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1959] 68-72).
Near the end ofJoyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the character Stephen
Dedalus avows: "I will try to express myselfin some mode oflife or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use - silence, exile, and cunning" (247).
Padraic Colum (1881-1972) reviewed Joyce's Haveth Childers Everywhere ("From a Work in Progress," Dublin Magazine 6. 3 [July-September 1931] 33-37); a review of Stuart Gilbert's study James Joyce's "Ulysses" had appeared in the previous issue of Dublin Magazine (6. 2 [April-June 1931] 64-65). The London wedding ofJames and Nora Joyce received mention in The Irish Times (4 July 1931: 6; 11 July 1931: 6). SB proposes that he and McGreevy write a preface or introduction to Work in Progress, or a book on the (as yet unannounced) title of the novel.
85
[? after 15 August 1931], McGreevy
8 "Fucking the field": SB's grotesque English-literal adaptation of the dead French metaphor "foutre le camp" (get away quickly). Rudmose-Brown encouraged SB to seek academic positions in Cape Town, SouthAfrica, and at the University of Cardiff, Wales. Leopold John Dixon Richardson (known as Reeky, called by SB "Rikky," 1893-1979), who had won highest honors in Classics at Trinity College Dublin; he was lecturer inLatin at the University of Cardiff.
Walter Starkie had been a Visiting Professor at the University of Madrid (1928-1929) and may have been considered for a position at Oxford, but he remained at TCD until 1940, when he became Director of the British Institute in Madrid.
9 TheimageofthesabreflatfricatrixappearsinDreamofFairtoMiddlingWomenas "the hard breastless Greek Slave or huntress" (83); the phrase "his mouth ajar and his nostrils dilated" appears in the opening of this novel (1). The prayer beginning "God bless" is found in Dream of Fair to Middling Women (8); Bibby was SB's nanny (Bridget Bray, n. d. ) (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 35-36, 134-135).
10 SB had written to thank McGreevy for sending on the manuscript of Georges Pelorson's novel "Claudiurnales" to Henri Muller (1902-1980); Muller, a friend of Pelorson, worked directly with Bernard Grasset (1881-1955), the founder and editor of Les Editions Grasset, Paris. SB commented to McGreevy: "Neither do I think Grasset will take it" ([after 2August - before 8August 1931] TCD, MS 10402/12). Pelorson had typed the novel on SB's typewriter, and sent it to McGreevy at SB's insistence; the manuscript was indeed refused (Belmont, Souvenirs d'outre-monde, 415-416).
"Mou" (soft); "mous et lourds sur Jes toits du monde" (soft and heavy on the roofs of the world). Pelorson said he saw a similarity between the walk of an Irish policeman and the strutting of pigeons (interview 2 November 1990).
11 Richard Aldington, Brigit Patmore. SB wrote "<theAldingtons> Richard and Bridget. "
SAMUEL PUTNAM PA R! S
[before 7 September 1931] [Dublin]
[no greeting]
Many thanks for N. R. and for including my lovely lovely poem
1
and for somebody's obliging observations on my Proust turd. Hoping to send you sometime something very nice.
Tanti saluti to the thousands of them that love me. 2 Yrs ever
86
Samuel Beckett
Saturday {12 September 1931}, McGreevy
ACS; 1 leaf, 1 side; NjP, New Review Correspondence of Samuel Putnam, COl 11/1/9. Dating: before 7 September 1931, when Prentice sent SB a copy of Richard Thoma's "Island Without Serpents. " a review of McGreevy's Thomas Steams Eliot (The New Review 1. 3 [August-September-October 1931] 119-121; UoR, MS 2444 CW! etterbook 133/944).
1 TheNewReview1. 3(August-September-October1931)includedSB'spoem"Return to the Vestry," as well as a note by Samuel Putnam announcing that SB's Proust would be reviewed in the following issue, "along with Ernest Seilliere's new Proust. Need we say that we prefer Beckett? " (98-99, 124).
2 "Tantisaluti"(manygreetings). SBechoesExodus20:6.
THOMAS McGREEVY LE LAVANDOU, VA R
Saturday [12 September 1931]
39 T. C. D. [Dublin]
Dear Tom
Many thanks for your letter and then for Thoma's article in
the New Review that Prentice sent along and that I had already read, Putnam having sent me a copy ofthe New Review, and that
1
I don't thing [for think] need detain us. I was very pleased to know that you liked the Albas. No, nothing either very new or very beautiful, when I come to think of it. They came together one on top of the other, a double-yoked orgasm in months of aspermatic nights & days. I sent them 3 weeks ago to Seumas O'Sullivan. So far he has not acknowledged their receipt. I'm afraid the 'Give us a wipe' class of guttersnippet continues to please me, or at least to recommend itself to me in as much as 'true. '2 One has to buckle the wheel of one's poem somehow, nicht wahr? Or run the risk ofNordau's tolerance. 3
And most affectionate gratias tibi for offering to mitigate my distress a paraitre with a share ofyour substance. You're the kindest offriends and ifl knew you were in Paris I would be very much less concerned about going to Leipzig. But Paris (as such)
87
Saturday {12 September 1931}, McGreevy
gives me the chinks at the moment and it's about the last place in
the world I want to go. Too many Frenchmen in the wrong streets.
Anyhow I've no idea when I'll get away or if I ever shall. Said
nothing to Ruddy- the old cowardice of keeping one[']s hand off
the future. 4 And I'm too tired and too poor in guts or spunk or
whatever the stuffis to endow the old corpse with a destination &
5
Pelorson has some good stuff in his new book that I think I spoke to you of and that he has just finished. He'll be off very soon, not that I see much of him now anymore (the only reason Ihopebeingthatheisnotasfreeasheusedtobe. )6 Iamfondof Leventhal for no reason good bad or indifferent which is surely the only possible way ofbeing fond ofanybody, and I see a little of him. I had an invitation from J[. J B. Yeats to go round some Saturday but I haven't had the courage to go so far. Frank emerges now & then from the fading fact of my family. Then there are sometimes the green tulips and always the quiet life (after the pubs close. )7
Do write and tell me how yourself goes & how yr. work goes.
8
ALS; 1 leaf, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/24. Dating: after 7 September 1931, when Charles Prentice forwarded Thoma's review of McGreevy's Thomas Stearns Eliot to SB. On 7 August 1931, the "Albas" were submitted to Seumas O'Sullivan. At the time of this
88
buy a ticket & pack up here. The 'pottamus waits for his angels. And really I can't seriously suppose that there's anything I want to rid myself of or acquire, no growth of freedom or property that can't be shed or assumed with as absurd a coefficient of plausi bility here in the miasma as anywhere else. Nothing is so attrac tive anyhow as abstention. A nice quiet life punctuated with involuntary exonerations (Albas). And isn't my navel worth 10 of anyone else's, even though I can't get a very good view of it.
SchonegriissetoR. &B. Andloveever Sam
Saturday {12 September 1931], McGreevy
letter to McGreevy, SB did not yet know that one of the poems would be published by Seumas O'Sullivan in Dublin Magazine.
1 American writer Richard Thoma (1902-1974), along with Samuel Putnam and Harold]. Salemson (1910-1988), wrote the "Direction" manifesto (1930) in response to transition's call for a revolution in writing; it formed the editorial basis for The New Review, edited by Putnam with Thoma as an Associate Editor. Thoma's review was critical of McGreevy's parochialism, his preoccupation with Catholicism, and his "rambling, pedantic, speculative, dilettantish" style ("Island Without Serpents," 119-121). George Reavey wrote a riposte ("Letter to Richard Thoma," The New Review 1. 4 [Winter 1931-1932] 397).
2 SBsent"theAlbas"toSeumasO'Sullivanon7August1931aswellastoMcGreevy. There is no manuscript of either poem in the archives of Dublin Magazine (TCD). SB's reference to the phrase "'give us a wipe guttersnippet"' in the rejected "Alba" indicates that it is the poem later retitled "Enueg 2. "
3 MaxSimonNordau(1849-1923),Hungarian-bornphilosopher,literarycritic,and Zionist. His two-volume study Entartung (1892; Degeneration) tried to demonstrate that many artists and authors share mental features with the criminal and the insane.
SB read and made notes from Nordau's Degeneration (translator not indicated [London: William Heinemann, 1895]; see Pilling, ed. , Beckett's Dream Notebook, 89-97).
"Nicht wahr? " (isn't that so? ).
SB is presumably referring to the twist or surprise of the poem Uohn Pilling, March 2005).
4 SBoriginallywrote"if! "andchangeditto"whenI'llgetaway. "
"Gratias tibi" (thanks to you).
"A paraitre" (that lies ahead).
SB had mentioned Leipzig as a destination in previous letters to McGreevy; he had
not yet spoken to Rudmose-Brown about his thought of leaving Trinity College Dublin (see [after 15 August 1931], n. 8).
5 SBreferstoT. S. Eliot'spoem"TheHippopotamus"(T. S. Eliot,CompletePoemsand Plays: 1909-1950 [New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1952[ 30-31).
6 BeforeleavingDublinintheautumnof1931,accordingtowhathelaterwrote, Pelorson had been trying feverishly to finish his third manuscript, which he called "l'espece de true sans denomination" (the sort of nameless something-or-another): he had "un demi-cahier de poemes, un roman acheve" (half a notebook of poems, a finished novel) as well as the new work. At the same time, he was preoccupied with his then secret marriage to Marcelle Graham (1900-? ), the complications of resigning from the Ecole Normale Superieure, and the need to support himself in France or elsewhere (Belmont, Souvenirs d'outre-monde, 324, 333-334).
7 FrankBeckett. SBevokes"thetulipsoftheevening/thegreentulips"inhispoem "Enueg 2" (Echo's Bones, [16-17]; rpt. Beckett, Poems 1930-1989, 16). SB explained to scholar and biographer Lawrence Harvey (1925-1988), who had asked him about the color: "Those sky tulips I called green because I saw them that colour & the flower" (8 March 1965, NhD, MSS 661, Lawrence Harvey collection).
8 "SchoneGriisse"(warmgreetings)toRichardAldingtonandBrigitPatmore.
89
Tuesday [c. 22 September 1931}, McGreevy
THOMAS McGREEVY PARIS
Tuesday [c. 22 September 1931]
Trinity College [Dublin]
My dear Tom
Many thanks for your envoi. Frankly I much prefer your
Eliot, which simply means I suppose, that I am more in sympathy
1
for me really the most lamentable stuff". 2 What I did enjoy
was the rhythm of your phrase that always charms me and the
lassoo [sic] leaps of your mind capturing analogies all round you.
The carelessly disposed of parallel between Aldington & Lur�at as
the adepts of Natures Vivantes I found very effective. But d'une
3
I was glad to know what your plans were, even in vague outline. Here is the address of the people in Florence.
Signorina Ottolenghi via Campanella 14
They charged me 30 lire a day (3 meals) and are cultured decent
people - and it[']s a quiet part ofFlorence, offthe Piazza Oberdamm
[for Oberdan] & not far from the Campo di Marte. You would
probably find something near for L 30 or L 35. I'll ask my Father
4
gal[l]op through Berard's Odyssey. He certainly makes it easy to read,andIreallyrecoveredsomethingoftheoldchildishabsorb tion [sic] with which I read Treasure Island & Oliver Twist and many others - free of all pilfering velleities. But I dislike very
90
withonesubjectthanwiththeother. Thepoetryyouquoteis
fa�on generale I find the book less dense and rapid than the Eliot. Don't mind this from me - I'm suffering from literary caries.
next time I see him. I see him very seldom.
I have done nothing at all except booze my heart quiet and
Tuesday [c. 22 September 1931}, McGreevy
much his Alexandrine diction, and if that kind of hemistich
neuralgia exasperates me what would it be like for a
Frenchman? He has some most wonderful glittering phrases:
La quenouille[,] chargee de laine purpurine - ! Et tout le jour le
5
but he wouldn't touch the other. He didn't like 'Give us a wipe' &
6
only a few adhesions will be ruptured. I see something of
Leventhal and like him, though I'm aware & frightened of the
sterile formulae of his attitude. I've done nothing further about
7
masterandadvocateGoligher. Iamveryangrybutmusttakeit all smiling as long as I'm 'assisting' and paralysed by shilly shally. I probably won't afford Germany at Xmas. Do write & love ever and don't think me too splenetic.
Sam
Amities a Beaufret et Thomas si tu les vois. 9
ALS; 2 leaves. 2 sides; PS, upper left margin side 1; TCD, MS 10402/13. Dating: McGreevy's book, Richard Aldington: An Englishman, was published by Chatto and Windus on 17 September 1931, and the Tuesday following was 22 September 1931 (Charles Prentice to McGreevy. 23 August 1931, TCD 8092/53). SB's poem "Alba" was published in Dublin Magazine 6. 4 (October-December 1931) 4.
1 SBhasreceivedhiscopyofMcGreevy'sRichardAldington:AnEnglishman.
2 McGreevy quotes numerous passages from Aldington's poetry. but without always indicating their titles; the first pagination given in what follows refers to the texts as published in The Complete Poems of Richard Aldington (London: Allan Wingate, 1948), and the second, to the pagination of the passages in McGreevy's book.
From Images: "In the Old Garden" (34; 12-13); "Choricos" (21-23; 14-15); "Lesbia" (28; 18); "After Two Years" (44; 18); "Amalfi" (35; 19); "At Mitylene" (26; 19); "In the Tube" (49; 23-24); "Inarticulate Grief' (64; 25-26); "Captive" (68; 26-27); "Sunsets" (68; 26-27); "The Faun Captive" (69-70; 27-28).
91
joug tressauta sur les cous.
Seumas O'Sullivan condescends to publish the 'sheet' Alba,
he didn't like the anthrax.
Georges leaves early next week and I see so little of him that
getting away. Ruddy loads me with the invigilations that he can't find time to accomplish in person, and those of his fucking
8
Tuesday [c. 22 September 1931}, McGreevy
From Images ofWar: "Taintignies" (108; 28); "Bombardment" (105; 29); "A Village" (90-91; 29-30); "Machine Guns" (93; 33-34); "Epitaph (2)" (106-107; 34); "Insouciance" (80; 35).
From "A Fool i' the Forest" (193-239), McGreevy uses several passages: (194; 42); (198; 420); (202; 43); and two sections (206; 43).
From "Short Poems" (numbered with both arabic and roman numerals): 4 (295-296; 65); IV (297; 65).
3 McGreevynotesthatAldingtonandFrenchartistJeanLu�at(1892-1966),bothof whom were marked by their experiences in World War I, share a commitment to depicting what he calls "natures vivantes," whereas T. S. Eliot "was painting verbal natures mortes" (31). McGreevy argues that the War caused Aldington and Lur<;:at to "bring their work closer to objective reality," but without the danger of nineteenth-century realism, both because "their technical point of departure is not realistic" and because "the principal reality that has been impelling them to expression is so vast and so terrible to look back on" (32).
"D'une fa;:on generale" (in a general way).
4 SBlocatesthepensioneinwhichhestayedwhenhewasinFlorencein1927,the summer prior to his undergraduate examinations in French and Italian (see Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 83-86). The Campo di Marte is near the Piazza Oberdan in Florence. SB's father, William Beckett* (1871-1933), a quantity surveyor, would have paid the bill.
5 Victor Berard (1864-1931) presents his French translation of The Odyssey, attrib uted to Horner (eighth century BC), as "poesie homerique" (Horner, L'Odyssee, tr. Victor Berard [Paris: Societe d'edition "Les Belles lettres," 19241). Berard's introduction explains: "Que ! 'on supprirne la rime qui jalonne de douze en douze syllabes cette 'diction alexandrine' et ! 'on aura, je crois, un rnodele de la prose que ! 'on peut concevoir pour obtenir en fram;:ais un rythrne equivalent . i celui du texte hornerique" (xxxii) (If we take away the rhyme which marks, in the succession of twelve syllables, this 'alexandrine diction,' we shall have, I think, a model of the prose that can be imagined in order to obtain in French a rhythm equivalent to that of the Homeric text).
A hemistich is the half, or section, of a line of verse as divided by the caesura.
"La quenouille, chargee de Laine purpurine" (The distaff, laden with crimson wool) (I, 82). The second line, "Et tout le jour le joug tressauta sur ! es cous" (And all day long the yoke rose and fell on the necks), is not an exact quotation of the phrase which appears three times in the translation: "Le joug, sur leurs deux cous, tressauta tout le jour" (The yoke, on their two necks, rose and fell all day long) (I, 75; I, 116; II, 205).
McGreevy had recommended Berard's translation, saying that it read like a novel, one that he could read and read again (Richard Aldington: An Englishman, 17). Treasure Island (1883) by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894). Oliver Twist (1837-1839) by Charles Dickens (1812-1870). For SB's reading notes from Berard's translation: Pilling, ed. , Beckett's Dream Notebook, 102-103.
6 "Alba,"DublinMagazine4. FordiscussionofthetwoAlbapoems:7August1931, n. 1.
7 SBwrote"<terrifying>"andinsertedaboveit"sterile. "
Georges Pelorson's arrangements following his marriage to Marcelle Graham may have delayed his departure plans; in his memoir he writes that he did not leave Dublin until shortly before mid-October 1931 (Souvenirs d'outre-monde, 332-334).
8 SBassistedRudrnose-Brownwithteaching,whichincludedinvigilatingexamina tions for him as well as for William Alexander Goligher (1870-1941), Registrar from 1930 to 1937; Goligher is described as one who "commanded respect" and enjoyed the
92
"substance ofpower," but whose remarks were often "caustic or cynical" (R B. McDowell and D. A. Webb, Trinity College Dublin, 1592-1952: An Academic History [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982] 442).
9 "AmitiesaBeaufretetThomassituJesvois. "(GreetingstoBeaufretandThomasif you see them. )
THOMAS McGREEVY PARIS
8/11/31 39 Trinity College Dublin
My dear Tom
One letter - yours - last week and none more welcome. lt is a
more than usually implacable Dublin Sunday. Mist & rain &
chimes & teetotal. Last Sunday I took myself for a walk - from
Rathfarnham to Enniskerry, through the Pine Forest. All beautiful
and lancinant, and the limp down the hill in the dark to
1
You seem to be installed quite comfortably at the Trianon. I'll be surprised if Chatto & Windus rise to it & publish your verse. I hope they do. Don't be so vague about your book. Ou en es-tu? 3 I'll send you an Irish Press. 4 Delighted to rescue your dishes if I can. Where do I go?
I'm right in a dead spot, one of the knots in my life teak but I suppose I'll get clear sooner or later. I can't write anything at all, can't imagine even the shape of a sentence, nor take notes (though God knows I have enough 'butin verbal' to strangle any thing I'm likely to want to say), nor read with understanding, gout
93
8 November 1931, McGreevy
Enniskerry&flatstoutinthePowerscourtArms. Pelorsonsays he understands Rimbaud who used to compose poems walking. But for me, walking, the mind has a most pleasant & melancholy limpness, is a carrefour of memories, memories of childhood mostly, moulin a larmes. 2 But to-day everything is dripping & there is nothing at all to be done and nobody at all to go and see.
8 November 1931, McGreevy
or degout. 5 I was presented with a lovely polyglot edition of Horace, and I haven't the guts to start into it. 6 I read two books ofPowys: Mark Only and Mr Tasker's Gods, not knowing his work at all, & was very disappointed. Such a fabricated darkness & painfully organised unified tragic completeness. The Hardy vice caricatured. Everybody had been telling me what a great writer he was. And what a style! 7 Everything is very grey & identical, spe cially ton serviteur. I was hoping to get away at Xmas - even to Paris if not to Germany- but what with the pound & an overdraft & petty debts & the remoteness of my cheque, I don't think it can be done. I don't think I'll ever get away now. I'll be renominated (sauf scandale) this time 2 years & settle down to professorial incompe tence. I really believe so. Without very much regret. 8
They are giving Ruddy a D. Litt. Stip. Cond. at next com mencement. Together with Curtis & Allison [for Alison] Phillips. Gracious & nugatory. 9 [•••]
[. . . ]
I suppose you have no news of the new Transition. They have stuff of mine - carmina quae legunt cacantes. 10
Dear Tom, I wish I could write you a cheerful easy newsy letter like yours to me. I'm inextricably morveux and I beg your pardon. I underestimated this terrible Dublin.
11
1 SBwalkedfromRathfarnham,southofcentralDublin,tothePowerscourtArms Hotel in Enniskerry in Co. Wicklow, a distance of about 10 miles. The forest, Tibradden, is approximately 21⁄2 miles south ofRathfarnham, Co. Dublin.
"Lancinant" (poignant).
94
Pourvu que cela ne t'empeche pas de re[e]crire.
God bless. Is there no chance of seeing you here soon?
Love ever Sam
ALS; 1 leaf, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/21.
8 November 1931, McGreevy
2 "Carrefour" (crossroads); moulin a larmes (tearmill, adapted from "moulin a vent" [windmill! ).
3 McGreevywaslivingattheTrianon-PalaceHotel,1bis-3RuedeVaugirard,Paris 6. He had been encouraged by Charles Prentice to send his poems to Chatto and Windus, and he did so: however, as Prentice wrote to Richard Aldington, Chatto and Windus was unlikely to publish them (3 November 1931, ICSo, Aldington 68/6/5). McGreevy contin ued to work on his novel (see TCD, MS 8039-55).
"Ou en es-tu? " (How far have you got? )
4 TheIrishPresscommencedpublicationinDublinon5September1931,propos ing to represent "an Irish Ireland, an Ireland aware of its own greatness, sure of itself, conscious of the spiritual forces which have formed it into a distinct people having its own language and customs and a traditionally Christian philosophy of life": its motto was: "Truth in news" (5 September 1931: 5). McGreevy's first contri bution was "A Great Christian Drama for Irish Players" (The Irish Press 28 December 1932: 6, 11).
5 "Butinverbal"(verbalbooty),areferencetoSB's"note-snatching"(seePilling, ed. , Beckett's Dream Notebook, xvi-xviii).
"Gout or degoiit" (taste or distaste).
6 Horace. Oeuvres completes d'Horace . . . French tr. Jean-Baptiste Monfalcon, Spanish tr. Javier de Burgos, Italian tr. Tommaso Gargallo, English tr. Philip Francis; German tr. Christoph Martin Wieland and Johann Henrich Voss, Polyglotte edn. [Latin text with translations into French, Spanish, Italian, English. and German] (Paris and Lyon: Connon et Blanc, 1834).
7 TheodoreFrancisPowys(1875-1953)wroteMarkOnly(1924)andMr. Tasker'sGods (1924); both were published by Chatto and Windus.
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928).
8 "Ton serviteur" (your servant); "sauf scandale" (barring a scandal). The British pound went off the gold standard on 21 September 1931, and then the pound fell by 25 percent; the Saorstat pound was set against the British pound.
9 Trinity College Dublin conferred the title of Doctor of Letters on Rudmose-Brown, Edmund Curtis (1881-1943), Professor of Irish History, and Walter Alison Phillips (1864-1950), Lecky Professor of Modern History and Chief Assistant Editor, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edn.
10 There was a hiatus in the publication of transition: numbers 19-20 were pub lished as a single issue in June 1930 and number 21 in March 1932; the latter published SB's story "Sedendo and Quiesciendo" [for Quiescendo] (13-20).
SB quotes from an epigram by Martial (ne Marcus Valerius Martialis, first century AD): "carmina quae legunt cacantes" (poems which people read at stool) (Martial. Epigrams, II, tr. Walter C. A. Ker (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press: London: Heinemann. 1968] XII. 61: line 10, 362-363). It is cited by SB from The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) by Robert Burton (1577-1640) (see Pilling, ed. . Beckett's Dream Notebook, 104).
11 "Morveux"(snotty-nosed).
