4 SB makes this suggestion sinceStanley Nott was unwilling to
undertake
publica tion of Murphy alone.
Samuel Beckett
On n'est pas mal, au sein du chauffage central.
11 fait un froid a faire sauter les couilles.
Le pain est noir, !
'horizon aussi.
What in the world are you doing among the thatches.
Was it then another journey from, like so many?
I can't believe you'd go to Tappesfield [for Toppesfield] of your own free will.
1
I got here last Friday, 24 hours late. The town is superb, nothing older than middle 19th century. One exquisite green steeple (truly a guglia), that of the Petrikirche. And the Alster pieces d'eau are masterpieces. 2 I got a lovely vision ofT. C. D. & its terra infirma reclaimed from the land, the Liffey lying calm over Nassau Street, as no doubt once it did, washing the fringes ofLeinster Lawn, Lecky & the Kook ofBells submerged, & Frank
374
9 October 1936, McGreevy going to his lunch in a canoe. 3 That would be the only town
planning- away with the town! Manning Robertson would agree
4
right at the end of Altona's most charming promenade, under the inevitable snivelling lime, in the grip of ivy. "He who then liveth & believeth in me shall never perish. " Then I had a Bauernfriihsti. ick in the Hauptbahnhof. 5
The Gallery here was something of a disappointment, but
may improve. The building is magnificent and the pictures
admirably presented (one line hanging against matt white
throughout), but there is an appalling quantity of rubbish,
worse than unimportant locals. Meisters BERTRAM & FRANKE
6
Goyens, a Van Uden -Teniers not as good as the one in Dublin,
a so called Brouwer landscape that might conceivably be a pot
boiler, a couple of Everdingens and a characteristic landscape of
that German-Roman that you don't like & whose name I can
never remember. 7 Then roomfuls of Tischbein, Menzel & God
knows who else. There is a lovely Degas Portrait de Femme,
I am sure.
I found Klopstock, buried with his cockpecked wife & son,
don't say much to me either. There are a lot of lovely Van
another hardly up to standard by Lautrec, and a sentimental
Picasso Femme a l'Absinthe. 8 The modern Germans are more
interesting, Leibl, Corinth, Nolde etc. There is a lot of Munch
also, & I found an excellent portrait of a woman by one Jaeckel,
of whom I know nothing. He has nothing else in the Gallery.
Marc's Mandrill is amusing, but I think not so good as the
9
struggled into the language I don't think I'll be sorry to go. I begin to think that Germany's charm is perhaps after all mainly for me a matter of associations. I feel sad enough & often enough
375
Boccioni that Boss Sinclair had in Kassel.
It is nice to be away, but when I have seen the pictures &
9 October 1936, McGreevy
for that to be so. Now that Holland & France have come off the truce, I hope to return that way. 10 Holland in the early spring & Paris in the late, if Europe has not been obliterated before then.
Simon & Schuster turned down Murphy, with the usual kind
11
words, brilliance, 5 % appeal & ruisselant avenir.
Houghton &
Mifflin now have it. Nott has not yet made up his mind. Perhaps
he must get in touch with Mme. Beeton before he can reach a
12
To judge by quantity of spare space that follows it, the circum
cision was uncalled for. I see in the same number a harmless
paragraph on Dilly's book from the com[p]te-gouttes of Norah
13
but hoping soon to 'Take his leave' (! ! ) Richard mit vache is back
14
felt like a desertion. He was tearfully & continuously depressed for weeks before I left. Overwork, neuritis, sex worries, home gloom, etc.
God love thee & write incontinent. I don't seem to have had a proper letter from you for ages.
Ever Sam
Elsheimer is the man.
ALS; 2 leaves, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/110.
1 "Onn'estpasma! ,auseinduchauffagecentral. IIfaitunfroidafairesauter! es couilles. Le pain est noir, ! 'horizon aussi" (Comfortable enough, with the central heating all round one. It is brass monkey weather. The bread is black, so is the horizon). For further description, see Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 217.
376
decision.
My truncated poem is in this number [of] Dublin Magazine.
Hoult.
A letter from the physical jerking Charles, still in London,
"big, red & jovial".
Frank drove me to Waterford. Very sad parting from him. It
9 October 1936, McGreevy McGreevy had the loan of a cottage (Black House) in the tiny village ofToppesfield,
Essex Uack B. Yeats to McGreevy, 30 November 1936,TCD, MS 8105/138).
2 SB arrived in Hamburg on 2 October. For images and detailed information about his stay in Hamburg, consult the website by Roswitha Quadflieg, Fritz-Renzo Heinze, and Clements-Tobias Lange: "Beckett in Hamburg 1936," 11 November 2007, www. beckett-in-hamburg-1936. de/.
Nearly a quarter of Hamburg was destroyed by fire in May 1842, which necessitated massive rebuilding in the mid 19th century. The tower of St. Peter's Church had burned at this time and was reconstructed in Gothic style with a 436-foot tower. "Guglia" (obelisk, hence spire).
The inner and outer Alster lakes are formed by locks on the Alster river; these sheets of water are bounded by tree-lined streets and promenades. "Pieces d'eau" (ponds).
3 SBimaginestheRiverLiffeyoverspreadingitsbankstocoverthelandoccupied by Trinity College Dublin and Nassau Street, with the water lapping the edges of the lawn that extends from Leinster House (the Parliament Building oflreland) to Merrion Square.
The statue of historian William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1838-1903) is on the library green ofTCD. In his wordplay, SB alludes to the Book ofKells, the illuminated manu script of the Gospels, created in Ireland c. AD 800, kept in the TCD Library. Frank Beckett's office was at 6 Clare Street, an extension of Nassau and Leinster Streets.
4 Irish urban planner Manning Robertson (1888-1945) wrote Dun Laoghaire: The History, Scenery and Development of the District (1936) in which he advocated preservation of open spaces.
5 German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803) was buried in the Christiankirche cemetery, at the end of the Palmaille in Ottensen, in the Altona section of Hamburg. Also buried there is his first wife Margareta Miiller (Meta, 1728-1758), their stillborn son, his second wife Joanna Elisabeth Dimpfel von Winthem (1747-1821), and his brother Victor Ludwig Klopstock (1744-1811); the verse, John 11:26, is SB's trans lation (Samuel Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an: Das Hamburg-Kapitel aus den "German Diaries" 2. 0ktober-4. Dezember 1936, transcribed by Erika Tophoven ISchenefeld: Raamin-Press, 2003] 13. For SB's note about the cemetery, see BIF, UoR, MS 4848, and, in Facsimile with a photo, in Roswitha Quadflieg, Beckett was here: Hamburg in Tagebuch, Samuel Becketts von 1936 [Hamburg: Hoffinan und Campe, 2006] 31-32).
"Bauernfriihstiick" (country breakfast); "Hauptbahnhof" (central train station).
6 The Hamburger Kunsthalle was constructed in 1867-1869 in an Italian Renais sance style.
The chief work of Master Bertram von Minden (fl. 1367-c. 1415) is the Altarpiece of St. Peter's (also known as the Grabow Altarpiece or The Creation of the Animals, HK 500). Among works by Master Franke (fl. 1400-1425) in Hamburg is the Altarpiece of the Traders with England (also known as the St. Thomas Altarpiece, HK 490-498).
7 DutchlandscapepainteranddraughtsmanJanvanGoyen.
Peasants Merrymaking (NG! 41) in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland was painted by David Teniers with Flemish painter Lucas van Uden (1595-1672): SB compares this with paintings byTeniers in the Hamburger Kunsthalle: The News (HK 125), Peasants by the Fireside (HK 175), Moonlit Landscape (HK 176), and The Bleachery (HK 337).
377
9 October 1936, McGreevy
Adriaen Brouwer Landscape (HK 339) is now entitled Hilly Landscape with Herd and reattributed as "Anonymous of South Nederland" (c. 1640/1650).
Paintings by Allart van Everdingen {1621-1675) in the collection were Northern Landscape with Wateifall (HK 55), Hilly Landscape (HK 56), Norwegian Fjord (HK 312), Northern Wateifall (HK 313). In his diary entry for 8 October 1936, SB mentions two Everdingens, but the museum cannot confirm which paintings were on display (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso viel an, 14; Dr. Ute Haug, 8 February 2006).
SB recalls the name of Adam Elsheimer as a postscript to this letter.
8 There is a family of painters by this name: Johann Henrich Tischbein {1722-1789), Johann Jacob Tischbein (1725-1791), Johann Friedrich August Tischbein (1750-1812), and Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (1751-1829), who as a friend of Goethe was known as the "Goethe Tischbein" (Goethe in the Roman Campagna, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut and Stadtische Galerie [no. 11571). Of the Tischbein family, SB specifically mentions Johann Jacob and Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso viel an, 20).
Hamburg also had many works by genre painter Adolf Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel (1815-1905).
The painting by French impressionist painter Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas (1834-1917) is now known as Mme. Josephine Gaujelin (formerly known as Portrait ofa Woman. HK 2417). SB refers to the Female Portrait: The Daughter ofthe Village Sergeant (HK 1253) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
The Absinthe Drinker (HK 2353) by Picasso was confiscated by the Nazis, and hung in the 1937 Munich exhibition of "Entartete Kunst" (Degenerate Art); it is now in the Doris Im Obersteg collection, on loan to the Kunstmuseum Basel (Im 1411) (Stephanie Barron, ed. , "Degenerate Art": The Fate ofthe Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany [Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum ofArt, 1991J 168; Charlotte Guzwiller, Registrar, Kunstmuseum Basel, 7 June 2006).
9 Wilhelm Leib! (1844-1900), Lavis Corinth (1858-1925), and Emil Nolde (1867-1956). The 1927 Katalog der neueren Meister of the Hamburger Kunsthalle shows only two works by Norwegian expressionist painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944): Male Portrait (Director Briinings) (HK 2309; confiscated in 1937 and now in a private collec tion) and Woman in Blue (HK 2310).
The only painting by Willy Jaeckel (1888-1944) in the Hamburger Kunsthalle at this time was St Sebastian I (HK 1679). On 19 November, SB recorded that a portrait he had seen on 8 October 1936 had "gone from its place" (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 14, 44).
The Mandrill (HK 1688, confiscated in 1937; since 1964, in the Pinakothek der Modeme in Munich, 13467) by Franz Marc {1880-1916) is compared to The Laugh (once owned by William Sinclair, now MOMA 656. 1959) by Italian painter Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916).
10 It is likely that the truce to which SB refers is the economic shift of 26 September: France (in agreement with Britain and the United States) devalued its currency to reduce barriers to trade, followed by Holland and Switzerland in early October 1936 ("Valuing the Franc," The Times 28 September 1936: 12; "A New Beginning," The Times 28 September 1936: 13; "Fetters to Trade," The Times 6 October 1936: 13).
11 The rejection letter from Simon and Schuster has not been found; "ruisselant avenir" (dazzling future).
378
12 BostonpublishersHoughtonMifflin.
Stanley Nott had been considering Murphy (see 19 September 1936, n. 10). SB's facetious reference is to Isabella Mary Beeton (nee Mayson, 1836-1865), whose Mrs. Beeton's Book of Hauselwld Management (1861) was the influential cookbook for over one hundred years.
13 "Cascando,"DublinMagazine3-4. Thecutinthepoem:19September1936,n. 3.
Norah Hoult's review ofThe Fires ofBeltane by Geraldine Cummins called the novel "a detailed and unsentimental story with a touch of genuine poetic imagination" ("New Fiction," Dublin Magazine 11. 4 [October-December 1936[ 96).
"Compte-gouttes" (literally, drop-by-drop).
14 CharlesPrentice.
Richard Aldington and his companion Brigit Patmore had returned to London from Austria; also at about this time, Aldington had begun an affair with Netta Patmore (1911-1977), Brigit's daughter-in law (Charles Doyle, Richard Aldington: A Biography [Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989] 176). SB quotes from Prentice's letter which is not extant.
"Mit" (Ger. , with), "vache" (Fr. slang, bitch).
IAN PARSONS
C HATTO AND WINDUS, LONDON
7/11/36 Hamburg 13
Schhiterstrasse 44 bei Hoppe
Germany
My dear Parsons
Will you be so kind as to have three More Pricks Than Kicks
and three Prousts sent to me at above address. I enclose cheque
1
TLS; 1 leaf, 1 side; date stamped received 9-11-36; UoR, MS 2444 CW 59/9.
1 SBhadpromisedacopyofhisProusttoGunterAlbrecht•(1916-1941),anappren tice in the bookshop of Kurt Saucke (1895-1970) in Hamburg (Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an, 33, 26).
379
7 November 1936, Parsons
for one pound, and trust my arithmetic is correct. With best wishes.
Yours very sincerely,
sf
(Samuel Beckett)
13 November 1936, Reavey
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
13/11/36
Schh. iterstrasse 44 bei Hoppe Hamburg 13
Dear George
Thank you for letter with Greenslet's enclosed.
Let me say at once that I do not see how the book can be
cut without being disorganised. Especially if the beginning is
cut (& God knows the first half is plain sailing enough) the later
part will lose such resonance as it has. I can't imagine what they
want me to take out. I refuse to touch the section entitled Amor
Intellectualis quo M. se ipsum amat. And I refuse also to touch
2
1
thegameofchess. TheHoroscopechapterisalsoessential. ButI am anxious for the book to be published and therefore cannot afford to reply with a blank refusal to cut anything. Will you therefore communicate to Mr Greenslet my extreme aversion to removing one third of my work, proceeding from my extreme inability to understand how this can be done and leave a remain der. But add that ifthey would indicate precisely what they have in mind, and the passages that cause them pain, I should be willing to suppress such passages as are not essential to the whole and adjust such others as seem to them a confusion of the issue. Be astonished, firm, & up to a point politely flexible, all at once, if you can. Do they not understand that if the book is slightly obscure, it is so because it is a compression, and that to compress it further can only result in making it more obscure? The wild & unreal dialogues cannot, it seems to be [for me], be removed without darkening & dulling the whole thing. They are the comic expression of what elsewhere is expressed in elegy,
380
namely if you like the hermetism of the spirit. Is it here that
they find the "skyrockets"? There is no time and no space in
such a book for mere relief. The relief has also to do work and reinforce that from which it relieves. And of course the narrative is hard to follow, & of course deliberately so. Am I then Berdaev [for Berdyaev]? That I should adorn with historical amnions & placentae a non-historical uterus? And sink grapples in a womb ceaselessly pregnated & never delivered? And crowd the last chapter with oyster kisses & Murillo brats? But this is all dans le vide, & must remain so, until I know in detail what it is that upsets them. 3
Perhaps if Nott were to express willingness in event of USA
collaboration to publish the book as it stands, or totters, and
furthermore to give out as his opinion that cuts are not desir
4
I am also very anxious to obtain permission to use enclosed
photograph, without subscript, as frontispiece. I came across it
first in a Daily Sketch months ago, & found it again here in an
Illustrierte. I have somewhere the date of issue of D. S. in ques
5
I shall be here a little time still, & until I can let you have another address, write me here.
Amicalement6 s/ Sam
TLS; 1 leaf, 1 side; T env to George Reavey Esq, European Literary Bureau, 30 Red Lion Square, London W. C. 1, ENGLAND; pm 13-11-36, Hamburg; TxU. Previous publication: Bair, Samuel Beckett, 243; rpt. Beckett, Disjecta, 103.
1 The letter from Ferris Greenslet (1875-1959), Editor of Houghton Mifflin, with regard to Murphy, has not been found.
381
13 November 1936, Reavey
able, the Mifflin Zerstorungswut might be pacified.
tion. IpresumeIcannotuseitwithoutpermission,&amnot sure how I should set about getting permission. Anyway keep it it [sic] carefully.
13 November 1936, Reavey
2 In Murphy: "Amor Intellectualis quo M. se ipsum amat" (Intellectual Love with which M. loves himself) (ch. 6, 107-113); the game of chess (ch. 11, 242-246); the Horoscope chapter (ch. 3, 26-41).
3 ReaveyhadtranslatedtheworkofNikolaiBerdyaev.
Although there are "oyster kisses" between Miss Counihan and Wylie (Murphy, 117), there are none in the last chapter. The secular paintings of Spanish painter Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1617-1682) were composed almost entirely of scenes of young children.
"Dans le vide" (guesswork).
4 SB makes this suggestion sinceStanley Nott was unwilling to undertake publica tion of Murphy alone.
"Zerstorungswut" (destructive mania).
5 Thecaptionfortheimageis"Buthe'sdoneit! Mate! "Itappearedwithfourother photos of apes playing chess: "Chess is a Shouting Match the Way these Two Play It," Daily Sketch [London] 11 July 1936: 10. The reproduction in a German Il! ustrierte has not been located. "Illustrierte" (glossy magazine).
6 "Amicalement"(Allthebest).
MARY MANN ING HOWE CAMBRI DGE, MASS A CHUS ETTS
14/11/36
Hamburg
Dear Mary Congratulations.
1
Praised be the day before evening. Or not at all.
Send your poem. I know. It has the colour of lead and the texture of worn plush, and is rich in place-names. And Mons Venerillae? 2 Now you must be very careful, what you write, think, say, wish and fear. The appendix pain has gone, and will not return. The first communion glow steals over you from time to time. And impertinence you pity rather than pardon.
Reavey wrote enclosing a letter from Greensletandhindrance. I am exhorted to ablate 33. 3 recurring to all eternity of my work. I have thought of a better plan. Take every 500th word, punc tuate carefully and publish a poem in prose in the Paris Daily Mail.
382
14 November 1936, Manning Howe
Then the rest separately and privately, with a forewarning from
Geoffrey, as the ravings of a schizoid, or serially, in translation,
in the Zeitschrift fur Kitsch. 3 My next work shall be on rice
paper wound about a spool, with a perforated line every six inches
and on sale in Boots. The length of each chapter will be carefully
calculated to suit with the average free motion. And with every
copy a free sample of some laxative to promote sales. The Beckett
Bowel Books, Jesus in farto. Issued in imperishable tissue. Thistle
down end papers. All edges disinfected. 1000 wipes of clean fun.
4
I replied, dear agente provocatrice, that I would not have
a finger laid on the section entitled Amor intellectualis etc. , nor
on the Thema Coeli, nor on Endon's Affence, nor on the last
will and fundament, but that so far as the rest was concerned
I would willingly remove all ties and supports, dripstones, key
stones, cornerstones, buttresses, and, with especial pleasure,
the entire foundations, and accept full and entire responsibility
5
After all one is always flattered. It is only from the highest unities that a third can be negligently carved away and the remainder live. The amoeba's neck is not easily broken. Nor his countenance put out.
I dream, with the help of black coffee, of a lap the size of the fifteen acres, with all appurtenances strictly to scale, all to myself in my present deformity. Beauty is a blank wall with Paste No Bills. I am tired dashing my skull against it. I run the gauntlets of galleries, up and down the highly waxed calva ries, a cockshy and an Auunt [for Aunt] Sally of art. I go to an old woman this evening, whose house is a shrine to Schmidt-Rottluff,
383
Also in Braille for anal pruritics. All Sturm and no Drang.
fortheensuingdetritus. Theowls,cats,foxesandtoadsofthe higher criticism could be relied on to complete the picture, a romantic one.
14 November 1936, Manning Howe
a painter on Picasso's level, and it is like going to be keel hauled. 6 I should have been away from here this long time, there are so many other hoops to be gone through, and not another ball in sight. Ireland? I feel nothing but the dread at having to return.
I can't read, write, drink, think, feel, or move.
I seem impelled to address my friends when least in a con dition to.
People like me - for a little.
Mother was all set to join Susan in London & then of course
7
I am not obscure. Where it hurts? No aim need be taken. It doesn't hurt anywhere. And is worked up into a hurt every where. I feel like an anaesthetised Sebastian affecting to choke back his cries.
8
sf S
Through the wall come female Danish voices, two Jutland
tarts in colloquy. Pure chirping. They should be on a funeral
urn, in the Genesiacal period. Now I know how Ophelia
should speak the flower speech. And that Hamlet was mad.
9
1 SB's reference is not known. Mary Manning Howe was pregnant with her first child.
2 ThepoembyMaryManningHoweisnotidentified.
Mary Manning Howe was writing a novel, Mount Venus (1938); SB's use of the term Mons Venerillae in More Pricks Than Kicks is drawn from Burton, The Anatomy of
384
cried off. Frank still works every evening till 8.
That is worse than being disliked from the beginning. I hope
They will give the Nobel prize to Kurt Gotz next. Love
He is buried in no fewer than 54 Jutlandish localities. All the lavatory men say Heil Hitler. The best pictures are in the cellar. 10
TL! ; 1 leaf, 2 sides (ANS PS on verso); TxU.
14 November 1936, Manning Howe Melancholy (see Pilling, ed. , Beckett's Dream Notebook, 123; Pilling, A Companion to "Dream of
Fair to Middling Women," 263).
3 TheletterofFerrisGreenslet:13November1936,n. 1.
The Paris Daily Mail was the title of the continental edition of the Daily Mail (London)
published in Paris from 1905 to 1946.
As a trained psychiatrist, Geoffrey Thompson was competent to treat schizophrenia. "Zeitschrift furKitsch" (Magazine forKitsch), Beckett's invention.
4 SBwrote"<trimmed>disinfected. "Boots,chemists.
SB's pun refers to the "Sturm und Orang" (Storm and Stress) movement in the arts in
Germany in the late eighteenth century.
5 "Thema Coeli" refers to the horoscope section of Murphy (32-33), "Endon's Affence" to the chess game (243-245), and Murphy's "last will and fundament" to the reading of his will (268-269).
6 Thefifteenacres:29January[1935],n. 5.
On 15 November 1936, SB was invited for a second visit to the home of the art
historian Rosa Schapire (1874-1954). He knew that the intensity of her opinions was heightened by the fact that, as a Jew, she had been forbidden to publish or lecture (Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an, 39-41).
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff(neKarl Schmidt, 1884-1976, who added the place of his birth to his name in 1905) was a member of the Briicke painters who formed a group from 1905 to 1913: Erich Heckel (1883-1970), Fritz Bleyl (1880-1966), EmstLudwigKirchner (1880-1938), Otto Mueller (1874-1930), Max Pechstein (1881-1955), and Emil Nolde. For photos of Schapire's home with Schmidt-Rottluff's portraits of her, as well as furniture and functional objects decorated by him, together with Schapire's extensive bibliography of his work, see Gerhard Wietek, "Rosa Schapire" in Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen, IX (Hamburg: Dr. Ernst Hauswedell and Co. Verlag, 1964) 114-160.
The term "Aunt Sally," derived from fairground games, signifies an easy target.
7 SusanManning,motherofMaryManningHowe.
8 The 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature had just been awarded to American play wright Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953). German actor, director, novelist, and dramatist
Kurt Gatz (1888-1960) never received it.
9 TheentirePSishandwrittenininkontheversoofthetypedpage.
Danish tour groups resided in the Pension Hoppe in October and November 1936
(Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an, 19, 40).
SB's allusion to a funeral um may be related to a lecture that he heard on 12
November 1936 by Dr. Eugen von Mercklin, Curator of Ancient Art, Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe (Arts and Crafts Museum), Hamburg, who spoke on the "Geometrische Periode," which he defined as 800 to 600 BC (Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an, 37); SB imagines a vase from the "Genesiacal period" (the time of Genesis),
which, according to the Jewish Calendar, is c. 3761 BC.
SB alludes to Ophelia's flower speech (Shakespeare, Hamlet, IV. v. 175-177, 180-186).
10 Having bought the 1927 Hamburger Kunsthalle Katalog der neueren Meister, SB noted that many pictures were no longer on view, and that many were not described (Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an, 28).
385
28 November 1937 {for 1936}, McGreevy THOMAS McGREEVY
LONDON
28/11/37 [for 1936] Hamburg
Dear Tom
Forgive my too long silence. I find it more & more difficult to
write, even letters to my friends.
The weather is appalling, a leaden yellow all day, and the
first drizzles of snow beginning. It will be colder in Berlin, but
1
The whole north Harz region is the richest in early Roman of all Germany. 3 If only I felt more up to looking at things, but for the past week I am in rotten form, grippe I think, with the old herpes & a slowly festering finger. I wanted to go to Bremen before leaving Hamburg, but the light is so frightful, and the constitution of the gallery there now so doubtful (I mean what pictures have they left hanging), & my apathy so enormous, that I have not made the trip. 4 From Brunswick I expect to go straight to Berlin, arriving there about a week or 10 days before Xmas. There I will remain at least a month. 5
I have met a lot of friendly people here, mostly painters. Kluth, Ballmer, Grimm, Bargheer, Hartmann - perhaps a name is familiar to you. It is an interesting group, especially Ballmer (a Swiss) & Grimm, for me. 6 They are all more or less suppressed, i. e. cannot exhibit publicly and dare sell only with precaution. The group was broken up in 1933, their library confiscated,
386
brighter. IleaveherenextThursdayorFriday. Iexpecttospend a night in Luneburg, perhaps a couple in Hanover, & then for a week sit down in Brunswick, from where excursions to Hildesheim, Goslar, Wolfenbiittel, Halberstadt, Quedlinburg, Riddagshausen, & Konigslutter. 2
28 November 1937 {for 1936}, McGreevy
etc. The influences are in every imaginable dosage Munch,
Nolde and the "Bridge" (Schmidt-Rottluff, Kirchner, Heckel,
etc. ). 7 I have seen several excellent private collections (where
alone living art is to be seen in Germany at present. The
Kronprinzenpalais in Berlin is closed, & that is typical for the
whole country, and the campaign against "Art-Bolschevism" is
only just beginning\ those of Fraulein Dr. Rosa Schapire, art
historian, exclusively Schmidt-Rottluff; 9 of Frau Sauerlandt,
widow of Professor Sauerlandt of the Art & Crafts Museum
here, whose banned book on the painting of the past 30 years I
succeeded in obtaining, mostly Nolde;10 and of a merchant
prince called Hudtwalcker, mostly Munch. 11 I also got permis
sion to view the Cellar of the Gallery, or rather one of the
cellars, & saw there in the twilight some excellent pictures of
the "Bridge" Group; in another cellar are some 60 pictures of the
German impressionist Liebermann. 12 I was refused permission
in the Art & Crafts Museum to inspect a carpet after design
by Schmidt-Rottluff. 13 I have introductions to Schmidt-Rottluff,
Nolde & Heckel in Berlin. 14 The fundamental antithesis, & the
two poles of influence, is Schmidt-Rottluff-Nolde. Spend [for
spent] a very interesting evening with Grimm & Ballmer, then
Grimm alone. Their enthusiasm for early Christian miniature
painting, especially the Irish Celtic. 15 Ballmer's painting is like
nothing I have seen, except some moods of the later Picasso (do
you remember the tremendous figure on a shore that I liked so
much in the big Paris Exhibition? ), metaphysical concrete. 16
Grimm draws like Lautrec, & then frail lyrical tempera colours.
Bargheer is very violent & intelligent & anatomical. Pollaiuolo,
whom I mentioned, he analyzed with admiral [for admirable]
17
justness & sensitiveness.
therefore only a very little disturbed by the official attitude
387
They are all profoundly serious and
28 November 1937 [for 1936}, McGreevy
towards them. I shall be surprised & lucky ifl find such energetic underground of painting in other parts of Germany. I hear on all
18
removed & leave a remainded [for remainder].
Drunken Boat was to have been published in New Poetry;
but I hear this has been deferred, to make room for an article by
20
sorry you have had to lay the Yeats aside. I'm afraid I couldn't write about pictures at all. I used never to be happy with a
21
I heard a lovely concert with the Berlin Philharmonic under
Sabata (pupil of Toscanini) from Milan: Strauss's Don Quixote,
which belongs to same period as Heldenleben & which therefore
I expected would be awful but which was exquisite; Bolero,
mistimed as usual, ejaculatio praecox as usual; & Brahms' �nd
Symphony superbly played, so that I understand Brahms (the
Brahms of the symphonies) a little for the first time & why I had
almost [for? always] found him so difficult to understand. Sabata
22
a Kraft <lurch Freude spinster from Altona. But Hindemith's
388
I meant to go home by Paris, but think now of going home the way I came. By April I expect to be far too tired for Paris. Perhaps I shall get off the boat at Southhampton or Plymouth or wherever it calls and have a short time in London & see you & Geoffrey. I suppose that will partly depend on what happens with Murphy. I hear from Reavey that Nott would take it if an American mug could be found, & furthermore that Houghton Mifflin are "on", but screaming for a cut of one third! 19 So the matter still pends, I not having refused blankly to change a syllable, but having replied with a polite request to be told how I was to remove more than I had already
sides that Hamburg is an island.
Ezra Pound.
I am glad you have got a translation from Heinemann, but
picture till it was literature, but now that need is gone.
was more conducted than conducting.
I was invited one evening to a Hausmusik. Wolf sung by
28 November 1937 [for 1936}, McGreevy
Matthias der Maler symphony on gramophone. 23 I so want to
see the Isenheimer Altar in Colmar, but don't see how it is to
be managed. There is something also in Aschaffenburg &
I think in Munich, but apparently trivial beside the
24
cent form. Mother has had no holiday & wont take one. Young
Sinclair has a job waiting in South Africa (I think thanks to
Dorothy Elvery), but is not well enough to travel. He is spending
a few days at Cooldrinagh! Boss has been moved to Rathdrum &
fallen in love with a nun. Cissie is beyond writing to me, & I have
25
Edinburgh, which he found appalling. And there is an Irishman
called Power, who has not been in Ireland, who was born in
Gibraltar, whose home is in Peru, whose interests are in Spain &
family in Marburg, whose family left Waterford, while the going
was good, in the 1s! li century. He stood me lunch in a vegetarian
26
in Brunswick would take me in. Only in ports does the new
27
Flamand] called Brulez, professor of French here, & gave
28
through him a real little German pedant Fraulein Tied[t]ke,
whose thesis on the Proustian Symbol I am at present skim
ming. She wrote me a long letter in crabbed French about
the shortcomings of my book, & I must meet here [for her]
Monday before a flowershop & render an account. But there is
something magnificent in doing a doctorate in 1936 with a
29
389
Isenheimer.
News from home is good. Frank seems to be in magnifi
this news from home.
We have an Icelander in the Pension now, fresh from
restaurant.
I am tired of this Pension. I wonder is there a whore left
Germany tolerate brothels.
I met a Proust fiend in the University, a Flamant [for
him my book, which released his compliments. And
work on not merely an "exquisite", but a non-Aryan.
Brulez
28 November 1937 {for 1936}, McGreevy
quoted with scorn Huxley's "mental masturbation". I said there were worst things, mental aspermatism for example. My Proust is apparently not positive & intellectual enough for the disciples of Curtius, I mean my presentation of Proust. They want to make his "solution" a little moral tri umph, the reward of endeavour & the crown of a life of striving a la Goethe. 30
Forgive this dry letter. It is all I can do to-day & to-morrow would be more than I could do.
Perhaps you would write in about a week to Poste Restante, Braunschweig. I expect to be there from about g! ! ! to 15! ! ! December.
Love ever Sam
31
ALS; 2 leaves, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/145.
I got here last Friday, 24 hours late. The town is superb, nothing older than middle 19th century. One exquisite green steeple (truly a guglia), that of the Petrikirche. And the Alster pieces d'eau are masterpieces. 2 I got a lovely vision ofT. C. D. & its terra infirma reclaimed from the land, the Liffey lying calm over Nassau Street, as no doubt once it did, washing the fringes ofLeinster Lawn, Lecky & the Kook ofBells submerged, & Frank
374
9 October 1936, McGreevy going to his lunch in a canoe. 3 That would be the only town
planning- away with the town! Manning Robertson would agree
4
right at the end of Altona's most charming promenade, under the inevitable snivelling lime, in the grip of ivy. "He who then liveth & believeth in me shall never perish. " Then I had a Bauernfriihsti. ick in the Hauptbahnhof. 5
The Gallery here was something of a disappointment, but
may improve. The building is magnificent and the pictures
admirably presented (one line hanging against matt white
throughout), but there is an appalling quantity of rubbish,
worse than unimportant locals. Meisters BERTRAM & FRANKE
6
Goyens, a Van Uden -Teniers not as good as the one in Dublin,
a so called Brouwer landscape that might conceivably be a pot
boiler, a couple of Everdingens and a characteristic landscape of
that German-Roman that you don't like & whose name I can
never remember. 7 Then roomfuls of Tischbein, Menzel & God
knows who else. There is a lovely Degas Portrait de Femme,
I am sure.
I found Klopstock, buried with his cockpecked wife & son,
don't say much to me either. There are a lot of lovely Van
another hardly up to standard by Lautrec, and a sentimental
Picasso Femme a l'Absinthe. 8 The modern Germans are more
interesting, Leibl, Corinth, Nolde etc. There is a lot of Munch
also, & I found an excellent portrait of a woman by one Jaeckel,
of whom I know nothing. He has nothing else in the Gallery.
Marc's Mandrill is amusing, but I think not so good as the
9
struggled into the language I don't think I'll be sorry to go. I begin to think that Germany's charm is perhaps after all mainly for me a matter of associations. I feel sad enough & often enough
375
Boccioni that Boss Sinclair had in Kassel.
It is nice to be away, but when I have seen the pictures &
9 October 1936, McGreevy
for that to be so. Now that Holland & France have come off the truce, I hope to return that way. 10 Holland in the early spring & Paris in the late, if Europe has not been obliterated before then.
Simon & Schuster turned down Murphy, with the usual kind
11
words, brilliance, 5 % appeal & ruisselant avenir.
Houghton &
Mifflin now have it. Nott has not yet made up his mind. Perhaps
he must get in touch with Mme. Beeton before he can reach a
12
To judge by quantity of spare space that follows it, the circum
cision was uncalled for. I see in the same number a harmless
paragraph on Dilly's book from the com[p]te-gouttes of Norah
13
but hoping soon to 'Take his leave' (! ! ) Richard mit vache is back
14
felt like a desertion. He was tearfully & continuously depressed for weeks before I left. Overwork, neuritis, sex worries, home gloom, etc.
God love thee & write incontinent. I don't seem to have had a proper letter from you for ages.
Ever Sam
Elsheimer is the man.
ALS; 2 leaves, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/110.
1 "Onn'estpasma! ,auseinduchauffagecentral. IIfaitunfroidafairesauter! es couilles. Le pain est noir, ! 'horizon aussi" (Comfortable enough, with the central heating all round one. It is brass monkey weather. The bread is black, so is the horizon). For further description, see Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 217.
376
decision.
My truncated poem is in this number [of] Dublin Magazine.
Hoult.
A letter from the physical jerking Charles, still in London,
"big, red & jovial".
Frank drove me to Waterford. Very sad parting from him. It
9 October 1936, McGreevy McGreevy had the loan of a cottage (Black House) in the tiny village ofToppesfield,
Essex Uack B. Yeats to McGreevy, 30 November 1936,TCD, MS 8105/138).
2 SB arrived in Hamburg on 2 October. For images and detailed information about his stay in Hamburg, consult the website by Roswitha Quadflieg, Fritz-Renzo Heinze, and Clements-Tobias Lange: "Beckett in Hamburg 1936," 11 November 2007, www. beckett-in-hamburg-1936. de/.
Nearly a quarter of Hamburg was destroyed by fire in May 1842, which necessitated massive rebuilding in the mid 19th century. The tower of St. Peter's Church had burned at this time and was reconstructed in Gothic style with a 436-foot tower. "Guglia" (obelisk, hence spire).
The inner and outer Alster lakes are formed by locks on the Alster river; these sheets of water are bounded by tree-lined streets and promenades. "Pieces d'eau" (ponds).
3 SBimaginestheRiverLiffeyoverspreadingitsbankstocoverthelandoccupied by Trinity College Dublin and Nassau Street, with the water lapping the edges of the lawn that extends from Leinster House (the Parliament Building oflreland) to Merrion Square.
The statue of historian William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1838-1903) is on the library green ofTCD. In his wordplay, SB alludes to the Book ofKells, the illuminated manu script of the Gospels, created in Ireland c. AD 800, kept in the TCD Library. Frank Beckett's office was at 6 Clare Street, an extension of Nassau and Leinster Streets.
4 Irish urban planner Manning Robertson (1888-1945) wrote Dun Laoghaire: The History, Scenery and Development of the District (1936) in which he advocated preservation of open spaces.
5 German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803) was buried in the Christiankirche cemetery, at the end of the Palmaille in Ottensen, in the Altona section of Hamburg. Also buried there is his first wife Margareta Miiller (Meta, 1728-1758), their stillborn son, his second wife Joanna Elisabeth Dimpfel von Winthem (1747-1821), and his brother Victor Ludwig Klopstock (1744-1811); the verse, John 11:26, is SB's trans lation (Samuel Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an: Das Hamburg-Kapitel aus den "German Diaries" 2. 0ktober-4. Dezember 1936, transcribed by Erika Tophoven ISchenefeld: Raamin-Press, 2003] 13. For SB's note about the cemetery, see BIF, UoR, MS 4848, and, in Facsimile with a photo, in Roswitha Quadflieg, Beckett was here: Hamburg in Tagebuch, Samuel Becketts von 1936 [Hamburg: Hoffinan und Campe, 2006] 31-32).
"Bauernfriihstiick" (country breakfast); "Hauptbahnhof" (central train station).
6 The Hamburger Kunsthalle was constructed in 1867-1869 in an Italian Renais sance style.
The chief work of Master Bertram von Minden (fl. 1367-c. 1415) is the Altarpiece of St. Peter's (also known as the Grabow Altarpiece or The Creation of the Animals, HK 500). Among works by Master Franke (fl. 1400-1425) in Hamburg is the Altarpiece of the Traders with England (also known as the St. Thomas Altarpiece, HK 490-498).
7 DutchlandscapepainteranddraughtsmanJanvanGoyen.
Peasants Merrymaking (NG! 41) in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland was painted by David Teniers with Flemish painter Lucas van Uden (1595-1672): SB compares this with paintings byTeniers in the Hamburger Kunsthalle: The News (HK 125), Peasants by the Fireside (HK 175), Moonlit Landscape (HK 176), and The Bleachery (HK 337).
377
9 October 1936, McGreevy
Adriaen Brouwer Landscape (HK 339) is now entitled Hilly Landscape with Herd and reattributed as "Anonymous of South Nederland" (c. 1640/1650).
Paintings by Allart van Everdingen {1621-1675) in the collection were Northern Landscape with Wateifall (HK 55), Hilly Landscape (HK 56), Norwegian Fjord (HK 312), Northern Wateifall (HK 313). In his diary entry for 8 October 1936, SB mentions two Everdingens, but the museum cannot confirm which paintings were on display (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso viel an, 14; Dr. Ute Haug, 8 February 2006).
SB recalls the name of Adam Elsheimer as a postscript to this letter.
8 There is a family of painters by this name: Johann Henrich Tischbein {1722-1789), Johann Jacob Tischbein (1725-1791), Johann Friedrich August Tischbein (1750-1812), and Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (1751-1829), who as a friend of Goethe was known as the "Goethe Tischbein" (Goethe in the Roman Campagna, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut and Stadtische Galerie [no. 11571). Of the Tischbein family, SB specifically mentions Johann Jacob and Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso viel an, 20).
Hamburg also had many works by genre painter Adolf Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel (1815-1905).
The painting by French impressionist painter Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas (1834-1917) is now known as Mme. Josephine Gaujelin (formerly known as Portrait ofa Woman. HK 2417). SB refers to the Female Portrait: The Daughter ofthe Village Sergeant (HK 1253) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
The Absinthe Drinker (HK 2353) by Picasso was confiscated by the Nazis, and hung in the 1937 Munich exhibition of "Entartete Kunst" (Degenerate Art); it is now in the Doris Im Obersteg collection, on loan to the Kunstmuseum Basel (Im 1411) (Stephanie Barron, ed. , "Degenerate Art": The Fate ofthe Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany [Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum ofArt, 1991J 168; Charlotte Guzwiller, Registrar, Kunstmuseum Basel, 7 June 2006).
9 Wilhelm Leib! (1844-1900), Lavis Corinth (1858-1925), and Emil Nolde (1867-1956). The 1927 Katalog der neueren Meister of the Hamburger Kunsthalle shows only two works by Norwegian expressionist painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944): Male Portrait (Director Briinings) (HK 2309; confiscated in 1937 and now in a private collec tion) and Woman in Blue (HK 2310).
The only painting by Willy Jaeckel (1888-1944) in the Hamburger Kunsthalle at this time was St Sebastian I (HK 1679). On 19 November, SB recorded that a portrait he had seen on 8 October 1936 had "gone from its place" (Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 14, 44).
The Mandrill (HK 1688, confiscated in 1937; since 1964, in the Pinakothek der Modeme in Munich, 13467) by Franz Marc {1880-1916) is compared to The Laugh (once owned by William Sinclair, now MOMA 656. 1959) by Italian painter Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916).
10 It is likely that the truce to which SB refers is the economic shift of 26 September: France (in agreement with Britain and the United States) devalued its currency to reduce barriers to trade, followed by Holland and Switzerland in early October 1936 ("Valuing the Franc," The Times 28 September 1936: 12; "A New Beginning," The Times 28 September 1936: 13; "Fetters to Trade," The Times 6 October 1936: 13).
11 The rejection letter from Simon and Schuster has not been found; "ruisselant avenir" (dazzling future).
378
12 BostonpublishersHoughtonMifflin.
Stanley Nott had been considering Murphy (see 19 September 1936, n. 10). SB's facetious reference is to Isabella Mary Beeton (nee Mayson, 1836-1865), whose Mrs. Beeton's Book of Hauselwld Management (1861) was the influential cookbook for over one hundred years.
13 "Cascando,"DublinMagazine3-4. Thecutinthepoem:19September1936,n. 3.
Norah Hoult's review ofThe Fires ofBeltane by Geraldine Cummins called the novel "a detailed and unsentimental story with a touch of genuine poetic imagination" ("New Fiction," Dublin Magazine 11. 4 [October-December 1936[ 96).
"Compte-gouttes" (literally, drop-by-drop).
14 CharlesPrentice.
Richard Aldington and his companion Brigit Patmore had returned to London from Austria; also at about this time, Aldington had begun an affair with Netta Patmore (1911-1977), Brigit's daughter-in law (Charles Doyle, Richard Aldington: A Biography [Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989] 176). SB quotes from Prentice's letter which is not extant.
"Mit" (Ger. , with), "vache" (Fr. slang, bitch).
IAN PARSONS
C HATTO AND WINDUS, LONDON
7/11/36 Hamburg 13
Schhiterstrasse 44 bei Hoppe
Germany
My dear Parsons
Will you be so kind as to have three More Pricks Than Kicks
and three Prousts sent to me at above address. I enclose cheque
1
TLS; 1 leaf, 1 side; date stamped received 9-11-36; UoR, MS 2444 CW 59/9.
1 SBhadpromisedacopyofhisProusttoGunterAlbrecht•(1916-1941),anappren tice in the bookshop of Kurt Saucke (1895-1970) in Hamburg (Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an, 33, 26).
379
7 November 1936, Parsons
for one pound, and trust my arithmetic is correct. With best wishes.
Yours very sincerely,
sf
(Samuel Beckett)
13 November 1936, Reavey
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
13/11/36
Schh. iterstrasse 44 bei Hoppe Hamburg 13
Dear George
Thank you for letter with Greenslet's enclosed.
Let me say at once that I do not see how the book can be
cut without being disorganised. Especially if the beginning is
cut (& God knows the first half is plain sailing enough) the later
part will lose such resonance as it has. I can't imagine what they
want me to take out. I refuse to touch the section entitled Amor
Intellectualis quo M. se ipsum amat. And I refuse also to touch
2
1
thegameofchess. TheHoroscopechapterisalsoessential. ButI am anxious for the book to be published and therefore cannot afford to reply with a blank refusal to cut anything. Will you therefore communicate to Mr Greenslet my extreme aversion to removing one third of my work, proceeding from my extreme inability to understand how this can be done and leave a remain der. But add that ifthey would indicate precisely what they have in mind, and the passages that cause them pain, I should be willing to suppress such passages as are not essential to the whole and adjust such others as seem to them a confusion of the issue. Be astonished, firm, & up to a point politely flexible, all at once, if you can. Do they not understand that if the book is slightly obscure, it is so because it is a compression, and that to compress it further can only result in making it more obscure? The wild & unreal dialogues cannot, it seems to be [for me], be removed without darkening & dulling the whole thing. They are the comic expression of what elsewhere is expressed in elegy,
380
namely if you like the hermetism of the spirit. Is it here that
they find the "skyrockets"? There is no time and no space in
such a book for mere relief. The relief has also to do work and reinforce that from which it relieves. And of course the narrative is hard to follow, & of course deliberately so. Am I then Berdaev [for Berdyaev]? That I should adorn with historical amnions & placentae a non-historical uterus? And sink grapples in a womb ceaselessly pregnated & never delivered? And crowd the last chapter with oyster kisses & Murillo brats? But this is all dans le vide, & must remain so, until I know in detail what it is that upsets them. 3
Perhaps if Nott were to express willingness in event of USA
collaboration to publish the book as it stands, or totters, and
furthermore to give out as his opinion that cuts are not desir
4
I am also very anxious to obtain permission to use enclosed
photograph, without subscript, as frontispiece. I came across it
first in a Daily Sketch months ago, & found it again here in an
Illustrierte. I have somewhere the date of issue of D. S. in ques
5
I shall be here a little time still, & until I can let you have another address, write me here.
Amicalement6 s/ Sam
TLS; 1 leaf, 1 side; T env to George Reavey Esq, European Literary Bureau, 30 Red Lion Square, London W. C. 1, ENGLAND; pm 13-11-36, Hamburg; TxU. Previous publication: Bair, Samuel Beckett, 243; rpt. Beckett, Disjecta, 103.
1 The letter from Ferris Greenslet (1875-1959), Editor of Houghton Mifflin, with regard to Murphy, has not been found.
381
13 November 1936, Reavey
able, the Mifflin Zerstorungswut might be pacified.
tion. IpresumeIcannotuseitwithoutpermission,&amnot sure how I should set about getting permission. Anyway keep it it [sic] carefully.
13 November 1936, Reavey
2 In Murphy: "Amor Intellectualis quo M. se ipsum amat" (Intellectual Love with which M. loves himself) (ch. 6, 107-113); the game of chess (ch. 11, 242-246); the Horoscope chapter (ch. 3, 26-41).
3 ReaveyhadtranslatedtheworkofNikolaiBerdyaev.
Although there are "oyster kisses" between Miss Counihan and Wylie (Murphy, 117), there are none in the last chapter. The secular paintings of Spanish painter Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1617-1682) were composed almost entirely of scenes of young children.
"Dans le vide" (guesswork).
4 SB makes this suggestion sinceStanley Nott was unwilling to undertake publica tion of Murphy alone.
"Zerstorungswut" (destructive mania).
5 Thecaptionfortheimageis"Buthe'sdoneit! Mate! "Itappearedwithfourother photos of apes playing chess: "Chess is a Shouting Match the Way these Two Play It," Daily Sketch [London] 11 July 1936: 10. The reproduction in a German Il! ustrierte has not been located. "Illustrierte" (glossy magazine).
6 "Amicalement"(Allthebest).
MARY MANN ING HOWE CAMBRI DGE, MASS A CHUS ETTS
14/11/36
Hamburg
Dear Mary Congratulations.
1
Praised be the day before evening. Or not at all.
Send your poem. I know. It has the colour of lead and the texture of worn plush, and is rich in place-names. And Mons Venerillae? 2 Now you must be very careful, what you write, think, say, wish and fear. The appendix pain has gone, and will not return. The first communion glow steals over you from time to time. And impertinence you pity rather than pardon.
Reavey wrote enclosing a letter from Greensletandhindrance. I am exhorted to ablate 33. 3 recurring to all eternity of my work. I have thought of a better plan. Take every 500th word, punc tuate carefully and publish a poem in prose in the Paris Daily Mail.
382
14 November 1936, Manning Howe
Then the rest separately and privately, with a forewarning from
Geoffrey, as the ravings of a schizoid, or serially, in translation,
in the Zeitschrift fur Kitsch. 3 My next work shall be on rice
paper wound about a spool, with a perforated line every six inches
and on sale in Boots. The length of each chapter will be carefully
calculated to suit with the average free motion. And with every
copy a free sample of some laxative to promote sales. The Beckett
Bowel Books, Jesus in farto. Issued in imperishable tissue. Thistle
down end papers. All edges disinfected. 1000 wipes of clean fun.
4
I replied, dear agente provocatrice, that I would not have
a finger laid on the section entitled Amor intellectualis etc. , nor
on the Thema Coeli, nor on Endon's Affence, nor on the last
will and fundament, but that so far as the rest was concerned
I would willingly remove all ties and supports, dripstones, key
stones, cornerstones, buttresses, and, with especial pleasure,
the entire foundations, and accept full and entire responsibility
5
After all one is always flattered. It is only from the highest unities that a third can be negligently carved away and the remainder live. The amoeba's neck is not easily broken. Nor his countenance put out.
I dream, with the help of black coffee, of a lap the size of the fifteen acres, with all appurtenances strictly to scale, all to myself in my present deformity. Beauty is a blank wall with Paste No Bills. I am tired dashing my skull against it. I run the gauntlets of galleries, up and down the highly waxed calva ries, a cockshy and an Auunt [for Aunt] Sally of art. I go to an old woman this evening, whose house is a shrine to Schmidt-Rottluff,
383
Also in Braille for anal pruritics. All Sturm and no Drang.
fortheensuingdetritus. Theowls,cats,foxesandtoadsofthe higher criticism could be relied on to complete the picture, a romantic one.
14 November 1936, Manning Howe
a painter on Picasso's level, and it is like going to be keel hauled. 6 I should have been away from here this long time, there are so many other hoops to be gone through, and not another ball in sight. Ireland? I feel nothing but the dread at having to return.
I can't read, write, drink, think, feel, or move.
I seem impelled to address my friends when least in a con dition to.
People like me - for a little.
Mother was all set to join Susan in London & then of course
7
I am not obscure. Where it hurts? No aim need be taken. It doesn't hurt anywhere. And is worked up into a hurt every where. I feel like an anaesthetised Sebastian affecting to choke back his cries.
8
sf S
Through the wall come female Danish voices, two Jutland
tarts in colloquy. Pure chirping. They should be on a funeral
urn, in the Genesiacal period. Now I know how Ophelia
should speak the flower speech. And that Hamlet was mad.
9
1 SB's reference is not known. Mary Manning Howe was pregnant with her first child.
2 ThepoembyMaryManningHoweisnotidentified.
Mary Manning Howe was writing a novel, Mount Venus (1938); SB's use of the term Mons Venerillae in More Pricks Than Kicks is drawn from Burton, The Anatomy of
384
cried off. Frank still works every evening till 8.
That is worse than being disliked from the beginning. I hope
They will give the Nobel prize to Kurt Gotz next. Love
He is buried in no fewer than 54 Jutlandish localities. All the lavatory men say Heil Hitler. The best pictures are in the cellar. 10
TL! ; 1 leaf, 2 sides (ANS PS on verso); TxU.
14 November 1936, Manning Howe Melancholy (see Pilling, ed. , Beckett's Dream Notebook, 123; Pilling, A Companion to "Dream of
Fair to Middling Women," 263).
3 TheletterofFerrisGreenslet:13November1936,n. 1.
The Paris Daily Mail was the title of the continental edition of the Daily Mail (London)
published in Paris from 1905 to 1946.
As a trained psychiatrist, Geoffrey Thompson was competent to treat schizophrenia. "Zeitschrift furKitsch" (Magazine forKitsch), Beckett's invention.
4 SBwrote"<trimmed>disinfected. "Boots,chemists.
SB's pun refers to the "Sturm und Orang" (Storm and Stress) movement in the arts in
Germany in the late eighteenth century.
5 "Thema Coeli" refers to the horoscope section of Murphy (32-33), "Endon's Affence" to the chess game (243-245), and Murphy's "last will and fundament" to the reading of his will (268-269).
6 Thefifteenacres:29January[1935],n. 5.
On 15 November 1936, SB was invited for a second visit to the home of the art
historian Rosa Schapire (1874-1954). He knew that the intensity of her opinions was heightened by the fact that, as a Jew, she had been forbidden to publish or lecture (Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an, 39-41).
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff(neKarl Schmidt, 1884-1976, who added the place of his birth to his name in 1905) was a member of the Briicke painters who formed a group from 1905 to 1913: Erich Heckel (1883-1970), Fritz Bleyl (1880-1966), EmstLudwigKirchner (1880-1938), Otto Mueller (1874-1930), Max Pechstein (1881-1955), and Emil Nolde. For photos of Schapire's home with Schmidt-Rottluff's portraits of her, as well as furniture and functional objects decorated by him, together with Schapire's extensive bibliography of his work, see Gerhard Wietek, "Rosa Schapire" in Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen, IX (Hamburg: Dr. Ernst Hauswedell and Co. Verlag, 1964) 114-160.
The term "Aunt Sally," derived from fairground games, signifies an easy target.
7 SusanManning,motherofMaryManningHowe.
8 The 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature had just been awarded to American play wright Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953). German actor, director, novelist, and dramatist
Kurt Gatz (1888-1960) never received it.
9 TheentirePSishandwrittenininkontheversoofthetypedpage.
Danish tour groups resided in the Pension Hoppe in October and November 1936
(Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an, 19, 40).
SB's allusion to a funeral um may be related to a lecture that he heard on 12
November 1936 by Dr. Eugen von Mercklin, Curator of Ancient Art, Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe (Arts and Crafts Museum), Hamburg, who spoke on the "Geometrische Periode," which he defined as 800 to 600 BC (Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an, 37); SB imagines a vase from the "Genesiacal period" (the time of Genesis),
which, according to the Jewish Calendar, is c. 3761 BC.
SB alludes to Ophelia's flower speech (Shakespeare, Hamlet, IV. v. 175-177, 180-186).
10 Having bought the 1927 Hamburger Kunsthalle Katalog der neueren Meister, SB noted that many pictures were no longer on view, and that many were not described (Beckett, Alles kommt auf so vie! an, 28).
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28 November 1937 {for 1936}, McGreevy THOMAS McGREEVY
LONDON
28/11/37 [for 1936] Hamburg
Dear Tom
Forgive my too long silence. I find it more & more difficult to
write, even letters to my friends.
The weather is appalling, a leaden yellow all day, and the
first drizzles of snow beginning. It will be colder in Berlin, but
1
The whole north Harz region is the richest in early Roman of all Germany. 3 If only I felt more up to looking at things, but for the past week I am in rotten form, grippe I think, with the old herpes & a slowly festering finger. I wanted to go to Bremen before leaving Hamburg, but the light is so frightful, and the constitution of the gallery there now so doubtful (I mean what pictures have they left hanging), & my apathy so enormous, that I have not made the trip. 4 From Brunswick I expect to go straight to Berlin, arriving there about a week or 10 days before Xmas. There I will remain at least a month. 5
I have met a lot of friendly people here, mostly painters. Kluth, Ballmer, Grimm, Bargheer, Hartmann - perhaps a name is familiar to you. It is an interesting group, especially Ballmer (a Swiss) & Grimm, for me. 6 They are all more or less suppressed, i. e. cannot exhibit publicly and dare sell only with precaution. The group was broken up in 1933, their library confiscated,
386
brighter. IleaveherenextThursdayorFriday. Iexpecttospend a night in Luneburg, perhaps a couple in Hanover, & then for a week sit down in Brunswick, from where excursions to Hildesheim, Goslar, Wolfenbiittel, Halberstadt, Quedlinburg, Riddagshausen, & Konigslutter. 2
28 November 1937 {for 1936}, McGreevy
etc. The influences are in every imaginable dosage Munch,
Nolde and the "Bridge" (Schmidt-Rottluff, Kirchner, Heckel,
etc. ). 7 I have seen several excellent private collections (where
alone living art is to be seen in Germany at present. The
Kronprinzenpalais in Berlin is closed, & that is typical for the
whole country, and the campaign against "Art-Bolschevism" is
only just beginning\ those of Fraulein Dr. Rosa Schapire, art
historian, exclusively Schmidt-Rottluff; 9 of Frau Sauerlandt,
widow of Professor Sauerlandt of the Art & Crafts Museum
here, whose banned book on the painting of the past 30 years I
succeeded in obtaining, mostly Nolde;10 and of a merchant
prince called Hudtwalcker, mostly Munch. 11 I also got permis
sion to view the Cellar of the Gallery, or rather one of the
cellars, & saw there in the twilight some excellent pictures of
the "Bridge" Group; in another cellar are some 60 pictures of the
German impressionist Liebermann. 12 I was refused permission
in the Art & Crafts Museum to inspect a carpet after design
by Schmidt-Rottluff. 13 I have introductions to Schmidt-Rottluff,
Nolde & Heckel in Berlin. 14 The fundamental antithesis, & the
two poles of influence, is Schmidt-Rottluff-Nolde. Spend [for
spent] a very interesting evening with Grimm & Ballmer, then
Grimm alone. Their enthusiasm for early Christian miniature
painting, especially the Irish Celtic. 15 Ballmer's painting is like
nothing I have seen, except some moods of the later Picasso (do
you remember the tremendous figure on a shore that I liked so
much in the big Paris Exhibition? ), metaphysical concrete. 16
Grimm draws like Lautrec, & then frail lyrical tempera colours.
Bargheer is very violent & intelligent & anatomical. Pollaiuolo,
whom I mentioned, he analyzed with admiral [for admirable]
17
justness & sensitiveness.
therefore only a very little disturbed by the official attitude
387
They are all profoundly serious and
28 November 1937 [for 1936}, McGreevy
towards them. I shall be surprised & lucky ifl find such energetic underground of painting in other parts of Germany. I hear on all
18
removed & leave a remainded [for remainder].
Drunken Boat was to have been published in New Poetry;
but I hear this has been deferred, to make room for an article by
20
sorry you have had to lay the Yeats aside. I'm afraid I couldn't write about pictures at all. I used never to be happy with a
21
I heard a lovely concert with the Berlin Philharmonic under
Sabata (pupil of Toscanini) from Milan: Strauss's Don Quixote,
which belongs to same period as Heldenleben & which therefore
I expected would be awful but which was exquisite; Bolero,
mistimed as usual, ejaculatio praecox as usual; & Brahms' �nd
Symphony superbly played, so that I understand Brahms (the
Brahms of the symphonies) a little for the first time & why I had
almost [for? always] found him so difficult to understand. Sabata
22
a Kraft <lurch Freude spinster from Altona. But Hindemith's
388
I meant to go home by Paris, but think now of going home the way I came. By April I expect to be far too tired for Paris. Perhaps I shall get off the boat at Southhampton or Plymouth or wherever it calls and have a short time in London & see you & Geoffrey. I suppose that will partly depend on what happens with Murphy. I hear from Reavey that Nott would take it if an American mug could be found, & furthermore that Houghton Mifflin are "on", but screaming for a cut of one third! 19 So the matter still pends, I not having refused blankly to change a syllable, but having replied with a polite request to be told how I was to remove more than I had already
sides that Hamburg is an island.
Ezra Pound.
I am glad you have got a translation from Heinemann, but
picture till it was literature, but now that need is gone.
was more conducted than conducting.
I was invited one evening to a Hausmusik. Wolf sung by
28 November 1937 [for 1936}, McGreevy
Matthias der Maler symphony on gramophone. 23 I so want to
see the Isenheimer Altar in Colmar, but don't see how it is to
be managed. There is something also in Aschaffenburg &
I think in Munich, but apparently trivial beside the
24
cent form. Mother has had no holiday & wont take one. Young
Sinclair has a job waiting in South Africa (I think thanks to
Dorothy Elvery), but is not well enough to travel. He is spending
a few days at Cooldrinagh! Boss has been moved to Rathdrum &
fallen in love with a nun. Cissie is beyond writing to me, & I have
25
Edinburgh, which he found appalling. And there is an Irishman
called Power, who has not been in Ireland, who was born in
Gibraltar, whose home is in Peru, whose interests are in Spain &
family in Marburg, whose family left Waterford, while the going
was good, in the 1s! li century. He stood me lunch in a vegetarian
26
in Brunswick would take me in. Only in ports does the new
27
Flamand] called Brulez, professor of French here, & gave
28
through him a real little German pedant Fraulein Tied[t]ke,
whose thesis on the Proustian Symbol I am at present skim
ming. She wrote me a long letter in crabbed French about
the shortcomings of my book, & I must meet here [for her]
Monday before a flowershop & render an account. But there is
something magnificent in doing a doctorate in 1936 with a
29
389
Isenheimer.
News from home is good. Frank seems to be in magnifi
this news from home.
We have an Icelander in the Pension now, fresh from
restaurant.
I am tired of this Pension. I wonder is there a whore left
Germany tolerate brothels.
I met a Proust fiend in the University, a Flamant [for
him my book, which released his compliments. And
work on not merely an "exquisite", but a non-Aryan.
Brulez
28 November 1937 {for 1936}, McGreevy
quoted with scorn Huxley's "mental masturbation". I said there were worst things, mental aspermatism for example. My Proust is apparently not positive & intellectual enough for the disciples of Curtius, I mean my presentation of Proust. They want to make his "solution" a little moral tri umph, the reward of endeavour & the crown of a life of striving a la Goethe. 30
Forgive this dry letter. It is all I can do to-day & to-morrow would be more than I could do.
Perhaps you would write in about a week to Poste Restante, Braunschweig. I expect to be there from about g! ! ! to 15! ! ! December.
Love ever Sam
31
ALS; 2 leaves, 4 sides; TCD, MS 10402/145.
