Marseille,   11 June ’29

Dear Allen: —/—/ I didn’t stay more than three weeks at Collioure. Since then I’ve been in and about Marseille, a city which has a great deal of interest to me, although there’s nothing whatever here to interest the usual type of tourist. Have just come back from two weeks visiting Roy Campbell and family out at Martigues, a sort of Venice and Gloucester combined, being built on three islands made by canals joining the Etang de Berre with the sea.

I have come to love Provence, the wonderful Cezannesque light (you see him everywhere here) and the latinity of the people. Arabs, Negros, Greeks, and Italian and Spanish mixtures. The Campbells rent a house and have a maid for almost nothing, but swimming isn’t good there and there are other features which might not appeal to you as much as the country east of here where you are planning to go. Marsden Hartley whom I encountered here knows the whole coast, both sides of the Rhone, and prefers it here. I’m coming back to Paris within a couple of weeks but may take a swift excursion over to Nice and environs beforehand, just to see what I’ve missed by hanging around here so long. Then maybe my advice will be worth more than at present.

I’m planning on returning to N.Y. before very long. How soon depends largely on what I hear from the Crosbys on my return to Paris regarding their edition of The Bridge. I’m anticipating a good visit with you and Carolyn [Gordon] before many days. Thanks a lot for the money order, exactly correct in amount, and quite providential at the moment as the bank has been slow in forwarding me funds. — — — —

327: To Waldo Frank

(Postcard)

[Marseille]  June 17, 1929

Can’t get around to that long and grateful letter to you that you so much deserve. Why?—don’t ask me yet! But it isn’t because I don’t often long to see you. I have been in an undecided state since before we last met. I pray for relief.

328: To Malcolm Cowley

[Paris]  July 3rd, 1929

Dear Malcolm: Since reading the proofs I’m certain that the book is even better than before. And the notes!—When you first mentioned them to me I admit having trembled slightly at the idea. But since seeing them I haven’t a doubt. The maturity of your viewpoint is evident in every word. Humor and sincerity blend into some of the cleverest and adroit writing I know of, leaving the book a much more solidified unit than it was before. I haven’t had the original mss. with me for comparison, but wherever I have noted changes they seem to be for the better. Nor do I regret any of the additions. I like the added bulk of the book. Really, Malcolm—if you will excuse me for the egoism—I’m just a little proud at the outcome of my agitations last summer. Blue Juniata will have a considerable sale for a long period to come, for the bulk of it has a classical quality—both as regards material and treatment—that won’t suffer rejection by anyone who cares or who will later care for American letters.

I would particularize more copiously except that I’m expecting to see you within relatively so short a time.... I’ll be back in NY by the first of September at the latest, and I may be back a month before. Perhaps it’s just as well that a good part of my money is tied up in a savings account in New York and inaccessible to me here. As it is, I haven’t any great regrets about coming back at this time. When I come to France again I’ll sail direct for Marseille—and it’s certainly my intention to come again! I’m looking forward to talking it all over with you—so get a little cider ready for the occasion! —/—/

329: To Caresse Crosby

Patterson, New York   August 8th, 1929

Dear Caresse: Herewith are the gloss notes that I showed you, now corrected and ready to include with the composition of the first two sections of The Bridge. You will see where each block of them falls by the key lines typed at the left. I have kept them narrow as that seems to be the custom—and we don’t want to crowd our margins. (See MacLeish’s Hamlet and the version of “The Ancient Mariner” as printed in the Oxford Anthology.) I can’t help thinking them a great help in binding together the general theme of “Powhatan’s Daughter.” As for the Columbus note, it simply silhouettes the scenery before the colors arrive to inflame it....

I’m working on the other remaining sections indicated in the index of the ms. as you have it, and hope to get a couple of them off to you within ten days. I haven’t had a chance to see Mr. Fox, director of the Brooklyn Museum, yet, as he has been away on his vacation, but have an appointment made with his secretary for early next week. I’m hoping to see Harry Marks as soon as he returns in order to ask his advice about having a copy made of the picture, the amount to pay, etc. Meanwhile, from what Harry [Crosby] said, I judge that you are going ahead with setting certain sections. Don’t rush along too fast, though—please! If we get it out by the last of November it will be soon enough. Meanwhile I’m not negotiating with Liveright or anyone else. I don’t think there will be any difficulty whatever in disposing of the 250 which you are printing. I don’t know how many people have already bespoken copies, and I’ll send you a list of names later on which will be pretty sure-fire.

New York seems better than ever to me. The beaches are wonderful—and packed with pulchritude. Where are you these days? I somehow can’t picture you as still in Paris.

P.S. Please ask Harry if he can think of any job for that nice Danish boy I introduced him to the morning I sailed. He’s without work or funds—and starving. He’s an expert trainer and keeper of horses (Danish Royal Artillery) and speaks English fairly well. — — — — Honest, industrious, and will do anything that’s honorable.

330: To Harry and Caresse Crosby

Brooklyn, N.Y.   August 30th, 1929

Dear Harry and Caresse: I had my first visit with Harry Marks today and am glad to hear that he has nothing as yet to report about any work of yours on The Bridge. For, as you know, I am anxious to add more—the “Cape Hatteras” section, at least—before you bring it out. This is now being worked out rapidly, and the aeronautical sections which you so much admired have been improved and augmented considerably. However, the line-lengths are longer than in any other section—so long, in fact, that to preserve them unbroken across the page I think we ought to change our plan regarding page size and use, instead of the previously-agreed-on Perse book for a model, your Mad Queen volume—even better looking in other respects, too, I think. I hope I can ask you for this change without appearing too presumptuous!

How did you like the “gloss” I sent you recently? I’m passionately anxious to hear from you as soon as possible. —/—/

I’m settled at last in a comfortable furnished apartment—not far from the navy yard. There have been great house-warmings, especially since I can buy corn whiskey from my janitor for only $6. per gallon! No more querulous, farty old landladies for me for awhile. Write me from now on directly at the above address instead of Patterson. Liveright is issuing a second edition of White Buildings—Vanity Fair bestows laurels in the Sept. issue—Eliot urges me to contribute as well as old Mamby Canby of The Sat[urday] Review, the old enemy camp. So I’m feeling optimistic to a large extent.

331: To Caresse Crosby

Brooklyn, N.Y.   6th September 1929

Dear Caresse: Just received the first specimen proofs a little late, unfortunately, as my old landlady out at Patterson had thought they were “printed matter” and had failed to forward them as soon as certain other mail. But you’ll be writing me direct to the above address in the future anyway.

Please go ahead and set up what sections you already have in the large sized type. I like it much better than the smaller sized Caslon. Only—don’t you think that page (I’m using it as a model) would look better balanced, and certainly not crowded, with about four more lines of verse on it? I think that the extreme depth of the bottom margin looks awkward rather than luxurious.

I have more to send—and it’s very important. I am working like mad since I’ve found this apartment where I can keep my own hours, etc. I’m too rushed to type you out a final copy of this finale to the “Cape Hatteras” section yet, but you can get some idea of what I’m accomplishing by the muddled copy I’m including herewith. You’ll have the final version—including what you read in Paris—within a few days, aeronautics and all. It looks pretty good to me, and at least according to my ideas of The Bridge this edition wouldn’t be complete or even representative without it.

Then the “Quaker Hill” section—and “Indiana,” the final subsection to “Powhatan’s Daughter” (which won’t require any gloss, I think) will come in quick succession. I know what to plan on fairly well when I get into one of these fevers of work. So please be patient. The book must have these sections and I can promise to have them in your hands by the second week in October! Then clear steaming ahead! I’m very happy about the paper, format and all which you have selected. I’ll try to get you the fresh photo of Stella’s picture within a few days.

I hope you and Harry are still planning on a visit here next winter. Then maybe I can make up for the kiss I missed when sailing! Do you really like that little necklace that much?!! My gifts seldom have so fortunate a reception!

332: To Caresse Crosby

[Brooklyn]  Sept. 6th ’29

Dear Caresse: I forgot to include this new version of “Cutty Sark” in the earlier letter sent today. I have changed very little—what little has been only to promote clarity—which includes a more generous sprinkling of punctuation. So please use this instead of the version you’ve had.

The same quotation as before is used on the introductory sheet:

O, the navies old and oaken
O, the Temeraire no more!

—Melville

Hope this doesn’t put you out!

333: To Caresse Crosby

Patterson, N. Y.   Sept. 17, 1929

Dear Caresse: I sent you, registered, the “Cape Hatteras” last version. But retyping it for a magazine, I couldn’t help glimpsing some necessary improvements. So please use this second version, as enclosed. I vow that you’ll be troubled by no further emendations—excepting perhaps a comma or so on the proofs.

Since I’m writing I can’t help saying that I’m highly pleased with the way I’ve been able to marshal the notes and agonies of the last two years’ effort into a rather arresting synthesis....

Gosh, how I’d like a bottle of Cutty Sark tonight to soothe my excited nerves! The countryside is the dryest here in years—and nothing to hope for next year, as frost and this later drowth have ruined the apple crop! I had to flee the heat in the city for a week’s work up here in my old farmhouse room. It’s lovely, too. Another week of it—by which time I expect to have finished the two remaining sections,—and I’ll be back in city quarters (130 Columbia Hts)....

334: To Lorna Dietz

Patterson   Wednesday [ca. October 23, 1929]

Dearest Lorna: I’ve been weltschmerzing a little bit all by myself here since last Saturday afternoon, when I suddenly picked up and left town. I’ve never seen such color as this year’s autumnal shades, but the storm that began this morning after three wonderful days of sunshine probably won’t leave so much on the boughs to be gazed at.... Nevertheless I’m staying on at least until next Monday—and maybe somewhat longer. I feel quite rested already, but I know that I need a little “reserve” after the way I’ve been acting. I’m hoping also, to complete the last two sections [The Bridge], God ‘elp me! And then to come back to town and see you again in your sweet, new, cheerful, rosy little nest! — — — —

335: To Caresse Crosby

Brooklyn, N.Y.   December 26th, 1929

Dearest Caresse: I am hastily enclosing the final version of “Quaker Hill,” which ends my writing on The Bridge. You can now go ahead and finish it all. I’ve been slow, Heaven knows, but I know that you will forgive me. I haven’t added as many verses to what you took with you as I had expected. I had several more, roughly, in notes, but think that my present condensation is preferable. “Quaker Hill” is not, after all, one of the major sections of the poem; it is rather by way of an “accent mark” that it is valuable at all.

By the way, will you see that the middle photograph (the one of the barges and tug) goes between the “Cutty Sark” Section and the “Hatteras” Section. That is the “center” of the book, both physically and symbolically. Evans is very anxious, as am I, that no ruling or printing appear on the pages devoted to the reproductions—which is probably your intention anyway.

I have an idea for a change in one line of the dedication “To B. Bridge.” If you don’t like it, don’t change it. But I feel that it is more logical, even if no more suggestive. Instead of:

“—And elevators heave us to our day”

I suggest

“—Till elevators drop us from our day”

I’ll leave the choice to you.

I think of you a great deal. This letter doesn’t represent me really, at all. But I must get it off for the Mauretania or else risk the delays of one of the slower steamers, and I fear that you are already impatient. I shall write you more very soon, meanwhile I hope that you have recovered somewhat from the exhaustion that must have followed on your brave and marvelous endurance at the time of your departure. —/—/

P.S. Please send a review copy to Yvor Winters—RFD1, Palo Alto, California. — — — —

1930

I almost shed tears when I think of how little I saw of you during my last visit. My melodramatic departure and the attending circumstances sent me to bed with a backache for three weeks after I got home. Then, as you guessed, the terrible shock of Harry Crosby’s suicide threw me flat again for another week. I had just given a big party for him and his wife a few days before that happened, and I was with his wife and mother on the evening when the disaster occurred. In fact it was I who had to bring the terrible news to those two lovely women. Mrs. Crosby left for France a couple of days later, just as she had planned to do anyway. I think she has been a very brave woman to go right ahead and bring out the Paris edition of The Bridge on regular schedule. I heard from her yesterday—and by now the edition is ready to be shipped to the agent here, Harry F. Marks, ——. As I told you, it’s a beautiful job of printing. The type used is a new French type, very much like the face which Richard recommended, Garamond. The Liveright edition (ready April 1st) is in Garamond and will be quite handsome also. Great interest has been aroused in advance and I am sure to get some very laudatory reviews. I really don’t want to write any poetry for awhile now, but just the same feel somehow depressed that I haven’t some ambitious project on hand to take the place of The Bridge. I haven’t seen the dancers that you spoke of, but hear that they are very good. If you ever get a chance to see the pantomime of Angna Enters in Cleveland be sure not to miss her. She is wonderful! Humor, pathos, tragedy—the whole gamut of the emotions. And there have been some wonderful art shows here this winter, better than any I saw in Europe. The Museum of Modern Art right now has a marvelous collection of modern French painters, etc. Georgia O’Keeffe, Marin shows—and I wish you could see the show of a friend of mine, Peter Blume! —/—/

337: To Waldo Frank

[Brooklyn]  March 16th

Dear Waldo: It was so kind of you to have replied so quickly and generously! I feel quite guilty for not having thanked you sooner. I’ve really never known so discouraging a time job-hunting. Insomnia has got me on the rack—and I really can’t envisage just what is in store, but perhaps after the reviews of The Bridge come out (Liveright’s edition is due out next week) I’ll possibly be able to rally my confidence and make a better impression in “the business world.”

Meanwhile the disintegrating forces of N.Y. strike me as pretty severe!

It was reassuring to know that you got your copy of The Bridge. Cummings and one or two others didn’t—quite inexplicably. There’s much in it new to your eyes, and I am quite tremulous of your opinion, though perfectly content to wait for the time when you can afford to give it a good reading.

I’ll try to find you a first edition of White Buildings—but I haven’t much hope of locating one. Among your books somewhere you’ll find the copy I gave you, inscribed too, for I’m awfully certain I didn’t fail in that essential courtesy due long ago. Or you may have lost it. I’ll send you a copy of the second edition anyhow, and if my memory has served me wrong you’ll forgive me I’m sure. —/—/

338: To Paul Rosenfeld

Patterson, N.Y.   April 21st,

Dear Paul: I’m sorry not to have the “Letter”[62] in your hands by this time. I’m hoping that a week’s delay won’t afflict your schedule too seriously.

As usual, when I attempt any sort of technical disquisitions I’m struggling against the chronic habit I seem to have—of trying to cram everything into one paragraph! I got clogged up, then paralyzed,—at least momentarily thrown off. But my intentions are honest and good. And I’m hoping to make my promise good by next Saturday.

There’s no liquor out here, at any rate.

339: To Herbert Weinstock

Patterson, New York   April 22nd, 1930

Dear Herbert Weinstock: You have my sincerest gratitude for your enthusiastic review of The Bridge. Van Vuren had already sent me a copy, and I was just on the point of writing you my thanks when along came your good letter.

I hope I am deserving of such lofty companions as you group me with. I am almost tempted to believe your claims on the strength of your amazing insight into my objectives in writing, my particular symbolism, the intentional condensation and “density” of structure that I occasionally achieve, and the essential religious motive throughout my work. This last-mentioned feature commits me to self-consciousness on a score that makes me belie myself a little. For I have never consciously approached any subject in a religious mood; it is only afterward that I, or someone else generally, have noticed a prevalent piety. God save me from a Messianic predisposition!

It is pertinent to suggest, I think, that with more time and familiarity with The Bridge you will come to envisage it more as one poem with a clearer and more integrated unity and development than was at first evident. At least if my own experience in reading and rereading Eliot’s Wasteland has any relation to the circumstances this may be found to be the case. It took me nearly five years, with innumerable readings to convince myself of the essential unity of that poem. And The Bridge is at least as complicated in its structure and inferences as The Wasteland—perhaps more so.

I shall remember to write you my exact whereabouts in time to reach you before you leave for the East and Europe, and we shall meet somewhere in New York. At present the unemployment situation has me balked for any definite location beyond the next day or so.

340: To Eda Lou Walton

Patterson, New York   April 23rd, 1930

Dear Eda Lou: I am enclosing an extract from a letter written to Otto Kahn some time ago explaining my intentions in certain sections of The Bridge. I submit it to you more or less as I did to him, not as a justification for the poem but as a fairly accurate chart of certain purposes in the poem which I may or may not have succeeded in accomplishing. It may interest you. And since you have been kind enough to include the poem in your course at N.Y.U., it may prove even helpful in elucidating certain aspects of the poem.

Please keep this paper to yourself, however. I am at present busy with an elaboration of it into a more or less formalized essay for The New American Caravan. I’d like to have it back within two weeks if it won’t trouble you too much.

341: To Selden Rodman

Brooklyn, N.Y.   May 22nd, 1930

Dear Mr. Rodman: Your criticism of The Bridge was very much to the point, and I am grateful for your enthusiasm. I also share your admiration for the poetry of Archibald MacLeish, though I feel that at times he betrays too evidently a bias toward the fashionable pessimism of the hour so well established by T. S. Eliot.

I tried to break loose from that particular strait-jacket, without however committing myself to any oppositional form of didacticism. Your diffidence in ascribing any absolute conclusions in the poem is therefore correct, at least according to my intentions. The poem, as a whole, is, I think, an affirmation of experience, and to that extent is “positive” rather than “negative” in the sense that The Waste Land is negative.

In a few days I am leaving town for the summer, but I should like to meet you next autumn if you are in this vicinity then.

342: To Isidor Schneider

Patterson, N.Y.   June 8, ’30

Dear Isidor: —/—/ That makes me all the more grateful for the evident care which you took in your review of The Bridge. Certainly I don’t see what more I could ask for—than your generous credit to and recognition of practically all the aspirations implicit in the poem. I hope the actual poem is deserving of it all. If you have read Winters’ attack in the June issue of Poetry you cannot have been more astonished than I was to note the many reversals of opinion he has undergone since reading my acknowledgment to Whitman in the later “Cape Hatteras” section.

Had it not been for our previous extended correspondence I would not, of course, have written him about it. But as things stood I could hardly let silence infer an acceptance on my part of all the wilful distortions of meaning, misappropriations of opinion, pedantry and pretentious classification—besides illogic—which his review presents par excellence. I must read what prejudices he defends, I understand, against writing about subways, in the anti-humanist symposium. Poets should defer alluding to the sea, also, I presume, until Mr. Winters has got an invitation for a cruise!

I haven’t any work whatever in mind. I guess I can trust my father’s promise of a small allowance to carry me along out here until fall, when the gates of employment may prove a little better oiled than they have for some time past. If you hear of anything, Isidor, please let me know. I’m aching to get busy at almost anything. —/—/

343: To Allen Tate

Gaylordsville, Conn.   July 13th, 1930

Dear Allen: Your last good letter and the admirable review of The Bridge in The Hound & Horn deserved an earlier response, but time has somehow just been drifting by without my being very conscious of it. For one thing, I have been intending to get hold of a copy of The Hound & Horn and give your review a better reading, before replying, than I could achieve at the tables in Brentano’s when I was in town about two weeks ago. I still haven’t a copy and consequently may wrong you in making any comments whatever. But as I don’t want to delay longer I hope you’ll pardon any discrepancies.

The fact that you posit The Bridge at the end of a tradition of romanticism may prove to have been an accurate prophecy, but I don’t yet feel that such a statement can be taken as a foregone conclusion. A great deal of romanticism may persist—of the sort to deserve serious consideration, I mean.

But granting your accuracy—I shall be humbly grateful if The Bridge can fulfil simply the metaphorical inferences of its title.... You will admit our age (at least our predicament) to be one of transition. If The Bridge, embodying as many anomalies as you find in it, yet contains as much authentic poetry here and there as even Winters grants,—then perhaps it can serve as at least the function of a link connecting certain chains of the past to certain chains and tendencies of the future. In other words, a diagram or “process” in the sense that Genevieve Taggard refers to all my work in estimating Kunitz’s achievement in the enclosed review. This gives it no more interest than as a point of chronological reference, but “nothing ventured, nothing gained”—and I can’t help thinking that my mistakes may warn others who may later be tempted to an interest in similar subject matter.

Personally I think that Taggard is a little too peremptory in dispensing with Kunitz’s “predecessors.” We’re all unconscious evolutionists, I suppose, but she apparently belongs to the more rabid ranks. I can’t help wishing I had read more of Kunitz before seeing her review. He is evidently an excellent poet. I should like to have approached him, not as one bowing before Confucius, nor as one buying a new nostrum for lame joints. Taggard, like Winters, isn’t looking for poetry any more. Like Munson, they are both in pursuit of some cure-all. Poetry as poetry (and I don’t mean merely decorative verse) isn’t worth a second reading any more. Therefore—away with Kubla Khan, out with Marlowe, and to hell with Keats! It’s a pity, I think. So many true things have a way of coming out all the better without the strain to sum up the universe in one impressive little pellet. I admit that I don’t answer the requirements. My vision of poetry is too personal to “answer the call.” And if I ever write any more verse it will probably be at least as personal as the idiom of White Buildings whether anyone cares to look at it or not.

This personal note is doubtless responsible for what you term as sentimentality in my attitude toward Whitman.[63] It’s true that my rhapsodic address to him in The Bridge exceeds any exact evaluation of the man. I realized that in the midst of the composition. But since you and I hold such divergent prejudices regarding the value of the materials and events that W. responded to, and especially as you, like so many others, never seem to have read his Democratic Vistas and other of his statements sharply decrying the materialism, industrialism, etc., of which you name him the guilty and hysterical spokesman, there isn’t much use in my tabulating the qualified, yet persistent reasons I have for my admiration of him, and my allegiance to the positive and universal tendencies implicit in nearly all his best work. You’ve heard me roar at too many of his lines to doubt that I can spot his worst, I’m sure.

It amuses me to see how Taggard takes up some of Winters’ claims against me (I expected this and look for more) in his article in the Anti-Humanist volume, especially as that borrowing doesn’t seem to have obviated his own eclipse according to her estimate of the new constellation. I have the feeling that Miss Taggard is not only conducting her own education in public (as someone once said of George Moore) but also the education of her subjects.... At least she seems now to have attained that acumen which is a confusion to all.

I’m leaving this week-end for a visit to Cummings in New Hampshire. After a final row with Addie M. Turner (who is about to sell her place anyway) I have moved my things down the road to Fitzi’s [Fitzgerald]. Occasionally I am appalled at my apparently chronic inability to relinquish some hold or connection that has long since ceased to yield me anything but annoyance—until some violence of fates forces my release. That’s one of many ways I seem to keep of wasting time. —/—/

344: To Guggenheim Memorial Foundation[64]

[Gaylordsville]   [August 29, 1930]

My application for a fellowship is prompted by a desire for European study and creative leisure for the composition of poetry. I am interested in characteristics of European culture, classical and romantic, with especial reference to contrasting elements implicit in the emergent features of a distinctive American poetic consciousness.

My one previous visit to Europe, though brief, proved creatively stimulating in this regard, as certain aspects of my long poem, The Bridge, may suggest. Modern and medieval French literature and philosophy interest me particularly. I should like the opportunity for a methodical pursuit of these studies in conjunction with my creative projects.

My next volume of poetry will probably be issued by Horace Liveright, Inc., who has already issued my two previous books, White Buildings and The Bridge.

345: To Allen Tate

Gaylordsville, Conn.   Sept. 7th, 1930

Dear Allen: Have you ever had boils? I got my first specimen during my visit to the Cummingses six weeks ago, brought it home along with several up-and-coming progeny, and “the loyal and royal succession of the Plantagenets” (as E.E. referred to them) has not left me yet. Since the throne room is in my right arm pit, not to mention the chamber and royal nursery, I’ve scarcely been able to manipulate my right arm to the meek extent of writing a letter much of the time. I think that I have now established at least my better intentions!

The pictures of your homestead were much appreciated and widely circulated hereabouts. It’s my opinion that you now have about all one could ask for in the way of rural comfort not to mention dignity. Certainly it surpasses anything owned and directed by any of our mutuals in this valley. I should enjoy the visit you suggested (many thanks!) but, boils or no boils, I’ve got to get located in some office as soon now as possible—or at least be on the scene of interrogation, prison, palace, and supplication. —/—/

I was glad to get your Three Poems. The distinguished diction throughout reminds me of the little advance I have ever made in essential flexibility and the finer intonations. These qualities seem most evident to me in the “Message from Abroad,” which, though it is largely inferential to me in its substance, is in a way, all the more welcome as a poem to be re-read for a multiple suggestiveness that may very well take on clearer perspective with time. “The Cross” keeps me guessing a little too strenuously. I can’t help thinking it perhaps too condensed, and, as Bill [Brown] suggested, a not entirely fused mélange of ecclesiastical and highly-personalized imagery. In which case you sin no more than Eliot in the recent “Ash-Wednesday.” The “Ode to the Confederate Dead” is as excellent as ever, I don’t think essentially improved except as regards rhythm: the wind-and-leaf interpolations adding a certain subjective continuity.

My summer seems like a blank to me right now. Perhaps my study of Dante—the Commedia which I had never touched before—will have been seen to have given it some significance, but that isn’t much to boast of. —/—/

346: To Solomon Grunberg

N.Y.C.   Sept. 30th ’30

Dear Mony: —/—/ Now that I am back in town again, looking for the needles in haystacks and jobs in limbo,—now that the most monotonous and familiar situation of all engrosses, nay inundates me, I’m taking “time off” to answer in the hope that you’ll write me more news and also be sure to look me up on your next visit to these parts.

I’m most grateful for your continued interest in The Bridge. After so much grandiose talk as I indulged myself in during its interrupted progress it’s a wonder if most of my friends aren’t appalled at its ultimate shortcomings. Some of them are. It’s gone into a second printing, however, which means a sale exceeding the first thousand. If last spring hadn’t ushered in such a calamitous slump in all books I imagine I might have been more fortunate; at any rate I can’t complain about most of the reviews.

My summer was a kind of steady doldrums, enlivened only by a sudden insight into the values and beauty of Dante’s Commedia. Not that I’ve learned Italian, but that I found a decent translation (Temple Classics Edition) thanks to Eliot’s inspiring essay on Dante. My recent struggles with a poem of large proportions and intricate framework, I think, gave me a maturer appreciation of the Commedia than I could have mustered ten years ago. Sometimes one feels that one’s neglect or “indifference” to a great masterpiece is almost justified, pending the proper development of one’s own powers of perception proportionate to the opportunity postponed. (I didn’t realize that alliteration was so “on the job” this morning!) Of course I now realize how much more than ever I have to work to accomplish anything whatever.

Some conversations with you again would be very welcome interludes in my present job-obsession. Aren’t you planning on New York before long? — — — —

347: To Selden Rodman

[New York City]  October 27th, 1930

Dear Mr. Rodman: Thank you for sending me a copy of The [Harkness] Hoot. The copy that you had previously sent to The New Republic (via the hands of Slater Brown) had already afforded me considerable pleasure. Despite the unfortunate sentimentality of Hale’s oration the issue is amply justified by your essay on MacLeish, if I may say so,—the most penetrating estimate that he has so far received.

As for Hale, I recommend his perusal of the recent rape of The Woman of Andros conducted by Mike Gold in the columns of The N. R.—if he wants to see himself outdone on his own ground. Not that I care for Wilder. Never having read a word he wrote I cannot be expected to nurse sighs or curses. But I have read something of Spengler—and would just as soon he showed an American visa, for once, before predicting any more details of “our” future. —/—/

348: To William Wright

Brooklyn, New York   November 21, 1930

Dear Bill: —/—/ The details of your summer program and the description of your winter quarters reflect an enviable settled state of affairs. New York is full of the unemployed, more every day, and the tension evident in thousands of faces isn’t cheerful to contemplate. It is a little strange to see the city so “grim about the mouth,” as Melville might say. Yours truly has been having his grim moments, too; in fact I’m pretty well convinced that unmitigated anxiety has a highly corrosive effect on the resilience of the imagination. I am trying to write a couple of articles for Fortune—that deluxe business-industrial monthly published by Time, Inc.—and I am appalled at the degree of paralysis that worry can impose on the functioning of one’s natural faculties. One assignment is a “profile” of Walter Teagle, president of Standard Oil (N.J.). I managed to keep the oil king talking far beyond the time allotted, but when I come to write it up in typical Fortune style the jams gather by the hundred.

I am so pleased that you continue to enjoy The Bridge. I admit having felt considerably jolted at the charge of sentimentality continually levelled at the “Indiana” fragment, particularly when such charges came from people who acknowledged a violent admiration for Hardy’s poetry. For many of his lyrics have seemed to me at least as “sentimental” as this “mawkish” performance of my own. But I approve of a certain amount of sentiment anyway. Right now it is more fashionable to speak otherwise, but the subject (or emotion) of “race” has always had as much of sentiment behind it—as it has had of prejudice, also. Since “race” is the principal motivation of “Indiana,” I can’t help thinking that, observed in the proper perspective, and judged in relation to the argument or theme of the Pocahontas section as a whole, the pioneer woman’s maternalism isn’t excessive.

Did I mention my pleasure in reading a very skillful poem of yours about various types of fur. It came out in Poetry, I think. Certainly Baudelaire would have been charmed by its adept blending of beautiful names with a world of tactile sensations. The geographical evocations implicit in the list of animals mentioned were delightful. I see a great many reasons for you to continue writing, especially since it brings you none of the pangs that accompany a more professional concern with the muses. I haven’t written a line for over nine months, and nine months is not so promising a period in the seven arts as it may be in the physical sciences.

I’ll try not to be so remiss in writing again. Would I be deemed insensitive in requesting a temporary loan to help carry me over till a check from Fortune can be expected. Please be very frank. Money is “hard” everywhere these days, and if you can’t spare 25 or 50 dollars, or if you have any scruples against such transactions, I shall remain as affectionate and as spontaneous a partner to our friendship as ever. In fact I would prefer to shoulder double my present quandary before exposing you to any stringencies.

I have applied for a Guggenheim Scholarship (which would give me a year’s study and creative freedom abroad) and hope to God that I’ll gain approval. Announcements are made early in March. Meanwhile I’m praying that I can write well enough on industrial subjects to keep on with Fortune. My room here is surprisingly cheap—a weekly rate that barely exceeds rooming house costs—and with these articles I’ve had to be located where messages could be taken in my absence. The requirement of advance payment is none too comforting, however. —/—/

349: To William Wright

Brooklyn, N.Y.   November 29th, 1930

Dear Bill: Your imagination is evidently as magnanimous as your hand is.... By ascribing my almost chronic indigence to so Nietzschean a program as the attitude of “living life dangerously” infers, you make me blink a little. For my exposures to rawness and to risk have been far too inadvertent, I fear, to deserve any such honorable connotations;—and my disorderly adventures and peregrinations I regard with anything but complacency. However, it isn’t everyone who can lend help with such graceful tolerance of evident shortcomings; and your euphemisms make me doubly grateful.

The Teagle article is now awaiting approval. I hope to know more about my immediate fate early next week. If that doesn’t eventuate in a check and another assignment, then my best bet lies in the direction of book-selling in one of the many Doubleday-Doran shops in the metropolitan area. I know someone who may succeed in insinuating me there. In normal times, of course, I should have been located with an advertising agency months since. No, teaching isn’t a solution for me, Bill. I haven’t any academic education whatsoever. You may have forgotten that I left East High without even a diploma—in my junior year. Mirabile dictu!... Noblesse oblige!... Pax vobiscum!... Nunc dimittis est ... so who am I, therefore, to rule a class!

I’m hoping that I won’t need to cash your second check, a contingency which I’ll do my best to avoid. You’ll hear from me again very soon. Meanwhile I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your kindness.

350: To Isidor Schneider

Brooklyn, N.Y.   December 2nd, 1930

Dear Isidor: —/—/ As for the “Hymn Against Violence,” I’m all for it! It is beautifully sustained, amazingly compact; its imagery is often as startling as Rimbaud’s:

“—then overhear
reiteration’s tremor drum
upon your brain the changeless diaries of fear.”
and “Harder curds
the cloud. Waking in us no ease,
night comes of terror darkened infinite, of dying herds.”

A strange and sombre metre. Biblical as it is, and owing something perhaps to Hopkins’ exclamatory use of violent internal stresses, it is still highly original and by all odds the best poem of yours that I have yet seen. It’s a poem that I imagine Eliot would be very glad to have for The Criterion. But you probably got much better remuneration from The Menorah; besides, Eliot is apt to deliberate a year or so before informing one of his decision. —/—/

351: To Samuel Loveman

[Chagrin Falls, Ohio]  December 29th, 1930

Dear Sam: To make partial amends for my neglect of you, I am, as you see, giving you the full, blazing benefit of the official stationery! Of course, had I been consulted, I should never have permitted so harmless a slogan as “The place to bring your guest.” The fourth word would still have begun with “b,” but there would have been more action implied in the order of the other letters substituted, or I’m no befriender of monks and monkery.

However, that might belie the nights hereabouts. As I have just written to B—— A——, la vie sportif continues its reckless pace hereabouts without any too great abundance of absinthe, gobs, apple-vendors or breadlines. It’s too bad that all this drouth and quietude should have produced, so far at least, nothing better than a maidenly complexion and a bulging waist line. Gone is that glittering eye of Sands St. midnights, erstwhile so compelling; and the ancient mariner is facing the new year with all the approved trepidations of the middle west business man, approved panic model of 1931. So much for resignation. It brings me at least a little more sleep than I was getting in New York.

For about ten days I was busy at my father’s store on Euclid, near Higbee’s [Cleveland]. Driving in from the Falls here, wrapping Xmas parcelpost bundles, and driving back at night, I lived in a veritable whirl of excitement. Now that the Xmas “rush” is a memory only, I am casting about for some connection or other with what remains of the direct mail advertising business here. So far it doesn’t look promising. But unless I manage to turn a few honest pennies I mayn’t get back to your skyline for many months. Of course I knew that when I came out here, but I had borrowed all I felt justified in borrowing and the situation in NY looked, and still looks, hopeless. As you had no doubt observed, it had gotten considerably under my skin. —/—/

PART FOUR

Mexico

(1931-1932)

1931

Nothing much happens hereabouts. I haven’t even seen Bill [Sommer] yet, but I have a line out. Did I tell you that I called on D—— B. one morning? That was almost three weeks ago. He looked haggard, his complexion splotched, and thoroughly miserable; though he made an effort to be as suave as possible, I’m sure, it was evident that he was making an effort. I made no further than a general allusion to his illness and as no details were proffered I left him as ignorant in such respects as I had come. There seemed to be no way of arousing his interests to any extent. He’s evidently in a hell of a state, physically and mentally—a combination of both interacting, I suppose.

You’ll be interested in the story of the enclosed card, I’m sure. I chanced upon it just the other day in one of the local news stores. Then someone told me a few anecdotes concerning the local blacksmith, named Church, who died not so very long ago and was regarded as a most “peculiar” individual by most of the townspeople. What struck me in the first place was the obvious coincidence of a parallel use of symbols, the serpent and the eagle, with my lines on Pocahontas in The Bridge.