Cleveland   December the tenth

Dear Gorham: Your letter in French (which innovation I like) reached me yesterday, a welcome evening stimulant after the day’s work. For I am, in a way, very glad to announce that I’ve been busy for the last two weeks at selling books in a store here during the seasonal “rush.” This is, in all probability, entirely a temporary tent for me,—but it has enabled me, though intensely occupied, to get free of the money complex that had simply reduced me to ashes. This item added to a total lack of any sex life for a long period had left me so empty that I gave up insulting you with a mere heap of stones for a letter, and though I haven’t more to offer you now, I have sufficient interest again in the activity of writing to make my meagreness seem less obvious. Erotic experience is stumbled upon occasionally by accident, and the other evening I was quite nicely entertained, in my usual way, of course. And thus the spell is broken! I can’t help remarking also that this “breaker of the spell” is one very familiar with your present haunts, “La Rotonde,” etc., etc., only of a few years back. You see, then, that one may enjoy a few Parisian sophistications even in Cleveland!

The Ulysses situation is terrible to think on. I shall be eternally grateful to you if you can manage to smuggle my already-subscribed-for copy home with you. If this will in any chance be possible, please let me send you the cash for purchase, etc., at the proper time. I must have this book!

De Gourmont’s Une Coeur Virginal has just been published here, (trans. by Aldous Huxley), and I have snatched it up against its imminent suppression along with Jurgen and other masterpieces. If this is a fair sample of its author, and it’s supposed to be, I cannot see how his Physique d’Amour, translated by Pound and to be published by Boni & Liveright, will ever get beyond the printers’ hands. Yet how mellow and kindly is the light from de Gourmont! One hates to see him on the tables with Zane Grey and Rex Beach. Maybe, after all (and since I have procured my volume), it will not be so heart-rending to see the destruction of the jealous Puritan at work again. Two weeks of book-service to the “demands of the public” in a store have bred curious changes of attitude toward the value of popularity (of the slightest sort) in my mind. The curious “unread” that slumber lengthily on the shelves, and whose names are never called, are much nearer my envy than I had once thought they might be from the mere standpoint of neglect. This pawing over of gift-book classics in tooled leather bindings, etc., etc., is a sight to never forget. Poor dear Emerson must slumber badly. Aristocratic is Whitman, though—no one ever calls for that “democrat” any more than for Landor or Donne. And Edgar Guest and Service, death heads both, are rampant.

Of course you have heard of Anderson’s winning of The Dial prize. I was quite certain of it anyway, but intensely gratified at the fact now he has. He will probably go to Mexico now as money was all he needed. He wrote me an answer recently to my criticism of Erik Dorn, praising parts of it much and damning others. The book still puzzles me, which makes me dislike it a little more than ever. As a whole it is deficient, but I have always admitted certain parts good. But when one compares it with such a book as Anderson’s Triumph of the Egg, it fades out terribly. This latter is an anthology of recent short stories of Anderson and re-reading them together I get the most violent reaction. He has written of ghastly desolations which are only too evident in my own experience and on every hand. I am more enthusiastic than ever in my praise for him although I feel in an odd way, that he has, like a diver, touched bottom in a certain sense, and that his future work must manifest certain changes of a more positive character than the bare statement of reality, or conclude his promise. —/—/

84: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Dec. 25th, ’21

Dear Gorham: Your letter arriving a few days ago, of the 5th, and the note of the seventh announcing my presence on the boulevards (in Chaplinesque attire) have provided me with rich materials for a kind of Christmas tree, at least as thrilling as any of remotest childhood memories. Names and presences glitter and fascinate with all kinds of exotic suggestions on the branches. I can be grateful to you for the best of Christmas donations, as I can thank you for the main part of my mental and imaginative sustenance of the last six months, weary and tormented as they have been. And now things seem, at least, to look a little better for me. I have been asked to remain on for a brief period in the capacity of book-clerk, and there is a possibility in sight of my gaining a very promising position soon in a very high-class advertising house here that has the attraction of the best connections with the largest agencies in New York and elsewhere. At least my interview with the “authorities” there today proved favorable to me, and if I can only manage to write them the proper kind of letter and “sell myself” as they ridiculously put it, I may secure myself something profitable. Leastwise, however, I have paid off an obligation that worried me and had a little change to spend during the last few weeks which has worked unbelievable miracles on my spirit. My work has been so hectic during the last month that I have not had time to write you, much less poems, but I have a feeling that now that the rush is over and the New Year started, I shall again do something. You see I am promising again.

You cannot imagine how interesting to me have been your opinions of the personalities you have come in contact with. Your opportunities in this direction have far exceeded my happiest anticipations for you. It strikes me that you have met about all the personalities in the younger left-wing at all worth while. —/—/

It has been very gratifying, also, to hear of your amiable progress with Josephson. His “tightening and hardening” effect on one is exactly the compliment I owe to him. In a way he is cold as ice, having a most astonishing faculty for depersonization,—and on the other hand, you have no doubt found a certain affectionate propensity in his nature that is doubly pleasant against the rather frigidly intellectual relief of the rest of him. He likes you much, and wrote me so, also sending me some poems to submit to The D.D. which I cannot fancy as having a ghost of a show in such an uneven corner. But he needs money, and I shall be glad to do anything in my power to help him along,—not worrying, however, very, very much, as he has a flexibility and resourcefulness that I envy.

—/—/ If I were only in N.Y. I would see to it that S[ommer]’s work were given its due,—but that time will have to wait. Meanwhile he shows not the slightest inclination to wilt. As I said, his achievements present one gorgeous surprise after another. A mutual friend of ours here recently died, a Nietzschean and thorough appreciator of all the best, who has pursued his lonely way in America since the age of fifteen when he left his family in Norway on account of religious differences. Bill and I were among the pallbearers at this funeral, where there were only a few others present, although all appreciative of what the man was. I can’t go into detail, but the affair was tremendous, especially the finale at the crematorium. It was beautiful, but left me emotionally bankrupt last Sunday, the day following. That funeral was one of the few beautiful things that have happened to me in Cleveland.

Now for a brief résumé of American literature. It is, in a way, hopefully significant that Anderson’s Winesburg has been issued by Boni and Liveright in their Modern Library with a very fine introduction by Ernest Boyd which gives much praise to The L. R. for having had the acumen to introduce Anderson to the world. —/—/

The Dial for December has a fine article in it on American painting by Rosenfeld, singling out Hartley for extra and very intelligent praise. It also includes a fairly good poem by Malcolm Cowley, a rather disappointing article on Flaubert by Middleton Murry, and an atrocious piece of dull nonsense by Bodenheim. The new Shadowland is [as] far from thrilling as those tepid baths it did offer last summer, and the Ladies Home Journal and the Atlantic are as bouncing as ever.

This is all for tonight. We have a houseful of indiscriminate relatives and it has been hard to collect myself for even this potpourri, but I have more to say when I can get to it. I need time (a natural requirement with me for all writing or thought) to sit Buddha-like for a couple of hours every day and let things sift themselves into some semblance of order in my brain. But I haven’t had the opportunity for such operations for weeks, and may never,—until which time I pray you to be contented as you can by such thrusts in haste as this letter.

Your figure haunts me like a kind of affectionate caress through all sorts of difficulties. You are always my final and satisfactory “court of appeal,” and it is useless to attempt to tell you how much this means to me. So believe me when I tell you that I love you, and plan and plan for the glorious day when we shall get knees under the table and talk, and talk, and talk. The inefficacy of my letters to you always troubles me.

1922

I wouldn’t attempt any suggestions nor try to point out any places. Your work is always too much a composite whole for that critical sort of prodding to yield anything. I only felt this story as somehow an anti-climax to the amazing sense of beauty I recently got in re-reading the short stories you have done during the last few years that are collected together in the Egg volume. Please pardon me for this doubtless unnecessary comment. It is only in the light of my own desires and feeling in such circumstances that I have ventured it.

In my own work I find the problem of style and form becoming more and more difficult as time goes on. I imagine that I am interested in this style of writing much more than you are. Perhaps, though, we include the same features under different terms. In verse this feature can become a preoccupation, to be enjoyed for its own sake. I do not think you will sympathize with me very strongly on this point, but, of course, if you got as much pleasure out of finding instances of it in other writers as I do, you would see what I mean. For instance, when I come to such a line as the following from John Donne,—I am thrilled — — — — [“Of the Progresse of the Soule, The Second Anniversary,” ll. 296-98]. Or take another, called “The Expiration”: —/—/ [ll. 1-12]. What I want to get is just what is so beautifully done in this poem,—an “interior” form, a form that is so thorough and intense as to dye the words themselves with a peculiarity of meaning, slightly different maybe from the ordinary definition of them separate from the poem. If you remember my “Black Tambourine” you will perhaps agree with me that I have at least accomplished this idea once. My aims make writing slow for me, and so far I have done practically nothing,—but I can wait for slow improvements rather more easily than I can let a lot of stuff loose that doesn’t satisfy me. There is plenty of that in the publishing houses and magazines every day to amuse the folks that like it. This may very well be a tiresome ranting for you, but I think you will like the quotation anyway.

What are you going to do this winter: go to Mexico as you had thought of? I was all ready to scrape around for money enough to start for Europe when this job came along, and I thought I had better take it. Two friends of mine, however, have been in Paris for some time, writing me letters that made me foam at my moorings, and the desire to break loose has been strong.

If you aren’t too busy write me. A friend of mine, Lescaze, was in N. Y. over Christmas and says he had a very pleasant talk with you one evening at Paul Rosenfeld’s.

86: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Jan. 23rd, ’22

Dear Gorham: I come to my first evening, free and alone, in some time, and recognize quite plainly that I have neglected you. There are so many rather interesting people around this winter that there is always something or other doing. A concert to go to, a soirée,—and then since I have been writing ads a certain amount of hangover work to be done evenings sometimes,—that altogether I don’t like it. But I like my work and am wonderfully treated at the office. Never guessed a commercial institution could be organized on such a decent basis. And they actually will come of their own accord and tell you that they are pleased with the work you are doing for them!!!!!!!!!! I pass my goggle-eyed father on the streets now without a tremor! I go on mad carouses with Bill Sommer wherein we begin with pigs’ feet and sauerkraut and end with Debussy’s “Gradus ad Parnassum” in the “ivory tower.” Around Ernest Bloch at the Institute of Music here are gathered some interesting folks from all over everywhere. There is even a French restaurant here where the proprietress stands at the cashier’s desk reading La Nouvelle Revue Francaise and where wonderful steaks with mushrooms are served—alas, everything, including real garçons, except vin. The place looks like a sentence without any punctuation, or, if you prefer, this letter.

And now, mon cher, willy-nilly as it all may be, we come to your magazine. I don’t want to hurt you at all, but I must confess to little or no enthusiasm at the prospect of another small magazine, full of compressed dynamite as yours might well be. Unless one has half a million or so, what’s the use of adding to the other little repercussions that dwindle out after a few issues!? Don’t waste your time with it all, is my advice. Much better sit down and pound on your typewriter, or go toting mss. around to stolid editors. Listen,—there is now some kind of magazine that will print one’s work however bad or good it is. The “arty” book stores bulge and sob with them all. I pray you invest your hard-earned money in neckties, theatre tickets or something else good for the belly or the soul,—but don’t throw it away in paper and inefficient typography. Don’t come home three months sooner for the prospects of that rainbow.

No one will especially appreciate it — — — —. By all this you must not think that I have joined the Right Wing to such an extent that I am rollicking in F. Scott Fitzgerald. No,—but by the straight and narrow path swinging to the south of the village DADA I have arrived at a somewhat and abashed posture of reverence before the statues of Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton, Chaucer, sundry others already mentioned. The precious rages of dear Matty [Josephson] somehow don’t seem to swerve me from this position. He is, it strikes me, altogether unsteady. Of course, since Mallarmé and Huysmans were elegant weepers it is up to the following generation to haw-haw gloriously! Even dear old Buddha-face de Gourmont is passé. Well, I suppose it is up to one in Paris to do as the Romans do, but it all looks too easy to me from Cleveland, Cuyhoga County, God’s country. But Matty will always glitter when he walks provided the man in front of him has not sparkled,—which we hope he never does, of course,—and so I am happy to hear from him always about his latest change of mind. Quite seriously Matty is thrilling, in prose especially. His performance is always agreeable despite my inability to sympathize with his theories. Paris seems to be a good place for him to work and I suppose he will stay there at least until his contes are published. —/—/

87: To William Wright

Cleveland, O.   February 11, 1922

Dear Bill: Don’t let me keep on worrying. Your visit was a great pleasure to me, resulting in the renewal of old contacts and the discoveries of many new ones. I am so much interested in you now, that I am in danger of pestering you with all kinds of advice and admonitions. One of these is: not to let the caprices of any unmellow ladies result in your unbalance or extreme discomfiture. Even the best of them, at times, know not and care not what they do. They have the faculty of producing very debilitating and thoroughly unprofitable effects on gentlemen who put themselves too much in their hands. Woman was not meant to occupy this position. It was only the Roman Catholic Church who gave it to her. Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians knew better how to handle her. I suggest your reading De Gourmont’s Virgin Heart for a delicate dissection of this kind of problem. De Gourmont was something more than a purely “literary critic,” you know. He was one of the most thorough students of physiology and psychology of the modern world. He was an adept scientist of the emotions. Stendhal was another, but less clear.

All this suffering is quite romantic and beautiful, you know, but you pay a stupid price for it. I can’t help saying these things because of my interest and because I saw you go away in ominous style. I hope you haven’t been ill, and that you have merely forgotten to write me.

I have been through two or three of these cataclysms myself, harder than yours because of their unusual and unsympathetic situations. Maybe I have gained something by them, I don’t know,—but it is certain that I lost a great deal too.

88: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland?]  Feb. 25th —’22

Dear Gorham: Arrived yesterday the new Gargoyle. Altogether not such a poor issue as Matty predicted in one of his letters of last month. Your translations amuse me without interesting me as thoroughly as your nicely administered spanking of McAlmon. Maybe your translations (or rather selections) would excite me somewhat if I weren’t somehow so hopelessly tired of Art and theories about Art lately. I can’t quite account for it—never having suffered from indigestion like this before. It is, after all, I suppose, because I have nothing of my own to “give,” and therefore feel so little at stake in all the deluge of production and argument that I grow either bewildered or else indifferent. I am going through a difficult readjustment right now, besides meeting a period in my so-called “creative life” where neither my conscious self nor my unconscious self can get enough “co-operation” from the other to do anything worth while. I wrote something recently which I thought, on the moment, was good. Today I have faced it as a hopeless failure, disjointed and ugly and vain. I am only momentarily depressed by these facts, however, as I am kept so busy with my ad writing that I haven’t time to think much about it. —/—/

89: To William Wright

Jamestown, New York   March 2, 1922

Dear Bill: This is my second excursion to this place, no doubt somewhat familiar to you,—having been here part of last week. It’s a matter of business for the Co. (“investigation of the product,” in ad. lingo) and I rather enjoy getting out of Cleveland for a day or so. I’ve been getting out a catalog for the Art Metal folks here and puzzling my head over blue prints and figures until I have become somewhat dull. —/—/

By this time I suppose you are back again and full tilt in your customary carousels. I was glad to know that the trouble with you was only “physiological.” By this time you have probably read some of De Gourmont’s observations on that sort of thing, and, wise man!, were fully experienced to appreciate them. What an awful lot of novel forms there are! The novel is the most flexible literary form there is. It permits the freest and completest expression. Have you read Louis Hemon’s Maria Chapdelaine yet? The young French emigrant who wrote it died shortly afterward, but for what it intends it is one of the most finished things one could hope for. Human emotion in it is like delicate pastel tinted flowers on a background of midnight black. The black terrific power of the forest and winter threatens continually behind every word in the action. But I am nowhere near so enthused about this book as I am about Gogol’s Taras Bulba that I read on the train recently. I think someone has called it the Russian Iliad. It is certainly not secondary to The Iliad in many ways. That sting and tang of those Cossack adventures are something I won’t forget, and the hero, old Taras, is altogether memorable. This is something you must read.

I don’t want to go any further without thanking you for your “Ballade.” I find so much that is good in it that I am tempted beyond the proper respect for your very dégagé gesture of presentation in your letter, and want to risk the impropriety of some criticism of it. The main faults of it are faults inherent with the form you used. I do not, as you know, insist by any means on vers libre forms. But it is just when I see such a thing as your ballade with the (unavoidable) tiresome repetitions of sound or rhyme, that I am most moved to applaud even the slouchy vers libre work that seems to “get over” its meaning or lack of meaning at least without that mechanical insistence of certain formal patterns that can sometimes infuriate me. For instance, after “sweet, feet, deceit, conceit, and fleet” have all successively pecked at the ear, along comes “discreet retreat”!!, giving the whole poem at the point a tone of the neatest mean-ness. And that sort of tone is exactly what you do not want,—at least not along with some of your quite exquisite imagery that speaks in largeness of a full heart.

The first verse, the first four lines especially, is fine, and the idea behind that “discreet retreat behind sophistications of bread and meat” is good. It would be improved by using another and richer word than “sophistications” just to improve the sophistication a little, however. I feel this way,—that however you wrote this poem,—in jest, literary exercise, or emotionally,—it proves distinct poetic possibilities in you, which, whether you care to follow or not, are still there. Why don’t you work this poem into an easier form or perhaps into a vers libre form? I could do it to show you what I mean, but that would take all the fun out of it for you. Forms as strict as the ballade, can, in my opinion, be used satisfactorily for only very artificial subjects, or abstract themes.

I’ve been doing something myself, but don’t feel satisfied enough with it yet to send it.

90: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  March 2, ’22

Dear Gorham: —/—/ Just now, I apologize for it, I am so much worried by family finances that it’s hard for me to do anything more than my work. My mother’s alimony has reached its limited time and she is preparing (at 45 yrs. of age!) to go out into the world to learn to make her living!

I, naturally, shall henceforward be called upon not only to “keep” myself, but to lend as much of a helping hand as is possible in this predicament. So, it’s hard work for some time ahead for me, I guess. My present wages just suffice for my own limited requirements. My pater is too much of a cad to really do anything for his former wife except what the agreement between them says. The fact that this was made when she was partially out of mind and very ill, makes no difference to him.

However, I shall not resign myself to the proverbial and sentimental fate of the “might-have-been” artist without a few more strenuosities. I will have to expect a certain tardiness of gait, however.

I have just read Aldous Huxley’s latest, Crome Yellow, one of those things that evokes much quiet laughter and holds delightful savours, at least for a contemporary, between its covers. — — — —

As no good plays ever get to Cleveland, and the Chicago opera not at all this year, my outside entertainment has been meagre. Only a symphony concert every other week, and little new there.

Ernest Bloch, however, conducted two weeks ago his Trois Poèmes Juifs which were magnificent enough for Solomon to have marched & sung to. I occasionally pass him on the streets or in the aisles of the auditorium, and realize that genius, after all, may walk in Cleveland. — — — —

91: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] March 24th

Dear Gorham: —/—/ You know I shall talk it [Secession] up,—but the worst is that most of my acquaintances are totally unfitted for enthusiasms of this sort. The indifference you will encounter when you return to these States you must be prepared to face. Every one is suddenly and enormously busy—making money, attending teas, motoring, starving—God knows what all. It makes me reel! Life is too scattered for me to savor it any more. Probably this is only on account of my present work which demands the most frequent jerks of the imagination from one thing to another, still—the war certainly has changed things a bit here. The question in my mind is, how much less vertigo are we going to suffer in the latter whirl than we did in the first blows and commotion. If I am drifting into nonsense, it must be because I’m getting no time lately for anything but work.

If you come home in May—one of the first things you must do is to make me a good visit. You will be free to come, whereas there is a considerable doubt now about my coming east at all this summer. Here in my tower-study, rimmed with Sommer paintings and grey cracked paper, you will have a good chance to focus your recent observations — — — —. Besides,—you have never seen any of the midwest, and it ought to be part of your education. —/—/

92: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  March 29th, ’22

Dear Gorham: —/—/ With the banal arrival of spring and weeks of rain and cloudy skies, I have again fallen in love! I guess I might about as well take up quarters at La Rotonde—and be done with it. However, something must be indulged in to make Cleveland interesting.

93: To William Wright

Cleveland, O.   April 2nd

Dear Bill: Your prose is much better than your verse. I don’t know how to explain—perhaps if I saw more of your poetry I might,—but certainly the story you recently sent me makes me quite certain of it. The poem has the tepid and pubescent steam in it that always seems to issue from the environs of a college campus. It is college adolescence in only a slight advance from the ordinary. It has enough in it to “get by” on the first reading with a rather pleasing effect. But the second discovers much to be criticized. It’s not in the technique but in the attitude that I blame you for this. You have a real flair for phrasing, and two years ago I should have probably praised you for the poem.

But now let’s turn to the story. It is vital and well told. Nobody can imitate Anderson, of course, but that is not what we want anyway. Your story stands on its own feet quite well. In some places it is too accented. I say this in spite of my realization of the intent of it and also via recommending the very effective literary device of under-accentuation in just the right place to produce “overtones” of overwhelming effect. Then you could afford to be more sparing of adjectives! But I won’t rail any further! You certainly are displaying evidence and promises of a hopeful career. If you don’t get too engrossed in commerce after you leave college the break will do you good, I think. No matter how “free” one may be in college, the campus world with its idols and codes is very different from the world outside. Don’t think, please, that I’m decrying education, it’s only a mention that things are somehow harder and a little “scarey.” “Practical people” suddenly surround one, and they have such an insistence about being listened to. —/—/

The more speed I develop in ad-writing the more occasion I’m given to use it, and I seem to need to keep in touch with so many people that the hours spent at home are too few. This hankering for continual conversational excitement is one of my weaknesses. What I should be doing is working. Truly, on this gay Sunday afternoon, my conscience is weighted.

94: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  April 19th —’22

Dear Gorham: —/—/ The two copies of Secession reached me yesterday. Of course they were immediately and doubly devoured. But right here I ought to stop—I have so many things to say about it. —/—/

I find I have many, at least several disagreements with you. I can’t say nearly so much for Matty’s poem as you do—I mean the Café phallicus. The Tzara poem is perfectly flat. The Cowley poem is encouraging, although dreadfully alike something he had published in one of the last L.R’s. The Aragon prose is, in its odd way, a quite beautiful thing. But what has happened to Matty!?! And,—just why is Apollinaire so portentous a god? Will radios, flying machines, and cinemas have such a great effect on poetry in the end? All this talk of Matty’s is quite stimulating, but it’s like coffee—twenty-four hours afterward not much remains to work with. It is metallic and pointillistic—not derogatory terms to my mind at all, but somehow thin,—a little too slender and “smart”—after all.

O Matty must be amusing himself perfectly in Paris. And so he took you to be a real, honest-to-God disreputable and commercial editor! Serve you right, you bad boy, following the primrose path of the magazines! —/—/

95: To Charmion Wiegand

Cleveland, Ohio   May 6th, ’22

Dear Charmion: —/—/ You must put me in direct touch with Emil Reeck, however, as soon as possible. I have just written Anderson all about the plan, and shall rush the answer to you as soon as possible. But letters take such a dreadfully long time to get back and forth and you say you are leaving Berlin just about a month from now!! I somehow feel as though I were rushing to catch a train!

I very much agree with you that Germany would be really appreciative of Anderson, and they ought to have him. However, as Huebsch, Anderson’s publisher, is himself a German and very much in touch with Berlin, I suspect that already translation arrangements may have been started. Anderson is having a great enough vogue here at present to turn the head of anyone but a pessimist like Anderson. He is, I understand, very much made of by The Nouvelle Revue Francaise Group (headed by Jacques Copeau) and has been translated into French. His trip to Europe last summer put him in direct touch with all the younger crowd in France. However, we’ll see about Germany. There is still a chance.

Did I tell you that our friend, Gorham Munson, has been in Europe all this time? He is the one we went with to that meeting against prohibition, restricted speech, or something at some church on Central Park W. one night. Gilbert Cannan spoke, etc. Munson has been quite a bit in Berlin, and from Vienna has started a new literary magazine of his own, Secession, which is (first number) just seeping into this country. Munson must have just arrived in New York again, is due to anyway. He expects to print his magazine in Vienna right along as he can get it done there so much cheaper. His magazine is filled with quite ultra things by EE Cummings, Marianne Moore, Slater Brown, Matthew Josephson, Malcolm Cowley, etc., all of whom were with him in Paris last fall and winter when the inception of the magazine took place. I am sceptical about all such dear, darling and courageous and brief attempts, but shall do my best to make his magazine a success, despite my literary and philosophical differences with him in this project. —/—/

Thinking it might interest Chaplin to read the poem I wrote about him, I sent it to him,—and with the result that today I’ve received a most delightful acknowledgment of the same.... You know I worship Chaplin’s work. Think he is the greatest living actor I’ve seen, and the prime interpreter of the soul imposed upon by modern civilization. —/—/

You asked about French books. I have not been reading much modern work, but I am in touch with a good deal of it through a French-Swiss painter friend of mine here who has modern tastes and is in touch with Europe and the best of it all the time. —/—/

Any of the works of Andre Gide are good, same of older ones like Rimbaud, Laforgue (Jules) and Guillaume Apollinaire. The latter’s Calligrammes and Alcools (poems) are just being talked about in this country. I am mad about Laforgue, but he is hard to translate and very acid.

There is a wild bird and fashionable, Jean Cocteau, who writes plays, poetry and novelties that I understand is the present king of les boulevards, but I haven’t read him. The scene in France today is, I judge, about as scattered as the Genoa Conference. Everybody is being intensely clever, and everybody is also worried about what new standard tomorrow may erect. However, I have tried to name people here who have already been more-or-less settled and accepted, or who bid fair to be.

The people I am closest to in English are Yeats, Eliot, Pound, and the dear great Elizabethans like Marlowe, Webster, Donne and Drayton, whom I never weary of. I’ve lately been enjoying Melville’s Moby Dick, however. —/—/

I’ll write to you as soon as I hear from Anderson. If you come across any good monograph on Cezanne in Germany I would be glad to pay you for it as soon as you get back. Otherwise—with the exception of a good book illustrating Greek Vases well, I can’t think of anything.

96: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  May 16th ’22

Hooray Whoop La! That little note on the back of the envelope meant a lot to me. And I somehow feel good that you are once more with me on the same stretch of land! Jump right on the train, old dear, and I’ll meet you at the station. I’m very anxious to see you. I want you to meet this great Bill Sommer—and tell me all about all you have done and seen. I have the assurance now that you’ll come as soon as you can get the money, and it makes me quite happy.

Your rough & tedious transition back to the States gave you a good chance to prepare for the surprises of New York—there must have been some new aspects of the place awaiting you. I know that even a few months in the West Indies and Canada open your eyes to new things on your return. Of course there will be only too evident all the old aggravations,—but from occasional references in your letters I judge that you have more than once been touched by these same things during the last six months. The world is fast becoming standardized,—and who knows but what our American scene will be the most intricate and absorbing one in fifty years or so?

Something is happening. Some kind of aristocracy of taste is being established,—there is more of it evidenced every year. People like you, Matty and I belong here. Especially Matty, who was doing better work last summer before he got in touch with the Paris crowd than I suspect since. —/—/ His present crazes are, frankly, beyond my understanding. They are so much so that I have still a great deal of confidence that no matter how wild and eccentric he becomes, it’s just a phase which will be a practical benefit in the end. But, on the other hand, if one denies all emotional suffering the result is a rather frigid (however “gay”) type of work. Let us watch & pray! —/—/

97: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Same evening (May 16th)

Dear Gorham: I forgot to mention that the art books reached me and how pleased I am. Derain is one of my favorites—more even than Matisse & Picasso—and Vlaminck I have long admired. Marie Laurencin is amusing—but no more than any febrile female. Have you seen the amazing satires of Georg(?) Grosz and the beautiful metaphysics of Chirico? My friend Lescaze has put me in touch with a lot of moderns that I fear, off here in Cleveland, I should otherwise never have heard of.

I’m at work on a metaphysical attempt of my own—again I mention the familiar “Faustus & Helen” affair which has received a little stimulus lately. The trouble is—I get so little expanse of time undisturbed for it, that it’s hopelessly fragmentary so far. Here is a tentative beginning. — — — — [See Weber, op. cit., p. 175]

I wish you would tell me how you like my translations from Laforgue’s “Locutions des Pierrots” in the current Double Dealer.

You will notice below them a very interesting poem by Allen Tate. This poem interested me so much that I wrote him a letter and his answer reached me along with yours today. —/—/

98: To Allen Tate

Cleveland   May 16th ’22

Dear Allen Tate: Being born in ’99, I too, have a little toe-nail in the last century. You are not alone in all your youth and disgrace! But perhaps the umbilical cord made a clean margin of it with you, for I am reminded that it is 1922 and there is a chance of that. I popped on the scene shortly after Independence Day! and consequently have always had a dread of firecrackers.

Despite all this desperate imminence, I want to thank you for your answer to my letter. It has thrown me clear off the advertising copy work I brought home with me (yes, I’m one of the band!) as I feel more like putting that off until tomorrow, than this. But on the other hand there are so many things I want to say that I don’t know where to begin. Letters are sometimes worse than nothing, especially for introductions, so if I am chatty and autobiographical you must pardon it.

Certain educated friends of mine have lamented my scant education, not in the academic sense, but as regards my acceptance and enthusiasm about some modern French work without having placed it in relation to most of the older “classics,” which I haven’t read. I have offered apologies, but continued to accept fate, which seems to limit me continually in some directions. Nevertheless, my affection for Laforgue is none the less genuine for being led to him through Pound and T. S. Eliot than it would have been through Baudelaire. There are always people to class one’s admirations and enthusiasms illegitimate, and though I still have to have the dictionary close by when I take up a French book, a certain sympathy with Laforgue’s attitude made me an easier translator of the three poems in The D.D. than perhaps an accomplished linguist might have been. However, no one ought to be particularly happy about a successful translation. I did them for fun, and it finally occurred to me that I might as well be paid for them.

As I said before, it is because your poem seemed so much in line with the kind of thing I am wanting to do, that I felt almost compelled to write you. While I am always interested in the latest developments in poetry I am inveterately devoted to certain English old fellows that are a constant challenge. I refer to Donne, Webster, Jonson, Marlowe, Vaughan, Blake, etc. More “modernly,” have you read and admired Yeats (later poems), Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Edward Thomas, Wallace Stevens? I am missing a few, but I like all these people.

I am interested greatly in seeing your poems in The Fugitive. It occurs to me that my friend, Gorham Munson, editor of Secession, would possibly be interested in publishing some of your things, although he can’t pay anything yet for mss. Notice and N.Y. address of his magazine are in the back pages of the current D.D. I am trying to give him something myself, but I write so little that I simply haven’t anything. The last went to The Dial and ought to be out next month.

Don’t tell me you like the enclosed poems unless you really do. You may have seen them in different places, but I’m in the dark as to that.

P.S. Robinson is very interesting—his work is real and permanent, yet it is also a tragedy—one of the tragedies of Puritanism, materialism, America and the last century. Wm. Vaughn Moody’s beautiful tonality suffered in a kind of vacuum, too. We are more fortunate today, despite Amy Lowell!

The poetry of negation is beautiful—alas, too dangerously so for one of my mind. But I am trying to break away from it. Perhaps this is useless, perhaps it is silly—but one does have joys. The vocabulary of damnations and prostrations has been developed at the expense of these other moods, however, so that it is hard to dance in proper measure. Let us invent an idiom for the proper transposition of jazz into words! Something clean, sparkling, elusive!

99: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  June 4th ’22

Dear Gorham: — — — — I probably should not be here at the Corona were it not that I want you to see the new coin from the mint enclosed herewith.

I have been at it for the last 24 hours and it may be subjected to a few changes and additions, but as I see it now in the red light of the womb it seems to me like a work of youth and magic.

At any rate, it is something entirely new in English poetry, so far as I know. The jazz rhythms in that first verse are something I have been impotently wishing to “do” for many a day. It is the second part of the (three section) “Marriage of Faustus and Helen” that I must have tired you with mentioning. The other parts are entirely unlike it, and God knows when they will be done. The first part is just begun. However, I have considerable ambitions in this opus, as I have told you. Please let me know your sentiments regarding the enclosed.

The reassurance of your projected visit here makes me happy in spite of rose-fever cyclones. What talks we shall have! and there are three others here who have heard so much about you that they are anxious to meet you too. Bill Sommer has moved to his country place where the charming schoolhouse-studio is located. We shall have to spend a week-end there among the gay canvasses that line its walls.

100: To Allen Tate

Cleveland   June 12th

Dear Allen: So you are in love with the dear Duchess of Malfi also! How lovely she speaks in that one matchless passage: —/—[17] Exquisite pride surrendering to love! And it was this that faced all the brutality of circumstance in those hideous and gorgeous final scenes of the play! The old betrayals of life, and yet they are worth something—from a distance, afterward.

What you say about Eliot does not surprise me,—but you will recover from the shock. No one ever says the last word, and it is a good thing for you, (notice how I congratulate myself!) to have been faced with him as early as possible. I have been facing him for four years,—and while I haven’t discovered a weak spot yet in his armour, I flatter myself a little lately that I have discovered a safe tangent to strike which, if I can possibly explain the position,—goes through him toward a different goal. You see it is such a fearful temptation to imitate him that at times I have been almost distracted. He is, you have now discovered, far more profound than Huxley (whom I like) or any others obviously under his influence. You will profit by reading him again and again. I must have read “Prufrock” twenty-five times and things like the “Preludes” more often. His work will lead you back to some of the Elizabethans and point out the best in them. And there is Henry James, Laforgue, Blake and a dozen others in his work. He wrote most of this verse between 22 and 25, and is now, I understand, dying piecemeal as a clerk in a London bank! In his own realm Eliot presents us with an absolute impasse, yet oddly enough, he can be utilized to lead us to, intelligently point to, other positions and “pastures new.” Having absorbed him enough we can trust ourselves as never before, in the air or on the sea. I, for instance, would like to leave a few of his “negations” behind me, risk the realm of the obvious more, in quest of new sensations, humeurs. These theories and manoeuvres are interesting and consolatory,—but of course, when it comes right down to the act itself,—I have to depend on intuition, “inspiration” or what you will to fill up the page. Let us not be too much disturbed, antagonized or influenced by the fait accompli. For in the words of our divine object of “envy” (“Reflections on Contemporary Poetry,” Egoist, London, ’19—): “Admiration leads most often to imitation; we can seldom long remain unconscious of our imitating another, and the awareness of our imitation naturally leads us to hatred of the object imitated. If we stand toward a writer in this other relation of which I speak we do not imitate him, and though we are quite as [....]”[18]

101: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]   [ca. June 18]

Dear Gorham: I have been in a house up in “Little Italy,” a section of Sicilian immigrants very near our house where one can get good three-year Chianti,—and incidentally am feeling very fine as Sunday evenings go. There is the place to enjoy oneself, in the family parlour of a pickslinger’s family with chromos on the walls that are right in style of Derain and Vlaminck. Bitch dogs and the rest of the family wander in while the bottle is still half empty and some of the family offspring. Tristram Shandy read to a friend with a Spanish Bolero going on the Victrola sounds good in such a milieu! I never should live without wine! When you come here we shall make many visits to this charming family. You will like my classic, puritan, inhibited friend Sam Loveman who translates Baudelaire charmingly! It is hard to get him to do anything outside the imagination,—but he is charming and has just given me a most charming work on Greek Vases (made in Deutschland) in which satyrs with great erections prance to the ceremonies of Dionysios with all the fervour of de Gourmont’s descriptions of sexual sacrifice in Physique de L’Amour, which I am lately reading in trans.

I am glad you like Lescaze’s portrait of me. He has an athletic style. Your criticism of painting et al strikes me as very exact and appreciative—at least, as far as I am able to justly criticize it. He hates Cleveland with all the awareness of the recent description of this place accorded in the last Masses or Liberator, as I understand. Just now I am in too banal a mood to give sympathy to anything. At times, dear Gorham, I feel an enormous power in me—that seems almost supernatural. If this power is not too dissipated in aggravation and discouragement I may amount to something sometime. I can say this now with perfect equanimity because I am notoriously drunk and the Victrola is still going with that glorious “Bolero.” Did I tell you of that thrilling experience this last winter in the dentist’s chair when under the influence of aether and amnesia my mind spiraled to a kind of seventh heaven of consciousness and egoistic dance among the seven spheres—and something like an objective voice kept saying to me—“You have the higher consciousness—you have the higher consciousness. This is something that very few have. This is what is called genius.”? A happiness, ecstatic such as I have known only twice in “inspirations” came over me. I felt the two worlds. And at once. As the bore went into my tooth I was able to follow its every revolution as detached as a spectator at a funeral. O Gorham, I have known moments in eternity. I tell you this as one who is a brother. I want you to know me as I feel myself to be sometimes. I don’t want you to feel that I am conceited. But since this adventure in the dentist’s chair, I feel a new confidence in myself. At least I had none of the ordinary hallucinations common to this operation. Even that means something. You know I live for work,—for poetry. I shall do my best work later on when I am about 35 or 40. The imagination is the only thing worth a damn. Lately I have grown terribly isolated, and very egoist. One has to do it [in] Cleveland. I rush home from work to my room hung with the creations of Sommer and Lescaze—and fiddle through the evenings. If I could afford wine every evening I might do more. But I am slow anyway. However, today I have made a good start on the first part of “Faustus & Helen.” I am, needless to say, delighted that you like the second part so well. The other two parts are to be quite different. But, as yet, I am dubious about the successful eventuation of the poem as a whole. Certainly it is the most ambitious thing I have ever attempted and in it I am attempting to evolve a conscious pseudo-symphonic construction toward an abstract beauty that has not been done before in English—at least directly. If I can get this done in the way I hope—I might get some consideration for The Dial prize. Perhaps I’m a fool for such hopes—sooner or later I expect to get that yearly donation. —/—/

I am not going to read this over in the clear sober light of the dawn. Take it for what it is worth tonight when I seal the envelope—if you can read it!

102: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  June 22nd

Dear Gorham: —/—/ This is just rushed off between jobs. I must have insulted you to the limit with that letter of Sunday night,—but when I am filled up I am feeling too good to be taken seriously, so please don’t mind.[19] Your applause of the “Faustus and Helen II” has heartened me, although I am having a terrible time with the first part of it. The best way for me to speed up, I guess, is to forget all about time and be quite indifferent. —/—/

103: To ——

[Cleveland]  4th of July

Dear ——: —/—/ I am sorry to disappoint you about my “Praise.” There were no accouchements there at all. Not even temptations in that direction. It is, or was, entirely “platonic.” Nelson was a Norwegian who rebelled against the religious restrictions of home and came to America when a mere kid. Went to art school in Washington and won some kind of distinguished medal there. As soon as he was through school, an aunt of his in America who had been paying his tuition abruptly withdrew all her help and forced him into the prostitution of all his ideals and a cheap lithographic work that he was never able to pull out of afterward. He wrote several good poems published in Scribner’s & Century a long time ago, got married, and I finally met him here in Cleveland where he had been living in seclusion for a number of years. One of the best-read people I ever met, wonderful kindliness and tolerance and a true Nietzschean. He was one of many broken against the stupidity of American life in such places as here. I think he has had a lasting influence on me. —/—/

104: To Allen Tate

[Cleveland]  July 19th, ’22

Dear Allen: — — — — Let me salute you again. “Bored to Choresis” is as good as “Euthanasia,”—if not better. You do the trick here. Your vocabulary is exceedingly interesting—you have a way of meticulously accenting certain things in a quiet, yet withal so sharp a note, that the effect is greater than as though you roared. “Tribal library,” “Her rhythms are reptilian and religious,” etc., are excellent. And then, of course, I like your lunge at the bourgeois literary biographical interests. No one has ever put it better than you have.

You see what is good about this poem is over and above the merely personal sketches and digs that Robinson has been getting you into. Here you come into something larger, as you did in “Euthanasia,” where you hit all humanity a few slaps, but in so interesting a way! In other words,—this poem is creative where the ordinary “character” portrait is merely analytic and, generally, unimportant (at least in poetry). You needn’t be afraid of running too squarely into Eliot with work like this.

I would like to see you follow out the directions indicated in this poem—not their downward slant (interesting enough), but (if you get what I mean) their upward slant into something broadly human. Launch into praise. You are one who can give praise an edge and beauty, Allen. You have done so well in a couple of damnations, that I feel confident in you.

I must close. Bosses brush near my shoulder, and poetry isn’t exactly encouraged around here. Munson is strong for you with this new poem. I think he would like it for Secession if The Dial does not take it. He asks me to inform you that no particular “jargon” is necessary for Secession contributors. Be your own language—in so pure a way that it will be noticeable, and you will do well enough.

My hay fever temporarily passes. I peer again on the world with subsiding eyes. It’s a pleasure to think you of down in the clear valleys, and feeling so top-spinning! Marriage! Well, it sounds ominous. Think well, beforehand. Are you easily satisfied? That’s the main danger.

105: To ——

[Cleveland]  July 27th, ’22

Dear ——: —/—/ I feel like shouting EUREKA! When Munson went yesterday after a two weeks visit, he left my copy of Ulysses, a huge tome printed on Verge d’arche paper. But do you know—since reading it partially, I do not think I will care to trust it to any bookbinder I know of. It sounds ridiculous, but the book is so strong in its marvelous oaths and blasphemies, that I wouldn’t have an easy moment while it was out of the house. You will pardon my strength of opinion on the thing, but it appears to me easily the epic of the age. It is as great a thing as Goethe’s Faust to which it has a distinct resemblance in many ways. The sharp beauty and sensitivity of the thing! The matchless details! I DO HOPE you get a copy, but from what Munson says there is little hope unless you can get some friend of yours in Europe to smuggle it in in his trunk. It has been barred from England. It is quite likely I have one of two or three copies west of New York. The Dial ordered six and has only been able to get one so far, etc., etc. Munson, who met Joyce several times in Paris last summer, tells me that the Man Ray photo of J. in the recent Vanity Fair is really not a good resemblance. The face is not so puffy-looking, nor the odd ocular expression. Man Ray, you know, has his own individual temperament to express! Ah, these interesting photographers. Joyce dresses quietly and neatly. Is very quiet in manner, and, Anderson says, does not seem to have read anything contemporary for years. His book is steeped in the Elizabethans, his early love, and Latin Church, and some Greek;—but the man rarely talks about books. I rather like him for that. —/—/

Joyce is still very poor. Recently some French writers headed by Valery Larbaud, gave a dinner and reading for his benefit. It is my opinion that some fanatic will kill Joyce sometime soon for the wonderful things said in Ulysses. Joyce is too big for chit-chat, so I hope I haven’t offended you with the above details about him. He is the one above all others I should like to talk to.

I have been very quiet while Munson has been here. Tonight, however, I break out into fresh violences. —/—/ And thanks, dear — — — —, for the newspaper bundle. In the Times I enjoyed Colum’s account of Joyce’s early Dublin days, although he told me the story of the Yeats encounter several years ago. —/—/

106: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Aug. 7th, ’22

Dear Gorham: I sent 27 Sommer things off to Anderson last Saturday, feeling very much as though I were delivering Plato into the hands of the Philistines. Anderson has been very nasty besides being “just another fool.” I have been shocked, sensation very rare with me, with the contents of your letter relating his manoeuvres. He is evidently none too sure of the quality of his work so highly praised by Rosenfeld. I realize that he insulted me while he was here—it wasn’t necessary to tell fibs to avoid my company—but I shall beam on until all hope of his getting Bill an audience has vanished. In that event, I judge by your letter that we can depend fairly certainly on Frank, and Stieglitz, perhaps. I haven’t much hope in Anderson’s interest in anything connected with us now, after disgracing himself the way he has. Encore, regardez, mon ami,—don’t let kittens out of the bag before they have claws again if you want to be an effective iconoclast. —/—/

Why haven’t I received Secession #2 yet? Your letter of last week mentions it, and I am anxious to get at it. I got the new Broom with your Epstein trans. in it and Matty’s very clever translations and criticisms. Delightful “Blahs” and “blagues,” too! Matty has developed a “high hand” attitude in criticism that is (to anyone ignorant of his subject matter, direct contact with his authors, etc.) as effective and compelling as Pound’s. I am beginning to see little Caesarian laurels sprouting on his brow. His (anti-Zwaska) Caesarian attitude is not a little pleasing. Matty and Julius! Surely they have both gone into Gaul with somewhat the same stones, though Matty will have to wait until he gets back to the good old U.S.A. to be divided into three parts!

I am glad Frank took so well to your book. I have since wanted to read it over again, say fresh in the morning to better absorb its many compact and rich allusions toward your esthétique. Stupid and hasty as this letter is—I hope you won’t think I am satisfied with it. I’ve got so much on my mind that you must bear with me until a cool day comes when I shall not be so tired at night, nor the garret study be so hot as it is this evening. I enclose some poetry.[20] I think the first part of “Faustus” is about right now. Tell me what you think of the thing as a whole. Read it entirely over from the first so as to judge better of my graduation from the quotidian into the abstract, and tell me frankly what you think about it. I have been so close to the thing for so long a time that at present I cannot judge it synthetically at all. The third part has not been even started yet. The other evening I had a hint for the speed that I wanted in something like the following [four] lines: — — — —[20] But I have found nothing yet to satisfy me at all. It must be a dramatic comment done somewhat in a new idiom. I have got to search awhile yet for it. Meanwhile I have a homely and gay thing to show you that I did yesterday out of sheer joy, “Thinking of Bill——“, etc.[21] — — — —

Joyce is being savoured slowly—with steady pleasure. Meanwhile I find Enormous Room a stimulating article. It has taught me to better appreciate Cummings’ poetry—although the things in the last Broom of his are, I think, boresome. Since Cezanne by Bell has interested me a good deal.

Dominick! O yes! I think we both were bored with the climacteric after your departure. I have not seen him since!

“The Bottom of the Sea” is too deep for me to model yet as I want it. I haven’t forgotten it though.

107: To Charmion Wiegand

Cleveland, O.   Aug. 15th, ’22

Dear Charmion: You will be delighted to know, I’m sure, that the Anderson trans. matter has been settled. I got a letter from Huebsch last week saying that he had given Herr Reeck the rights—so some letters got across the waters anyway! This suggests the mention that Anderson was here about six weeks ago while Munson was visiting me, and came out to the house for an evening. The man’s personal charm supported the impressions his letters had given me (we had never actually met before) but I have been very disappointed in him since he went down to N. Y. afterward and stirred up a petty rumpus in The Dial office, about something that Munson told him [in Cleveland] on the subject of Rosenfeld’s position as a critic, etc. The story is not worth going into, but it showed Anderson to be surprisingly petty and malignant, not to say untactful. La-La! Well,—he hasn’t yet destroyed my taste for some of his work yet—despite that most of my friends don’t value his work above a Russian rouble.

“Pandora’s Box” is a good piece of “general” criticism. It is more social than literary and is the kind of thing, above all, that Americans need to read. I hope you find a good market for it. You must let me know where and when your things are published so I can look for them and get them.

Since Munson brought me my copy of Ulysses I have been having high times. A book that in many ways surpasses anything I have ever read. 800 pgs! You must read E. E. Cummings’ Enormous Room for a real inspiration in language and humanity.

The first issue of Secession does not come up to the second, now out. You should get it somewhere there in N. Y. and read Cowley’s two poems and Josephson’s story. “The Oblate.” —/—/

108: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Friday night

Dear Gorham: — — — — My enthusiasms, the hot weather, the onset of hay fever, the infinite and distasteful detail work I have been doing at the office, and the suspense of finding another position, etc., etc., have brought me very near the ground. In fact, for several days this week I have been unable to retain food and have thought at any moment something would snap and I would go into a million pieces. I haven’t felt as “dangerously” for several years. But I am picking up today—since I have got the job matter settled and informed the office that I shall not be with them after the first of September. This bit of news I had the wonderful pleasure of delivering to them just as my boss was starting in on a series of gentle reprimands, etc., and so instead of ever hearing the end of that rigmarole—I was begged to remain at a higher salary. Where I am going however, I shall have complete charge of the copy work and shall receive ten dollars a week more to start with and a considerable raise within sixty days. I was literally urged to come with them—a new agency—which was a unique pleasure for me!

Well,—we heard from Anderson! Rosenfeld’s remarks along with those of several other artists present at the time of the “trial” were quoted in effect that S[ommer] was not a notable man at all—had no personal vision—his work a mixture of half-a-dozen modern influences—and couldn’t draw a head on man, woman or animal! Anderson was very sorry he had had anything to do with any adverse criticism, etc., etc. So much for that. Dear G., let us create our own little vicious circle! Let us erect it on the remains of such as Paul Rosenfeld. But enough of this for now.

Of course I’m enthusiastic about “Faustus and Helen” now! Who wouldn’t be after your comments. However,—when it comes to the last section—I think I shall not attempt to make it the paragon of SPEED that I thought of. I think it needs more sheer weight than such a motive would provide. Beyond this I have only the surety that it is, of course, to include a comment on the world war—and be Promethean in mood. What made the first part of my poem so good was the extreme amount of time, work and thought put on it. The following is my beginning of the last part—at present: —/—/ How neatly here is violence clothed in pathos! —/—/

109: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Thursday

Dear Gorham: —/—/ My vacation has given me the time to read Rahab and finish Ulysses. Rahab is a beautiful book. It has a synthetic beauty that is more evident than the lyric note behind Ulysses. It contains beautiful language—Frank is a real artist—no doubt about that and of course way beyond Anderson when it comes to craft. My only doubt about Rahab comes in with the question, as yet undecided, as to whether or not there isn’t a slight touch of sentimentality attached to Frank’s “mysticism.” Certainly the man is not a realist—certainly he is sincere. There is also this question—Fanny’s later development, so far as I can see, does not put her far enough beyond her initial appreciation of life at the time she is deserted by her husband to warrant the stress on that thesis which Frank evidently intends as the motif of the book. As a picture of crucifixion the book is superb—but, after all, what tangible gain has Fanny got out of it except an attitude that Butler outlines in some such words as I believe I have repeated to you: “No one has ever begun to really appreciate life, or lived, until he has recognized the background of life as essentially Tragedy.” It is from this platform of perception that I conceive every artist as beginning his work. Does Frank consider Fanny’s course as complete where he leaves her at the end of Rahab—or isn’t there still something more to be said? The reason I pose this question is because Stephen Daedalus has already gone as far as Fanny before Ulysses begins. The Portrait took him beyond where Fanny sits at the end of Rahab. Of course it would stretch reality a great deal, probably, to take Fanny Dirk any further—but, in my mind, it is just this stubborn impossibility (however nonresponsible Frank may be) that makes my judgment of Rahab suffer in the light of Ulysses. Perhaps I am unfair and “all off.” Both books, however, have a strong ethical and Nietzschean basis and reading them at the same time as I have, I am irresistibly drawn into comparisons. Frank is so young that he has lots of time to benefit by Joyce and even go further—although I doubt if such will will be done for a hundred years or more. The point is—after all—I am interested in Frank and thank you for putting me out of prejudice. As an American today he is certainly in the front line—no doubt about that at all. —/—/

110: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Monday

Dear Gorham: I’m glad that Burke meets you in approving the “sea” poem,[22] and I’m sorry that it is, or at least appears to be beyond me to make changes in it. Of course you know I have never been very enthusiastic about it. Its only value in my mind rests in its approach to the “advertisement” form that I am contemplating and, I think, spoke to you about. It is a kind of poster,—in fact, you might name it “Poster” if the idea hits you. There is nothing more profound in it than a “stop, look and listen” sign. And it is the conception of the poem that makes me like the last line as I do—merely bold and unambitious like a skull & cross-bones insignia. —/—/