111: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Tuesday

Dear Gorham: —/—/ God! I wish I were on the New York scene, what with the items of your last letter. I was especially thrilled at the Damon book on Blake. You know how much Blake has always interested me. I’ve always thought Damon a very capable figure, and hope you get the Vers-Libre histoire for Secession. Sam [Loveman] was telling me today that he had seen some notice of issue #3 of that notable sheet in Sunday’s [N. Y.] Times, with a mention specific of Matty too.

I answered jh last Saturday, with a slight reprimand for the impotence of her “kick” at you in The L. R. I should rather like to see her aggravated a little longer, which is pretty sure to occur. I, as you know, have a certain admiration for Cuthbert Wright, but I felt his anti-DADA article in The D. D. was rather weak. I’m so tired of seeing the young turn their heads and wag them despairingly at every modern manifestation. They don’t need to accept them all,—but it’s so uninspiring to see them turn back to Greece and quote some Meleager lyric as the paragon of all time. This gesture from Wright was a little disappointing to me. Allen Tate writes me that he has returned to Nashville and joined the Ransom crowd there again. Your rejection of “Choresis” I presume was largely responsible for this return to the native.

I’m about fed up on furnaces and hot water heaters. I’ve been very attentive to the little ad. stories now for quite awhile. It’s about time that I did something about “F and Helen” again. To make things better or worse (I don’t know which yet) I’ve almost fallen in love. I may add, an object more than usually responsive this time. —/—/

112: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Sept. 29th, 1922

Dear Gorham: What would you think of my using the first part of “F and H” alone? Calling it just “For the Marriage of,” etc. This would seem rather disappointing, I know, but I feel that it is fate. This conviction comes after much thought and especially after writing one added verse (originally intended for part 3) to be inserted as the next-last, coming just before the “eye motif.” I feel that with this added the first part becomes an intensity that is definitely developed and closed,—and that further additions such as part 2 are irrelevant—at least anti-climactic by position. And as for the third part, I am interested enough in the aeroplane, war-speed idea but I think it would be better developed under a different sky. Let me know what you think of the idea;—what you think of the additional verse also.

“The Springs of Guilty Song,” or former part 2, would do very well, I think, to send to Broom. Of course, I want to try Dial on “F and H,” before it goes anywhere else. Its present length will slightly overlap two pages.

I am glad to have the Secession program in advance. You’re travelling right along it seems. I wish I could spare an erection, as suggested, but I have to save them all for Seiberling Tires, Furnaces, etc. I have a widening interest, you see, in tilling the public mind with my ideas of excellence. Frankly, I’m tired to death. The new job has been beyond expectations in many ways, but it simply keeps my imagination tied down more than ever. I have so much to do.

Allen Tate is in Cincinnati visiting his brother and may come up here for a couple of days. I really enjoy admonishing him—Matty is not the only one who has “disciples.” By the way,—I guess that latter gent got peeved again at my last letter. I preface every letter now, you know, with the prediction that its contents will absolutely disgust him beyond the desire to answer—someday, perhaps already, that prophecy will be fulfilled.

I can’t spare the money to put into reproductions of Bill’s [Sommer] pictures for some time. It will cost over twenty dollars just for six. It will be two months before I even break clear from the dentist and hay fever bills of the year,—so I guess we can’t send Loeb anything yet. —/—/

113: To Charmion Wiegand

[Cleveland]  Oct. 9th, ’22

My dear Charmion: —/—/ I’ve changed jobs only to find myself completely imprisoned now, there’s so much more to do. It’s copy work (as before) only now I have about all of it to write. I haven’t had time to think about poetry for weeks and letters have to wait. There are birth pangs to go through with, even in so staid a thing as advertising copy and ideas. I hammer my forehead for hours some days trying to get an idea that will be read, and loosen purse strings. —/—/

About Ulysses—I paid $20.00 for mine, that being the original subscription price (1-1/2) years ago when I ordered it. But I should never have got it past the censors and customs had Munson not brought it all the way from Paris in the bottom of his trunk. I know that already it is bringing such prices as $200.00-$300.00 (depending on binding and paper) in some places. Certainly I should never part with mine for any price. I feel quite luxurious!

I got a beautiful German monograph on Etruscan art the other day. But the art books I ordered months ago from Halim (Bremen) haven’t yet arrived. God knows,—I suppose the postoffice found something “obscene” in the Japanese landscapes somewhere, or the Chinese temples—or the Egyptian monuments!! —/—/

114: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Oct. 12, ’22

Dear Gorham: —/—/ Today also brought me the most prodigious book on Egyptian sculpture that I’ve ever seen. Of course it’s German,—one of the books I ordered from Halim (Bremen) months ago. I shall gloat over it many hours.

Looking it over gives one the impression that the children of the Nile completed every possibility of sculpture long before the Greeks began to work. The latter added some architectural features, in figures they only added a few rondures and a certain humanity that is less evident in the African forms. It’s largely the spacious austerity of Egyptian art that particularly hits me. —/—/

Williams wrote Bill [Sommer] a memorable letter accompanying his check (for $25.00) in which he said that Bill got under his under-drawers!—and went on to say that he was potentially greater than Marin. It has heartened Bill wonderfully. Such a letter was worth more than the plaudits of a hundred Rosenfelds. I’d like to meet Williams! (Repeating this statement so many times won’t do any good I suppose, but there’s that directness about the man that I know I’d find cleansing.)

I’m sending off “F. & H.” to The Dial today. I’m impatient for the money—besides that I feel that it is complete and might as well be out and aired. Having it around stagnates new ideas for me.

Allen Tate sends me a good poem, acknowledges myself and Eliot as his models—calls me mature and perfect—so that now (with a grain of salt) I feel vastly superior to Matty. I feel quite jolly tonight! — — — —

O Hell! what can you expect with a gallon of sherry gone since Sunday! It’s as smooth as Prufrock and is only supposed to be sold to rabbis for religious purposes. Rabbi Crane! What strange conversions there are.

I’ve been reading Rebecca West’s Judge with much delight. She’s the best exponent of the old novel form I know, and she has fine pathos and a certain cleanliness that is more than neatness. “Codes” are interesting after all. As a rabbi and upholder of document and tradition, I applaud. — — — —

115: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Oct. 25th, ’22

Dear Gorham: —/—/ You should see me in my luxurious new coat. Light brown with wide cross-stripes in orange! My progress down the avenue is attended with awesome gazes, to say the least. From now on, having broken the spell of modesty and bashfulness, I shall wear what I want to—providing I can afford it. But I just got a raise,—so maybe I stand a better chance in the future. —/—/

116: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Nov. 7th, ’22

Dear Gorham: “F and H” came back from The Dial on Monday. Evidently Mr. Watson, Jr., has something to say about things as Seldes mentioned that he was obliged to keep it over time in order to show it to Mr. Watson, concluding with, “Regrettably, we cannot use it.” Now it is on its way to Broom along with “The Springs of Guilty Song” (former part II). I would like to make a vow, if I felt capable of keeping it, not to send anything again to The Dial for two years. But, of course, I am merely cutting off my own nose with such tactics.

Matty wrote me quite a long letter from the Broom office in Berlin, arriving last week. After dissecting the copy of “Guilty Song” that I had sent him last summer as a sample of what I was doing, he came forth with the statement that there was damned little stuff of this calibre being written these days. So I am presuming that he will be glad to publish that poem, whether or not he fancies “F and H.” This latter he will probably find too emotional or old fashioned to praise, but I thought I’d submit it anyway.[23] If you care to, show it to Burke. In case of its second rejection—I am assuming your continued interest—you might care to use it in Secession. The Dial seems to have abandoned all interest in publishing American things, or anything, in fact, that comes to them unheralded by years of established reputation. Certainly, if the remaining installments of Anderson’s Many Marriages are equal in stupidity and banality to the first installment, they are going to make pretty fools of themselves. Anderson’s “naiveté” or what-you-will, becomes very aggravating.

I am strong with you in my admiration for Burke. I repeat for the eleventh time, I wish I could be in New York to talk to him, especially lately do I feel an intense need for contact and conversation with the right sort of people. I have rather missed Lescaze’s stimulation since he left, while Loveman, the only other person left here, becomes more incoherent every day. I am, really, suffering a great deal these days, and the worst is that I have almost no impulse toward writing. This wholesale “fertilization” of America by such half-baked people as the Algonquin gang is one of the most depressing features of all, because it is without any sense of values. Ben Hecht and Eliot get equal honors in such company. But at any rate I can rival you in some ways. Where you have Untermeyer, I can trot out Braithwaite. A letter from Braithwaite came last week inviting or rather soliciting my “Praise for an Urn” for the 1922 Anthology. At last I shall rub shoulders with Florence [sic] Wilkinson!

Allen Tate was a week later than expected in getting to N. Y., but you have probably met him by this time. I am rather looking forward to his two days here—he has enthusiasm and brains, however, undeveloped his style may be. Matty’s trans. from Soupault in the last Broom are undoubtedly clever, but I don’t see how he can rave so about this man’s conceptions. Matty mentions his recent love for Francis Jammes and Vielé-Griffin, the latter as being much abler than Laforgue. Where is he headed for, anyway? His Joyce article was amazing in its lack of recognition of the great elements in Joyce. I look forward to his final suicide with Frank. But, after all,—Matty will always keep his head up, and sniff ominously. —/—/

117: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Nov. 20th, ’22

Dear Gorham: I am immersed totally in a rush job and will be for a week or so more. These campaigns are taxing affairs and very confining, so I can’t write much. But I do want to assure you of my enthusiastic desire to both write the jacket for your Frank Study and also write a communication to the Double Skull[24] (delightful name) about it. As regards the latter,—it will necessarily be very short, as they once returned a reasonably-sized review I had written on Shaw’s Back to Methuselah on the argument that it was too long for the comparative importance of the book! Please send me the proofs as soon as they are out and I’ll begin.

I hope you enjoyed — — — —. I took the liberty of writing him to look you up because you had once mentioned a certain interest in him incurred in Pollard’s Their Day in Court. — — — — is delightful company, whether he goes in for post-Beardsley attitudes or not. The episodes of the Satyricon are mild as compared to his usual exploits in N. Y. during vacations. —/—/

Are you continuing with the advertising instructions? What do you think of Eliot’s The Wasteland? I was rather disappointed. It was good, of course, but so damned dead. Neither does it, in my opinion, add anything important to Eliot’s achievement.

I like the admonitions you offered on Macy, etc., in The New Republic. You are developing a tightened hold on criticism that is a favorable opposite to Mr. Rosenfeld’s rapturous Turner-sunset technique.

118: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Thanksgiving Day ’22

Dear Gorham: —/—/ I have not seen Sommer for weeks and weeks. He is very peculiar, never looks you up, never phones or manifests the slightest interest. I have got tired of ever-lastingly tagging after him and shall wait until I have some important news for him before I crash into his cosmos again. I don’t think he ever so much as replied with a note of thanks to Williams for his purchase and beautiful, generous tribute of praise. I can’t understand it. But it is perhaps good to become impersonal in the admiration of art.

Poor — — — —! I feared you would not like him very much. My affection for him is based on a certain community of taste and pursuit we have which you will understand. Because he has been mewed up so long with unpleasant work — — — — in a city where conversation and letters never existed—he has, out of sheer ennui, been forced to find entertainment in ways which have taken the best of him to feed what has become a sort of obsession. His creative impulse was never very strong, but in his letters and on his favorite topic you get as strong a satire as Petronius! Life has tamed him terribly,—yet he has lived a great deal if the senses mean anything.

I haven’t had time to read all of #3.[25] But I can well understand your dismay at Matty. With all his boasted time and leisure he ought to have made a better job of it. And that silly slant at Joyce—putting him along with Cabell! Matty’s “gay intellectualism” will eventually expose him to the jibes of a psychoanalyst if he continues in such loose estimates as his article in Broom on advertising displays. Some things he says may be true,—but how damned vulgar his rhapsodies become! I would rather be on the side of “sacred art” with Underwood than admit that a great art is inherent in the tinsel of the billboards. Technique there is, of course, but such gross materialism has nothing to do with art. Artistry and fancy will be Matty’s limit as long as he is not willing to admit the power and beauty of emotional intensity—which he has proved he hasn’t got.

Burke has an Egyptian quality of hard and solid speculation. Egyptian literature is, of course, not my comparison,—but in looking at the sculpture of that nation one gets the same impression, the same austerity. I have decided, perhaps I repeat myself, that no advance in sculpture has been made since the Egyptians so far as essential plastique is concerned. This after looking at the 200 or so photographs in a modern German book on the subject that I got recently.

Sam Loveman didn’t like your Saltus review. Said it was scattered, etc. I haven’t read it. His book on the man and his works is progressing, he says. I think it will probably be very bad. He is the kind of “critic” that feels it needful to damn every one else in order to praise. He made the terrible assertion that “while Saltus was steadily working, neglected in obscurity, Henry James was applauded in two countries for his puking.” James never did that, whatever else you may say about him. Ridiculous. Of course I don’t take Sam seriously in any criticism. The man Rychtarik and his wife are really the best company I have now. (Note the spelling of his name, correct this time.) His initials are W. R. I mention this because it would be sad to get his name wrong for that cover. He was pleased greatly by your acceptance and praise. —/—/

119: To Waldo Frank

[Cleveland]  Nov. 30th ’22

Dear Waldo Frank: I have heard through Munson that you care for some of my poems. Let me take the occasion of Secession #3 to tell you how powerfully I think you can write in such a story or episode as “Hope.” This is so fine that I cannot keep [from] writing you.

I never read prose before that flowed with such lyricism and intensity.—I suppose there are sure to be shocked cries, but the beautiful manipulation of symbolism in the thing has made your daring (if it took any) infinitely worth while. Writing like this is a real legacy, and nothing could be cleaner!

You may be interested in seeing six reproductions of work by Wm. Sommer that I sent Gorham today. In that case, anyway, this outburst may have served some purpose.

120: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Dec. 7th, ’22

Dear Gorham: Frank’s “Hope” struck me so strongly that I wrote him a few encomiums. I also wrote Fisher, ordering a copy of the Kuniyoshi monograph. His reply included mention that he failed to get to New York last week but expected to see you this week; that he would not be able to publish anything of Sommer’s for some time in any case until he got some monetary returns from his recent collections, etc. I hope Stieglitz likes them.

I haven’t heard anything whatever from Tate, not even a rumor. He must be quite ill, deranged or something. If, by any chance, he is sore at me, I cannot account for a reason.

Untermeyer’s article was at least decent, it was a non-insulting sort of bulletin and one of the better sort of things that could happen to Secession and its group. I was quite surprised that this parodist and facile assessor could so gracefully rise to the occasion of a new attitude. Whether we like him or not, his “position” in the American scene carries some weight, so I rather hope to see him continue his interest. —/—/

121: To ——

Cleveland   December 10th, ’22

My dear ——: My mother will not tolerate wine at the house—so I am rebelling. I am thinking seriously of moving into permanent private quarters where one need not be questioned about every detail of life and where one can be free of the description of one’s food and its contents and manner of preparation while it is eaten at the table. To this end I am at present staying for a few days at a hotel. Maybe I shall move out as above indicated, or maybe I shall go back; it all depends on the course she takes. Because I dread to leave her on account of the position it puts her in I hope she will be more lenient with me. I don’t ask much, and the little wine I succeed in getting has never resulted in embarrassing her. I never “carry on” at the house or annoy her. The fact of wine, alone, is what infuriates her puritanical instincts. All this is tedious and maudlin stuff to write, but that very fact makes it in some measure an excuse for my present dull outlook on things. Life is hard enough, God knows, without having to put up with a hundred extra restrictions in order to just have a room and a bed! —/—/

How do you manage such exquisite delights every time you journey to the Metropolis?! Your letter was superb. I can understand, also, how you failed to “mix” with Munson and his friends. You are so much of the Nineties that it was scarcely to be expected. You had the same reactions as H—— would have had to such a meeting. I am not saying that there is any single attitude toward art that is final. I do contend, however, that Munson, Burke, Cummings and Waldo Frank all have something new and fine to offer. And whether or not you agree with their critical “lingo” you will nevertheless find their creative results interesting and vital. In last week’s New Republic there was an article on the group by Louis Untermeyer, non-committal but intelligent, on Secession and its contributors in which I was mentioned casually. We are all of us quite different. Our differences from the attitude of the present generation-in-power are in each case individual. I shall probably never amount to anything—but the others that I have just mentioned will do things of considerable importance. Frank, in Rahab, and Burke in his criticisms and in a number of short ideographic stories, have already established places in contemporary letters. —/—/

I am quite disrupted. Family affairs and “fusses” have been my destruction since I was eight years old when my father and mother began to quarrel. That phase only ended recently, and the slightest disturbance now tends to recall with consummate force all the past and its horrid memories on pretext of the slightest derangement of equilibrium. As I write I am ensconced at my office. Everybody else is away, for it is Sunday. Yet, in forgetfulness someone was very kind in leaving a gallon of delicious sherry. I have already had two good glasses of it without permission. I shall probably have two more before I go to see Isadora Duncan this evening and go back to the uninteresting room at the hotel. For without my books around me and my pictures and my Victrola with its Ravel, Debussy, Strauss and Wagner records—I am desolate, I find. I have grown accustomed to an “ivory tower” sort of existence. I am succeeding very well in my advertising writing. Salary raised and promises of more and decent people to work with who enjoy Joyce, Cabell, Pater and the best things of life. Yet even so—Life is meagre with me. I am unsatisfied and left always begging for beauty. I am tied to the stake—a little more wastefully burnt every day of my life while all America is saying, “every day I am growing better and better in every way,” and Dr. Coué makes his millions!

I am just enough filled with wine at the time of this letter to make confessions that will bore you. Yet, oddly enough, it is at such times that I feel most like writing you and H——. He is floating under the shades of bamboos up the rivers of China under the dragon stars. You and I are in offices—seeking the same things—but my gift of humor has left me today. —/—/

122: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Tuesday, Dec. 12th

Dear Gorham: You, as well as some of my local friends, must share in my excitement at seeing Isadora Duncan dance on Sunday night. She gave the same program (All Tschaikowsky) that she gave in Moscow for the Soviet celebration and, I think, you saw it in New York recently. It was glorious beyond words, and sad beyond words too, from the rude and careless reception she got here. It was like a wave of life, a flaming gale that passed over the heads of the nine thousand in the audience without evoking response other than silence and some maddening cat-calls. After the first movement of the Pathétique she came to the fore of the stage, her hands extended. Silence,—the most awful silence! I started clapping furiously until she disappeared behind the draperies. At least one tiny sound should follow her from all that audience. She continued through the performance with utter indifference for the audience and with such intensity of gesture and such plastique grace as I have never seen, although the music was sometimes almost drowned out by the noises from the hall. I felt like rushing to the stage, but I was stimulated almost beyond the power to walk straight. When it was all over she came to the fore-stage again in the little red dress that had so shocked Boston, as she stated, and among other things told the people to go home and take from the bookshelf the works of Walt Whitman, and turn to the section called “Calamus.” Ninety-nine percent of them had never heard of Whitman, of course, but that was part of the beauty of her gesture. Glorious to see her there with her right breast and nipple quite exposed, telling the audience that the truth was not pretty, that it was really indecent, and telling them (boobs!) about Beethoven, Tschaikowsky, and Scriabin. She is now on her way back to Moscow, so I understand, where someone will give her some roses for her pains.

I am in great ferment, and have been staying at a hotel for several days until I talk to my mother about some things that will determine whether or not I shall continue to live out at the house any more. They are little things, mostly, but such little things accumulate almost into a complex that [is] too much for me to work under. There is no use in discussing them here, but just the constant restraint necessary in living with others, you may appreciate, is a deadening thing. Unless something happens to release me from such annoyances I give up hope of doing any satisfactory writing. — — — —

123: To William Wright

Cleveland, O.   December 24, 1922

Dear William: However much boredom you may find in Warren—I assure you, it will not be as strenuous as the hot water I am stewing in. The Pittsburgh Water Heater surely has been on my mind the last three weeks, and the burden is still unshifted. I am growing bald trying to scratch up new ideas in housekeeping and personal hygiene—to tell people why they need more and quicker hot water. Last night I got drunk on some sherry. Even in that wild orgy my mind was still enchained by the hot water complex,—and I sat down and reeled off the best lines written so far in my handling of the campaign. All of my poems in the future will attest this sterilizing influence of HOT WATER!

Nothing happens here, either. I am grateful only for wine. I have neither women or song. Cleveland street car rides twice a day take out all hope of these latter elements. I think of New York and next summer when the present is too sharp (or is it dull!). But the main faults are not of our city, alone. They are of the age. A period that is loose at all ends, without apparent direction of any sort. In some ways the most amazing age there ever was. Appalling and dull at the same time. —/—/

PART TWO

New York

(1923-1925)

1923

Stieglitz voiced an old feeling of mine about Bill’s [Sommer] work—the lack of finish evident in so much of it. This has always pained me. As a whole, his comments seem very just. But I tend to differ with him on one point in common with other critics who are so obsessed with the importance of current developments in art that they fail to recognize certain positive and timeless qualities.

I refer to the quality of line in Sommer’s work. That has, in particular, nothing more to do with modern work than the draughtsmanship of Michelangelo. It is something that may not distinguish a man as a great innovator or personality—but it is, for all that, a rare and wondrous quality. From what you write Stieglitz has the sense to recognize this quality and to value it. But a person like Georgia O’Keeffe, who has so distinctly her own horn to play, is scornful of everything short of evolution and revolution.

It is a relief once in awhile to detach one’s judgment from such considerations as hers, and to look at a piece of work as totally detached from time and fashion, and then judge it entirely on its individual appeal. I think that in Sommer’s case, you, Williams and myself are appreciators of this kind. I can enjoy Bill’s things regardless of their descent, evident or otherwise, from French or German artists of the last generation. He has certain perfections which many of the most lauded were lacking in. God DAMN this constant nostalgia for something always “new.” This disdain for anything with a trace of the past in it!!! This kind of criticism is like a newspaper, always with its dernier cri. It breeds its own swift decay because its whole theory is built on an hysterical sort of evolution theory. I shall probably always enjoy El Greco and Goya. I still like to look at the things Sommer makes, because many of them are filled with a solid and clear beauty.

I have frequently wondered why you were so laggard in your interest in Eliot. Your recent announcement brings me much pleasure of anticipation. Please let [me] know what you find in Eliot. With your head knocked against Burke’s over such a topic there ought to be some fine illuminations. You already know, I think, that my work for the past two years (those meagre drops!) has been more influenced by Eliot than any other modern. He has been a very good counter-balance to Matty’s shifting morale and violent urgings. My amusement at Matty’s acceptance of “F and H” considerably heightened by the memory of several sly hints against Eliot which some of his more recent letters had contained.

There is no one writing in English who can command so much respect, to my mind, as Eliot. However, I take Eliot as a point of departure toward an almost complete reverse of direction. His pessimism is amply justified, in his own case. But I would apply as much of his erudition and technique as I can absorb and assemble toward a more positive, or (if [I] must put it so in a sceptical age) ecstatic goal. I should not think of this if a kind of rhythm and ecstasy were not (at odd moments, and rare!) a very real thing to me. I feel that Eliot ignores certain spiritual events and possibilities as real and powerful now as, say, in the time of Blake. Certainly the man has dug the ground and buried hope as deep and direfully as it can ever be done. He has outclassed Baudelaire with a devastating humor that the earlier poet lacked.

After this perfection of death—nothing is possible in motion but a resurrection of some kind. Or else, as everyone persists in announcing in the deep and dirgeful Dial, the fruits of civilization are entirely harvested. Everyone, of course, wants to die as soon and as painlessly as possible! Now is the time for humor, and the Dance of Death. All I know through very much suffering and dullness (somehow I seem to twinge more all the time) is that it interests me to still affirm certain things. That will be the persisting theme of the last part of “F and H” as it has been all along. —/—/

125: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Jan. 10th, ’23

Dear Gorham: Your Study came day before yesterday. So far I have only had time for a single reading, but am ready to offer whole-hearted congratulations. It IS much improved from the fragment I read last summer, and I think you have made a criticism that, besides being quite exact and fair, is dramatic—and very constructive beyond the actual boundaries of the man and subject concerned. I shall go over it again this evening. By early next week I hope to have some words for the jacket written,—later a review for the Double-Skull. I’ll send them both to you as soon as they are ready, for suggestions or “corrections.” By this time, according to a recent letter of yours, you will be something of a “copy” critic also.

Sommer’s gratitude to you for your interest and success in helping him will never reach the frenzied pitch of a letter,—but I know that he feels quite deeply grateful. As I am his official and unofficial secretary in other matters I include mention of his sentiments here. I must admit that I personally got a greater “thrill” out of the news than any personal acceptances have given me for many a day.[26] — — — —

126: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Jan. 14th, ’23

Dear Gorham: This (enclosed)[27] may, or may not yet be finished. Anyway, I think it is rounded enough as it is to be somewhat enjoyed.

Some things about it surprise and satisfy me. It has a bit of Dionysian splendor, perhaps an overtone of some of our evenings together last summer. It is so packed with tangential slants, interwoven symbolisms, that I’m not sure whether or not it will [be] understood. However, I am sure that it perfectly consorts with the other two parts of the poem as I intend them:

Part I
Meditation, Evocation, Love, Beauty

Part II
Dance, Humor, Satisfaction

Part III
Tragedy, War (the eternal soldier), Résumé, Ecstasy, Final Declaration

There is an organization and symphonic rhythm to III that I did not think I could do. The last three evenings have been wonderful for me, anyway! A kind of ecstasy and power for WORK.

III doesn’t seem half long enough to me now—but I’m too much with and in it to know.

127: To Charmion Wiegand

[Cleveland]  Jan. 20th, ’23

My dear Charmion: It didn’t take me long to decide that Buschor’s Graechische Vasenmalerei is a book that I shall always carry about with me, even though it has taken me an unforgivably long time to tell you so. You and Hermann [Habicht] have my sincerest gratitude for such an unexpected and beautiful holiday present.

With a few exceptions I prefer Egyptian sculpture to the Greek, and this book makes me feel that the Greeks had more to express in line and design than they had in the third dimension. In pottery you get the less ambitious and less “cosmopolitan” aspiration and expression of these people. There is an intimacy and rusticity to the pottery which especially appeals to the literary instinct. The famous Nike of Samothrace always left me somewhat cool. Lady Milo is a bit imposing (Jove’s too near around the corner) and these idealized human dolls all stand too much on their dignity. O I know how they prostrated Heine and Pater et al., and I do respect them—but give me these lovely vase intaglios and arabesques—and maids and naughty satyrs with their rank lustful lives and leaves and brine and wine!

—/—/ I think it is a credit to Munson’s platform and writing that so much attention has already been proffered Secession. I was very lukewarm in the beginning and urged him not to “waste his time” on any magazine project. But after his visit here last summer I quickly switched about, especially as S has contained such new and suggestive material as the last 2 numbers included. Secession gets away from the “temperamental” editorial attitude of The Little Review (good in many ways as this has been) and bases its judgment on more tradition while at the same time being far more daring in its experiments than such magazines as The Dial. It has been discouraging to see how very “safe” The Dial plays sometimes, despite its protests to the contrary.

I find that I have derived considerable stimulation from Secession. Without it there would be only the vague hope that the steady pessimism which pervades The Dial since Eliot and others have announced that happiness and beauty dwell only in memory—might sometimes lift. I cry for a positive attitude! When you see the first two parts of my “Faustus & Helen” that comes out in Broom in Feb. or March, you will see better what I mean. I’ve about finished the third and last part now, and am pleased at the finale. —/—/

I’m rather worn out with the incessant activities of the last two weeks—last month, in fact. I can’t stand much “society” even with interesting people, and my acquaintance in Cleveland has somehow increased so extensively during the last two years that with work, reading, writing, etc., things are becoming entirely too febrile. You’ll excuse my mention of such “ailments” I hope, as part of my excuse for delay in writing. But I have already probably exhausted you beyond “resentments” of such nature by this lengthy gust. — — — —

128: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Jan. 24, ’23

Dear Gorham: I’ll wait for your next letter before sending any other versions of “F. & H. III” The last two days have been occupied with the enclosed strange psychoanalytic thing. I can’t quite justify the title in words, but it came to me quite freely as the right thing. Let me know how you like it.[28] —/—/

129: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Feb. 6th, ’23

Dear Gorham: Everyone writes me such encouraging notes about “F and H” that I am doubly sorry that I ever sent any to Broom for publication. Frank wrote me a very shrewd appreciation of Part II which he probably repeated to you. Untermeyer’s mention of me among the New Patricians prompted me to send him a copy after reading his article on Eliot in a recent Freeman. I disagreed with him openly on many points, but the substance of his last paragraph made me think he would be interested in reading the poem. I was rather foolish to follow such an impulse, but his answer was quite decent. He made the charge of a new type of “rhetoric,” however, which is just what Frank took pains to mention as fully absent. Untermeyer comes here for a lecture on March 11th and says he wants to have a talk with me if possible. This is all right, but I am not keen about argument. Allen Tate writes me the most glowing praises possible, calls me the greatest contemporary American poet, etc., etc., so I feel about ready to deliver myself of my memoirs and expire in roses. And then, your appreciation has especially been enjoyed. You “get” the form and arrangement of the “Stark Major” poem much better than Frank does, but he is right about the second paragraph being too complicated and vague and you are wrong about the last verse being redundant. When I get the second verse worked out to suit me I’ll send you another copy. In the meantime I am ruminating on a new longish poem under the title of The Bridge which carries on further the tendencies manifest in “F and H.” It will be exceedingly difficult to accomplish it as I see it now, so much time will be wasted in thinking about it. Your news about Broom is discouraging in view of the fact that I had just sent part III of “F and H” to Matty last week. Everything has been bungled all the way through. I hope I can get enough material together during the next few months for a small volume where things can be arranged in proper order. I am so deadly sick of manipulating things with magazines, The Dial included. This latter refuses my “F and H” and then takes such a silly thing as that Apleton or what’s-’ername woman contained this month in its covers. I have been so rushed around with too much society that I have not yet got at the review for your study, but it will be done within two weeks anyway. It was much easier to rap out this enclosed review for Fitts. Let me know what you like or don’t like about it. I am very awkward at reviews, mainly, I suppose, because the procedure is strange to me. I am through doing things for Sommer until he cooperates better. He has received notice and photographs from The Dial I learn from second hand. Ten days ago this was. I had especially asked him to phone me as soon as he heard anything definite from them, certainly a small task, but he never peeps or comes near. I shall not send back the photographs to you to show to anyone until he returns them to me. He knows I paid twenty dollars for them and that I want to keep them circulating, etc. He knew that I would be the one to write to The Dial and blow ’em up if they failed to keep their word on the reproductions, and naturally want to know the facts of the situation, yet he keeps his stolid distance. What’s the use? It’s too much trouble with all the rest I have to do, though I’d be only too glad to keep it up indefinitely if he’d show a little interest. —/—/

130: To Allen Tate

[Cleveland]  Feb. 6th, ’23

Dear Allen: I can’t seem to get around to write you a decent consideration of your recent poems, “Yellow River,” etc. When I get time to write, as now at the office, they are not by me, and you have already had evidence of my state of mind at other odd moments. Meanwhile, do not think me indifferent, please.

I’m afraid you will have to postpone your kind proclamations in regard to “F and H” until the three parts appear in book form and in proper sequence. The inadvertency of “The Springs of Guilty Song” in the Broom is too complicated to explain fully. Josephson is most unscrupulous in his editorship, and it takes so long to get word back and forth that I shall probably not send anything more to Broom even if they finish “F and H” with the other two parts. This is quite unlikely as Munson writes me doleful presages about its financial straits. Two more issues and it will probably expire. However, in case they do print the third part which I sent about two weeks ago, it will include a note at the bottom of the page explaining the sequence, etc., and correcting the misnomer “The Springs of Guilty Song.” In regard to this latter I had a very fine appreciation from Waldo Frank who was quite astonished at it. Then with your fine praise and Munson’s I feel more encouraged than ever about my work. I’m already started on a new poem, The Bridge, which continues the tendencies that are evident in “Faustus and Helen,” but it’s too vague and nebulous yet to talk about.

In the next S4N I have an amusing parody of Cummings and have asked Fitts, the editor, to send you a copy. Don’t be puzzled by the name of this magazine, it’s taken from the insignia of a mosquito fleet during the war, I think. I wish I could partake of the genuine Tatian Theory, but it’s not so universal in its application, I fear, as it used to be. Sherry and bad Port are about all one succeeds in safely absorbing around here. When am I to expect that promised portrait of you?

131: To Waldo Frank

Cleveland, Ohio   Feb. 7th, ’23

Dear Waldo Frank: I have not been so stimulated for a long time as I was with your letter and its exact appreciation of the very things I wanted to put into the second part of “For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen” or its misnomer, “The Springs of Guilty Song.” The fact that its intention was completely evident to you without any explanations or “notes” from me, has renewed my confidence and made me quite happy. It has also made me doubly anxious that you should have a copy of the entire poem to read. This is enclosed, and, of course, is yours to keep if you want it. It has been very discouraging the way Broom has handled the publication of this poem. The mails are slow and unreliable, and Josephson is hasty, to say the least, in his methods. At best now, it will come out in broken sequence, and a final Note with part III cannot much repair the situation. I want at least a few of my friends to have the thing in decent shape.

A few planks of the scaffolding may interest you, so I’ll roughly indicate a few of my intentions. Part I starts out from the quotidian, rises to evocation, ecstasy and statement. The whole poem is a kind of fusion of our own time with the past. Almost every symbol of current significance is matched by a correlative, suggested or actually stated, “of ancient days.” Helen, the symbol of this abstract “sense of beauty,” Faustus the symbol of myself, the poetic or imaginative man of all times. The street car device is the most concrete symbol I could find for the transition of the imagination from quotidian details to the universal consideration of beauty,—the body still “centered in traffic,” the imagination eluding its daily nets and self consciousness. Symbolically, also, and in relation to Homer, this first part has significance of the rape of Helen by Paris. In one word, however, Part I stands simply for the EVOCATION of beauty.

Part II is, of course, the DANCE and sensual culmination. It is also an acceleration of the ecstasy of PART III. This last part begins with catharsis, the acceptance of tragedy through destruction (The Fall of Troy, etc., also in it). It is Dionysian in its attitude, the creator and the eternal destroyer dance arm in arm, etc., all ending in a restatement of the imagination as in Part I. You would probably get all these things without my crude and hasty mention of them, but to me, the entire poem is so packed with cross-currents and multiple suggestions that I am anxious that you should see the thing as I do, even though I have perhaps not succeeded in “putting over” all the points which I think I have. If you feel like severe criticism in any cases I shall certainly welcome it. Certainly I was not “hurt” by the very accurate criticisms you offered in your last letter.

“Nuances” in Part II takes the American pronunciation, that is, the “es” is voiced. You were quite right about the second verse in “Stark Major.” I have never been satisfied with it as to clarity, and it will undergo revision before publication anywhere. —/—/

132: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland]  Feb. 9th, ’23

Dear Gorham: You don’t deserve my pains in copying these two charming things of Allen Tate’s until you send back that much belabored poem of Harris’s, but these being yours to keep or throw away, I submit them casually, as possible material for Secession. Tate sent them to me this week, and seems to have written them in a mood of amusement with no idea of their publication anywhere. I shall not say anything at all to him about above considerations unless you should happen to want one or both of them. Tate has a whole lot to offer when he finds his way out of the Eliot idiom, which as you know, is natural to him, and was before he ever heard of Eliot. These things are certainly not imitative of anyone to [any] noticeable extent. They certainly beat Gerty Stein on her own ground—that is from the standpoint of her announced desire to break up poetry into an idiom corresponding to cubism, etc. Tate has much more precision, while giving the same broken effect. Not that I care a damn about such theories beyond their being merely interesting, but that may be because from now on I feel that personal problems of my own, extenuating from the experience in writing “F and H,” will be enough to interest myself.

I am in a very unfavorable mood, and just after having congratulated myself strongly on security against future outbreaks of the affections. You see, for two or three years I have not been attacked in this way. A recent evening at a concert some glances of such a very stirring response and beauty threw me into such an hour of agony as I supposed I was beyond feeling ever again. The mere senses can be handled without such effects, but I discover I am as powerless as ever against those higher and certainly hopeless manifestations of the flesh. O God that I should have to live within these American restrictions forever, where one cannot whisper a word, not at least exchange a few words! In such cases they almost suffice, you know. Passions of this kind completely derail me from anything creative for days,—and that’s the worst of it.

Tate wrote me a charming old fashioned sonnet on my picture that I recently sent him. Because, in a loose way, it is so clairvoyant, I confide it to you, an act which would be almost immodest in other circumstances.

133: To Allen Tate

[Cleveland]  Feb. 12th ’23

Dear Allen: Let me congratulate you on the “Tercets of the Triad,” however mockingly intended. It is among your very best results, as is, also, the “Pins and Needles.” O I shall not soon forget “grandfather’s knees,” etc., etc. The interweaving of the lines is very cunning. I think you display a great amount of cleverness also in the “Pins and Needles”—although I’m not sure that I applaud the name for this. There might be others more apropos. To my mind you beat “Gerty” Stein on her own race track. That is, you succeed much better than she in accomplishing what is her avowed aim—to split up lyrical or picture-word sequences into pieces in the same way that Cubists do in painting. She is entertaining only at the expense of all coherence, whereas you break things up into sharp impressions and also preserve the outlines of the scattered pieces. This comparison, now that I see it written, is aimless, because your directions and temperaments are so entirely different. Yet its record here may amuse you as an idea that immediately came to my mind when I read your poem.

Odd paradoxes occur. These things which you claim to have written for amusement only, seem to carry through so far as completeness of form is concerned better than “Yellow River” and “Quality of Mercy” where your “seriousness” was, if anything, too evident. You won’t misunderstand me on this, I hope. I simply mean that your satirical leanings are very strong ... that their astringency frequently breaks up your lyrical passages and at other times overloads them to the point of obscurity. In an indifferent or gay mood you escape these encumbrances, as well as [the] slight tendency that such endowments always carry with them—the danger of occasional lapses into sentimentality. Do not be abashed. The same was true of no less a man than Jules Laforgue, who was like you in many ways and who naturally had far less temptations in Paris and Berlin than you and I, Allen and Hart in Kentucky and Ohio (U.S.A.) respectively. If I can find it I’ll send you a scrap of De Gourmont’s essay on Laforgue that I translated last summer. This is more illuminating than anything I could offer.

I think you need to cultivate greater simplicity of statement in your more emotional things,—however well your present facility suits the more ornamented and artificial congruities of satire or brilliant impressionism. In “Yellow River” there are many lines that are too noble to be wasted,—some of great penetration and beauty. So all this makes me wish you would devote some extra effort into perfecting this poem, willfully extracting the more obvious echoes of Eliot. You are certainly rich enough to get along without them. Don’t let your interest in The Fugitive woo too many things into too sudden print. Forgive my pedantic bass and lifted finger, but I think you are inclined to too hasty mss. dispatches sometimes.

The ads are calling, so Addios. I feel like quoting the first verse of The Bridge for a snappy close:—