PART ONE Ohio (1916-1922) (continued 2)

I am plugging along in a very sodden way, planning as much as I dare on a chance to work a little in the New York office for a few weeks this summer by way of a change. After a recent conversation with my father the move seems rather more probable than before,—so, it may be that I shall see you within six weeks from now of a hot evening. Have been reading Stendhal’s Chartreuse de Parma, Noa Noa, Way of All Flesh, and Landor’s Conversations,—a strange mixture. Anderson wrote me very much the same criticism of my “Episode of Hands” poem that you did. I haven’t done anything more with it in spite of frequent attempts. The new version of “Garden Abstract” I enclose for your criticism. The Dial has rejected it, but that doesn’t mean much to me after reading in their last number that vacant lyric of Alter Brody’s.

This “business life” is getting me in a terrible way,—and I am beginning to feel that I must contrive a jolt for myself soon. If it were only myself concerned in the “jolt” I wouldn’t have delaying qualms,—but,—perhaps I am fated to a life of parental absorptions. My interests are as keen as ever, though, and so I suppose I need not worry about myself,—as long as I keep worrying.

44: To Gorham Munson

Cleveland, June 8th, ’20

Dear Gorham: —/—/ I’ve just read your critique in The Freeman, and while I have never been to a Provincetown performance, I should certainly want to after this of yours. The F. rejected my “Garden Abstract” along with The N. Rep. and The Dial, and I’m at a loss to understand such things in the light of some of the mediocre effects that are more-or-less the rule in the columns of the first two. Of course the theme was pure pantheistic aestheticism,—and I suppose they would say that it was too detached from life, etc. I’m started on a set of sketches connected with Akron life now, and enclose a sample.[11] Maybe I shall be able to do something in New York in the mornings, the best time for such work, but as you know, plans for that kind of thing can never be made. — — — —

45: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] July 30th, —’20

Dear Gorham: —/—/ I have been promised the territory around Washington, D.C., Norfolk, Richmond, Va., etc., as a hunting ground for “selling,” beginning about the second week in September when I shall embark for Washington as headquarters. This last named place strikes me as interesting in the extreme,—even better than N.Y. which I know so well anyway. I shall more or less freely govern my own operations, rise and retire at later hours, and have a drawing account at the bank at my own disposal in addition to a good percentage commission on everything I sell. I must admit a happy surprise at my father’s recent appreciation of my efforts here during the last six months. He even made the unhoped-for concession of mentioning that he had chosen this territory for me on account of the better sort of business type that is in Washington and also on account of Washington’s “literary and journalistic associations.” Well, it will be much better than this smug atmosphere around here, and I rather tend to expect a moment or two of revived inspiration. Before closing, I must mention my enthusiasm for our Henry James. I have read recently his American, an early novel, and a group of tales in his “middle manner” collected in a book called The Better Sort, also I have been at his letters which I bought riskily but wisely, after all. — — — —

46: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] August 18th —’20

Dear Gorham: I am delighted to hear about your sudden appreciation of D’Annunzio’s novels. In fact, I get a picture of you running with them under your arm, (one arm, I should say,—the other being occupied with other cargo,—) away from the, as usual, glaring M. Schopenhauer who stands in the doorway of your erstwhile quiet ivory tower waving his arms and shaking fists at you. I would rather, and more truthfully, I think,—think of you thusly than as another picture, more common to humanity, that always obtrudes upon me when anyone announces “an engagement”—“The Storm”.... You will remember seeing it in a thousand “art store” windows:—a curly youth partly in a bearskin trotting amiably with a barefooted flaxen lady away from something that evidently hasn’t taken the starch out, as yet, from a rag that they are dragging along above them. It is all “too lovely” and pink. I am sure there is more of a “rouge et noir” cast to your surrender. Well,—betrayal brings memories and wisdom (to the male, anyway), and so I congratulate you on your splash even though I suffer from unaccustomed silence. One word before we close the subject, though:—you must not expect me to read D’Annunzio.

Did I tell you that I have been enjoying the letters of Henry James? Also, Aldous Huxley’s “Limbo,” and the Noh plays of Fenollosa and Pound. Conrad’s Nigger of the Narcissus seems to me all polyphonic prose, plus the usual quality of Conrad characterization, etc. Then I’ve read most of the tales in James’ Better Sort vol. and that is about all I’ve been able to cram into the exhausted evening hours since New York. I’ll chuck in a page of the Akron poem that I struck off the other evening just because I want an opinion on it from you.[12] Hustle back to the ivory tower and put on your specks for a minute, please, and tell me what you think of this uncouth trifle, sir. In view of my attitude toward what Akron so strongly represents, I have been thinking that it might be amusing to call the whole series “Porphyro in Akron.” I don’t much care whether anyone will care for it or not. What I seem to want to do more and more as time goes on, is to preserve a record of a few thoughts and reactions that I’ve had in as accurate colors as possible for at least private satisfaction. —/—/

47: To Gorham Munson

Washington, D. C. Sept. 13th, ’20

Dear Gorham: — — — — Here I am after a three-days search for a room in an unexceptional maison in a row of other rooming houses. There are charming places in Washington, but it takes time and information to get at them, and as I haven’t either, and had to give the Cleveland office “an address” very quickly, I shall remain here for three weeks yet, anyway. Your last came just before I left home. You ought to thank your stars for such a summer as you have had. I haven’t any idea yet how much I shall like Washington. There is a certain easiness about it, and geographically it is, I should judge, the nearest like Paris of any American city. An endless number of parks and monuments, and all the streets are lined with trees. At least it is more elegant than any other American city and with a very different psychology than N.Y., Cleveland or Akron. This last name reminds me that I sent “Porphyro” to The Dial with some additions and subtractions from the version you read, before leaving home. I dread this tramping around trying to sell Crane’s candy, but this week will see me started in it, and my affection for Washington will largely depend upon how well I get on. At present I feel a terrible vacuity about me and within me and a nostalgia for Cleveland. — — — — I share your enthusiasm for Cowley’s poem in The L.R.

48: To Gorham Munson

[Washington] Sept. 24th, —’20

Dear Gorham: — — — — I’ve been running around talking, talking, talking and waiting for the proper persons to arrive at their offices, etc., etc., etc., all week, and have succeeded to the mild extent of inaugurating two new accounts for the firm. Fortunately, people here don’t seem to arrive at their offices until after ten, and so I have the opportunity to sleep more than I did in Cleveland where the requirements commanded my resurrection at five A.M. My Akron friend, Mr. Candee, gave me an introduction to a poet friend of his who has charge of all the official communications, etc., that come into the State Department. He has proved a charming person, and has introduced me to several other interesting people. He is one of the few who is cognizant of what is going on abroad, knows some things weeks in advance of the newspapers and, of course, a great many things that never come out. His opinion of most of Europe, especially the greedy tactics of some of the freshly hatched nationalities, is below cynicism. I have not yet heard from The Dial about “Porphyro,” or at any rate he has [not] been redirected to me. I am beginning to feel that he is my lost soul, and will be a long time in returning. This simply means that I haven’t had a creative impulse for so long that I am even getting not to miss it. I am not in the type of Washington life that offers material or incentive for writing. The diplomatic circles have all kinds of scandals waving around which I generally hear a whisper of from the fringes, but there is really no cafe life here or factory or shop life worth mentioning. Thousands of clerks pour out of government offices at night and eat and go to the movies. The streets are beautiful with many parks, etc., but it is all rather dead. I am really more interested in the soldiers and sailors that one meets than anything else. They have a strange psychology of their own that is new to me. This sounds bad, and perhaps it is so,—but what should one do with the reported example of our new VICE — — — — scenting the air as it does. From what I’m hearing, about every other person in the government service and diplomatic service are enlarged editions of Lord Douglas. Amusing Household! as Rimbaud would say. I shall look for The Rainbow in Brentano’s here, and hope that it may be interesting. — — — —

49: To Gorham Munson

[Washington] Oct. 1 ’20

Dear Gorham: —/—/ New York seems to be set for a fine musical and dramatic season. I took in Footloose here last week and enjoyed it in spite of many obvious impossibilities of situation, etc. Emily Stevens did well in it—I suppose it would have failed without her. Stepping Stones is here this week and I may go to see it. — — — —

What think you of this Aldous Huxley’s “Leda” poems? They strike me as dry and very clever,—but is real poetry so obviously clever? Modern life and its vacuity seems to me to be responsible for such work. There is only a lime or a lemon to squeeze or a pepper-pot left to shake. All the same I admire his work very much. He comes in the line of Eliot and Sitwell. Eliot’s influence threatens to predominate the new English.

50: To Gorham Munson

Washington, D.C. Oct. 20th,—’20

Dear Gorham: —/—/ Your letter that arrived this morning had the true rage of the celibate unwilling in it. I sympathize with you.... My nights are uneasy also. But you ought to pity me more than yourself,—my satisfactions are far more remote and dangerous than yours, and my temptations frequent, alas!

I have just been reading your Pollard article, and on bringing it to the attention of my friend Wilbur Underwood here, was delighted to find that U. knew Pollard very well, the latter having been enthusiastic about the two vols. of verse that Underwood brought out in England a long time ago. What pathos there is in these sudden flashes on forgotten people, forgotten achievements and encounters! Here is this man, Underwood, with the beauty and promise of his life all dried and withered by the daily grind he has had to go through year after year in the State Dept. with a meagre salary. A better critic and more interesting person one seldom meets, yet the routine of uninteresting work has probably killed forever his creative predispositions. A very few friends is all that life holds for him. Yes, Pound is right in what he says in his “The Rest,”—“O helpless few in my country, O remnant enslaved!... You who cannot wear yourselves out by persisting to successes.”

U. has a very fine collection of rare translations, etc., from antiquity, and I have just been enjoying to the full his copy of the Satyricon of Petronius (Arbiter), a rare and completely unexpurgated Paris edition, purported to have been translated by Oscar Wilde, although it seems to me too fine a job for what I imagine Wilde’s scholarship to have been. Also, I am enjoying The Golden Asse of Apuleius, and some Saltus vols. that he has.

I went to see Hampden in The Merchant of Venice recently here. The way it was done, setting, costumes, speech, gestures,—everything was sickening. Hampden, in one scene only,—the tantrum with Tubal,—was good, everywhere else his acting was indifferent. I cannot understand how a man of his intelligence,—for I remember his Hamlet as being quite good,—will venture forth with such a cast of burlesque queens, (his Portia!!!) and bitches. The worst examples of antiquated theatricality, and mouthing of words! And the audience was ample and enthusiastic,—a true barometer of the American stage at present. —/—/

I shall be glad to get back to Cleveland for a while, if only to see the copies of Vildrac, Rimbaud, and Laforgue that have arrived from Paris since my leaving. I expect to return to W. later, in Jan. when the “season” here is on. I find agreement from my father that my lack of results here has not been so much a matter of personal inadequacy as the weather and general slowness of business here at this particular time.... I shall certainly be in an ungodly rush, though, all the time I am at the factory, as the holiday season orders will be coming in and things become perfectly maddening there for two months. However, anything will be better than the maddening experience I have been having here of clawing the air day after day without getting any but the most meagre results. —/—/

51: To Gorham Munson

Cleveland, Nov. 9th—’20

Dear Gorham: — — — — Yes, “Jurgen” has been breathing his native Ohio air for two weeks now, and is elbow and knee-deep in shipping and packing at the factory. The Christmas rush has already begun and I’m tired to death tonight after a rush since five this morning. But in spite of all it has been better to get out of the ghostly time I was having in Washington, back into the usual smoky and tawdry thoroughfares. Does one really get so used to such things as, in time, to miss them, if absent? I am sure I should not miss factory whistles in Pisa or Morocco, but I frankly did miss them in Washington. Anyway, they were more enlivening (and the people they claim) than anything or anyone that I saw in W., which seemed to me the most elegantly restricted and bigoted community I ever ventured into. They say it has changed a lot since the war, and prohibition, of course, smothered its last way out.—I almost hope I will not have the opportunity of returning there in Jan., as expected. But you’ve heard most of this before.—

I have written Margaret Anderson to find out the L.R. situation. Probably what you have heard is only too true. There is no use expressing familiar resentments about such proceedings, and anyway one grows rather calloused and numb in time. There is that danger with me,—of relaxing into an indifference more comfortable than an interest in the arts nowadays and here, allows. I suppose the Minns pictures, my poems, etc., are smothered,—at least I’ve reconciled myself to it peacefully. I’m sorrier about the Minns pictures than anything else, as it meant a great deal of trouble to bring their reproduction about. Perhaps they’ll print them again, I don’t know yet. My great wonder is that M.C.A. and j.h. keep persisting as they do.

When you get a chance see the new monograph on Jacob Epstein including fifty photos of his works. He seems to be much better than most of Rodin, and I’m enthusiastic almost to the point of silliness. I’m reading The Possessed at your suggestion. Dostoievsky is a stranger to me beyond Crime and Punishment which caught me by the throat. He does give one more life than my mundane world supplies,—and stimulates. He makes you forget yourself (should I better say, lose) in the life of his characters for days at a time. And how few writers can do that! You see this record of my temper at present,—I’m tired, with every evidence of it. — — — —

52: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] 11/23/20

My dear Gorham: Your letter has just come, and I’m sorry to know you are having such an ordeal of “nerves.” Of course, being thrown back violently again on celibacy after your Woodstock freedom would naturally tend to bring about such a result, and it is only a pity that you cannot find anything near you of sufficient temporary interest to relieve your situation. Of course, I realize, that the puritanical taboos of a typical boys’ school are what stands in the way most of all, and then you might possibly resent and refuse sheer sensuality after having experienced what I imagine has been offered you. I don’t believe in the “sublimation” theory at all so far as it applies to my own experience. Beauty has most often appeared to me in moments of penitence and even sometimes, distraction and worry. Lately my continence has brought me nothing in the creative way,—it has tended to create a confidence in me along lines of action,—business, execution, etc. There is not love enough in me at present to do a thing. This sounds romantic and silly,—you understand that I mean and refer to the strongest incentive to the imagination, or, at least, the strongest in my particular case. So I have nothing to offer you for reading and judgment. Mart Anderson writes me that the next L.R. will be out the twenty-fifth,—96 pgs., and will contain my poem, etc., and a publication of the J. Joyce trial and proceedings which she says are interesting. It ought to be a rich number with John Quinn and Burleson throwing epithets at each other. I stopped in the middle of The Possessed to read Poor White, but am again on the Russian trail. What marvelous psychology!!! A careful reading of “Dosty” ought to prepare one’s mind to handle any human situation comfortably that ever might arise.... You will like the Anderson book. It fascinated me as much as Winesburg and this in spite of a great fear I had of disappointment. There is a woman in it something like jh although too removed to do anything but suggest her. I wish, after you have read it, that we could have a fireside hour over the book. We might agree perhaps on the exquisite work of such scenes as the description of the murderer-saddlemaker sitting by the pond and rocking gently to and fro (the simplicity of A’s great power of suggestion is most mocking to the analyst)—and the scene where the sex awakening girl hears the men in the barn in speaking of her, say,—“the sap is mounting into the tree.” Nature is so strong in all the work of Anderson—and he describes it as one so willingly and happily surrendered to it, that it colors his work with the most surprising grasp of what “innocence” and “holiness” ought to mean. Also, his uncanny intuition into the feelings of women (a number of women have remarked to me about this) is very unusual. I have an absurd prejudice against Frank’s Dark Mother merely on account of what I read of it in a copy of The Dial. There it seemed to me too exclamatory, Semitic, and too much in the style of David Pinski, whose stuff I somehow am terribly bored with. So I probably shall never read it, as I probably shall never read more than the three pages of W. D. Howells that I once attempted. Frankly, you see, I admit to a taste for certain affectations and ornamental commissions. I wish I could follow your finger guide to the advice of Brooks in The Freeman about “outside interests” for the fallow seasons between poems. I had read the article and agree with it in many ways. But with me, there are no poems for “doldrums” to lag between, and no time, literally, for poems, to say nothing of energy. The fact is last week I ran gait at the factory at the rate of fourteen hours straight per day of rushed and heavy and confusing labor, and as it will probably continue that way until very near Christmas, I have all I can do to think of getting enough sleep to begin the rush again next day. Of course I am becoming very morose and irritable under this pressure of exertion, not to mention disgust and boredom, and yesterday, my first day of a chance to sit down and think a minute, I found myself in a rather serious state of indigestion and neurotic fever. So it goes. Our age tries hard enough to kill us, but I begin to feel a pleasure in sheer stubbornness, and will possibly turn in time into some sort of a beautiful crank. Pax vobiscum!!!!

53: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] Sunday, Dec. 5th,—’20

Dear Gorham: Your article in The Plowshare was so late as to have arrived only a few days ago,—the “Pascal” came yesterday. In almost every way, I think, the latter work is superior, and to me, more suggestive, but this is probably because we agreed pretty well over most of the contents of “Cafe St. Beuve” last summer in my parlours at the Prince George and so it was familiar material to me. I have never read Pascal and so can’t speak beyond telling you that I like your handling of the theme and it seemed to me that your style was richer than I have noticed before. I am filled with a kind of bleakness of mind and spirit lately, so that even this answer to your appreciated interest in my bland career is somehow an unsatisfactory effort. I should like to be able to see and talk to you,—the mere technical mechanics of writing have become so foreign to me from long neglect, that I feel awkward at best. Again I am very much at sea about everything that personally concerns me. —/—/ I am not sure about remaining in Cleveland much after the first of the year, as there is a possibility of my being sent out on the road again as salesman. On the other hand, it seems to me that it will be about as much as I can endure to remain at my present work in the shipping dept. until Christmas is over without a clean and final break with my father and his company, owing to various humiliations he seems interested in either forcing or countenancing others about the place to force, on me. As soon as my mother is off the scene I shall feel freer to do more as I please. I have practically no money and as employment is hard to find now, she is very much worried for fear I shall do something rash and suffer for it. About the only course I see is to save for all I am worth for two years or so, and then embark once and for all for foreign lands, Italy or Russia or Paris, and not come back until I want to. Literature and art be hanged!—even ordinary existence isn’t worth the candle in these States now. I enclose Matty Josephson’s last letter to me with his plans. They make my mouth water.

I wish I had three poems to send to The Nation, but I shall have to desist from a lack of “numbers.” The Possessed was one of the most tremendous books I’ve ever read, I think, and I am planning on reading The Brothers Karamazov as soon as time permits. At present I dip into Seutonius’ History of the Caesars, which is easy to recognize as one of Saltus’ principal authorities and sources for his Imperial Purple. — — — —

54: To Sherwood Anderson

[Cleveland] 12/8/20

Dear Anderson: Your mention of a possible trip East soon makes me hope very much that you will care to stop off at Cleveland here (a few hours at least) and see me. I shall not be living at home at the time as my mother expects to leave for her place in Cuba very soon, closing the house, but if you come alone I can accommodate you at my room wherever it may be. I want very much to talk with you and hope you can “make it” this time. Better look me up at the factory at 208 St. Clair Ave. if you arrive between 8 A.M. and 5 P.M. You don’t know how much I appreciate the encouragement your letters give me. Although I am not at present doing anything creatively, I have not sunk too much into despair or indifference to hope.

Do come,—won’t you!

55: To ——

[Cleveland] [Dec. 22, 1920]

Dear ——: NEWS! News! NEWS!—The “golden halo” has widened,—descended upon me (or “us”) and I’ve been blind with happiness and beauty for the last full week! Joking aside, I am too happy not to fear a great deal, but I believe in, or have found God again. It seems vulgar to rush out with my feelings to anyone so, but you know by this time whether I am vulgar or not (I don’t) and it may please you, as it often might have helped me so, to know that something beautiful can be found or can “occur” once in awhile, and so unexpectedly. Not the brief and limited sensual thing alone, but something infinitely more thrilling and inclusive. I foolishly keep wondering,—“How can this be?—How did it occur?” How my life might be changed could this continue, but I scarcely dare to hope. I feel like weeping most of the time, and I have become reconciled, strangely reconciled, to many aggravations. Of course it is the return of devotion which astounds me so, and the real certainty that, at least for the time, it is perfectly honest. It makes me feel very unworthy,—and yet what pleasure the emotion under such circumstances provides. I have so much now to reverence, discovering more and more beauty every day,—beauty of character, manner, and body, that I am for the time, completely changed.—But why aren’t you here to talk with me about it! How I wish you were here.

I have written you this way (typewriter) because, as you have discovered, my writing is hard deciphering. I have given up trying to improve it, and don’t try any more. You have probably got the candy and hymn by this time,—neither amount to much, but I wanted to send them. I don’t understand — — — —’s silence,—but certainly hope that I have not been relinquished as one of Akron’s temporary “makeshifts” or “reliefs.” It would really hurt. I have told you all that has happened. This rest would merely be to mention details of ungodly strain and hours of “Christmas rush” at the factory,—seventeen hours a stretch sometimes. When I have had time I have spent it with Dostoievsky’s Les Freres Karamazov which I like even better than The Possessed. The beautiful young Alyosha, and Father Zossima! Dostoievsky seems to me to represent the nearest type to the “return of Christ” that there is record of,—I think the greatest of novelists. But I am forgetting Frank Harris, who, you know, comes second to the “woman taken in adultery.” —/—/

1921

56: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] 1/14/21

Dear Gorham: —/—/ I’m slightly disabled today with a touch of la grippe and am remaining away from the factory. A talk with my father last week settled things more definitely for me than many months have afforded. I shall remain in my present capacity at the factory indefinitely until I find a job at some more “literary” work, when my father and I will more-or-less conclusively part hands so far as a business connection is concerned. At last he seems, after questioning various mutual friends as to my interests, etc., to have been forced into this much recognition of my persistence in artistic directions,—and it was gratifying to observe as gracious a surrender as he offered me. You see I have not said anything to him about my personal interests for almost two years, leaving him only what details of indifference to business as naturally revealed themselves throughout my association with him, to judge from. I long ago “gave up” talking over such sores with him,—and it has amused me vastly to find that at last the attitude aroused him to seek such indirect solutions to the “enigma.” Now I can hope to get a little reading and writing done before spring here in some sort of tranquillity. Before the summer is over I may have found me a journalistic job,—but the main point under either drudgery is that I accomplish some real writing. But this is the usual ante-room soliloquy, and I won’t bore you further with more of it.

I am just as glad for you that you didn’t start your magazine,—and with the same considerations in mind that you gave as your reasons against it. Italy will do you infinitely more good,—why waste your good money on what is, after all, an indifferent public. It is bad enough to waste brains and time—but not money!!! I haven’t seen Contact yet, but will try to get ’round to send for a copy soon. Williams has a very fine poem in the last Poetry and also there is a beauty by Padraic Colum. By the way, I hope you saw Colum’s write-up of Ezra Pound’s Instigations in a not very recent New Republic. It was the best appreciation of Pound on his own grounds that I’ve ever read.

Your last letter, although very brief and fragmentary, did bring a whiff from you of revived sensibilities. N.Y. does that to one always after any period of provincial stiffness. What are you writing now? Of course I shall send you whatever I do,—but the waiting is longer, by far, for me than for you. I’m caught dead tight in a new affair de coeur that at least keeps me stirred up in some ways. I don’t know how much blood I pay for these predicaments,—but I seem to live more during them than otherwise. They give the ego a rest. I may sound like an utter profligate,—but there is much sincerity, too painfully much, for me to laugh.

57: To Matthew Josephson

Cleveland, O. 1/14/21

Dear Matty: —/—/ What you say about the Akron suite is very true. I have only one point of disagreement with you,—crudeness of form. This was deliberate, and you have got to convince me that such a treatment of such a mood and subject is inconsistent before we can pick asphodels together again on the slopes of Parnassus. By the way,—do you care for my “Garden Abstract” in its final form in The L.R.? I think that the version I sent you was an earlier and poorer experiment. I must bestir myself soon and write something new. My main difficulty is at present a kind of critical structure that won’t permit me the expression of the old asininities, and (as you say) the poverty of society in these “provinces.” Your suggestion about the trade paper work is alluring. However, I am bound not to break away from my father’s concern until spring, when there may be a little striving and stirring up of the dust,—I hope.

Are you still planning on Italy? Why not the island of Capri? I hear there is interesting company about there,—D. H. Lawrence and Mackenzie musing and moping around the baths and arcades of Tiberius.... I don’t long so much for change of surroundings as time, TIME which I never seem to get to read or write or amuse myself. I hear [that] “New York” has gone mad about “Dada” and that a most exotic and worthless review is being concocted by Man Ray and Duchamp, billets in a bag printed backwards, on rubber deluxe, etc. What next! This is worse than The Baroness [Freytag-Loringhoven]. By the way I like the way the discovery has suddenly been made that she has all along been, unconsciously, a Dadaist. I cannot figure out just what Dadaism is beyond an insane jumble of the four winds, the six senses, and plum pudding. But if the Baroness is to be a keystone for it,—then I think I can possibly know when it is coming and avoid it.

58: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] 1/28/21

Dear Gorham: Your N.Y. bulletin interested me immensely. Last Sunday I went down to Akron to see Minns after a four months’ separation. I read him the opinions of Man Ray, whereat he flew into a holy rage. “There is no sense in the theory of interesting ‘accidents,’” and I am with Minns in that. There is little to [be] gained in any art so far as I can see, except with much conscious effort. If he doesn’t watch his lenses, M. Ray will allow the Dada theories and other flamdoodle of his section run him off his track. He seems to have done much good work so far, but it has been in spite of his ideas. If he is just recently infected, it’s too bad, because there is less chance of him containing his qualities under such theories—But so much for photography.

—/—/ When I get “Dosty” more cleared out of the way, I intend to get more poetry reading again, but just now he is all-absorbing, and somehow his offering is such a distinct type of itself that one doesn’t want to mix any other kind of reading with it. Here is my sum poetic output for the last three months—two lines—

Maybe it is my epitaph, it is contradictory and wide enough to be. But I hope soon to turn it into a poem and thereby, like Lazarus, return.

59: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] 2/11/21

Dear Gorham: Yes, my writing is quite Dada,—very Dada (I like the term as applied) and yet you must put up with it again as my machine has suffered another relapse.

I was very much amused and interested by the Contact that arrived about a week ago. Thank you, as always, dear old bean, for being so thoughtful. You are always sending me something to make my eyes blink delightedly and arouse me from the general stupor of these parts. How fine the Wallace Stevens were! And some of Williams’ talk was good—but how horrid that the room had to be splashed with the wet-dream explosions of Virgil Jordan and McAlmon. Their talk is all right—but what is true of it has been said adequately before,—and all they can seem to add is a putrid remnant or two. Perhaps I am on the downward grade, but when I come to such stuff as theirs I can only say “Excuse me.” I will be glad to receive stimulation from the sky or a foetid chamber or maybe a piss-pot but as far as I can make out they have wound their phalli around their throats in a frantic and vain effort to squeeze out an idea. In fact they seem very “Dada” in more sense than one. But enough!!!

Don’t disown me,—but I have done literally no writing to give you. The fact is that I am entirely engrossed in personal erotic experience lately that nothing seems possible in that way. O if you had ever seen the very Soul of Pierrot (in soul and incarnate) you would at least admire. Never, though, has such beauty and happy-pain been given me before—which is to say that my love is at least somewhat requited. You and one other are the only ones to know now or later of this, so do not think me vulgar or silly to tell you. Well, you have felt the fire somewhat yourself so you may appreciate my mood. Never have I suffered so, or reached such moods of ecstasy....

What do you think of Poor White? It certainly has made Anderson one of the most talked-of artists there are. I wrote you my opinion some time past. I’m still on “Dosty”—a very fine biography and estimate and analysis by J. Middleton Murry.

You will please forgive this letter. I have been perhaps a little too personal,—perhaps vulgar. But if anything’s to blame it’s the Subconscious rioting out through gates that only alcohol has the power to open. —/—/

60: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] 2/24

Dear Gorham: Your article on education, etc., in the last Freeman delights me. Remarkably courageous and true. I hope it may do at least a little good concretely,—but at least it will serve as an accentuation mark in the minds of a good many like myself who have felt with you along that line for some time.

Two new pictures just arrived from Minns that I wish you could see. One,—an old man’s head that is as good as a Rembrandt, and at the opposite pole, a young girl’s head that brings Pound’s sonnet lines persistently into my head,—“No, go from me. I have left her lately. I will not spoil my shield with lesser brightness.—” You know how it goes. I intend to send the old man’s head to The Dial for publication, but scarcely hope they will accept it after the mediocrities they have lately staged there. Really,—I flatter myself, you see,—I have more doubts about their accepting a poem I recently wrote and sent them, which I enclose.[13] You see, my present job allows me more time while “at work,” and I may even do more,—for better or worse, according as you feel about it.

This is all now until I hear from you and have more to build on. You know there is precious little for me to build on here, and so you must not too much mind if my letters have a predominance of what must seem banality to you. If so, forgive me,—and when you get tired of vainly tugging at your end of the line, let me know, and I’ll take it philosophically.

61: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] April 10th

Dear Gorham: — — — — For me here—the same old jog-trot except that I have lately run across an artist here whose work seems to carry the most astonishing marks of genius that have passed before my eyes in original form, that is,—I mean present-day work. And I am saying much I think when I say that I prefer Sommer’s work to most of Brzeska and Boardman Robinson. A man of 55 or so—works in a lithograph factory—spent most of his life until the last seven years in the rut of conventional forms—liberated suddenly by sparks from Gauguin, Van Gogh, Picasso and Wyndham Lewis, etc. I have taken it upon myself to send out some of his work for publication, an idea that seems oddly, never to have occurred to him. —/— I enclose an incipient effort of mine of recent date.[14]

62: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] April 20th

Dear Gorham: Your letter did me good, and has left a good hangover for me for the last few ungenerous days. I left my father’s employ yesterday for good—nothing, I think, will ever bring me back. The last insult was too much. I’ve been treated like a dog now for two years,—and only am sorry that it took me so long to find out the simple impossibility of ever doing anything with him or for him.

It will take me many months, I fear, to erase from my memory the image of his overbearing head leaning over me like a gargoyle. I think he had got to think I couldn’t live without his aid. At least he was, I am told, furious at my departure. Whatever comes now is much better than the past. I shall learn to be somewhere near free again,—at least free from the hatred that has corroded me into illness.

Of course I won’t be able to get to N.Y. now for any summer vacation. You know what a privation that means to me. I have nothing in sight in the way of employment,—and as times are so bad,—I don’t know when I shall. A job as copy-writer for an advertising house will probably be open to me about June 1st. And there is a newspaper opening out here soon,—perhaps that may yield me something. I have a roof over my head and food, anyway—here at home—and maybe I shall write something. The best thing is that [the] cloud of my father is beginning to move from the horizon now, you have never known me when it has not been there—and in time we both may discover some new things in me. Bridges burn’t behind!

Glad you like “Estador.” I’m beginning to myself. I cannot quite accept your word changes although I’m far from satisfied with it. But the more I work over it the less I seem likely to be,—so I’m going to try it on The Dial.—Anything for some money now.

63: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] May 3rd 21

My dear Gorham: —/—/ I feel sure S[ommer]’s work is as important as any contemporary work anywhere, and I’m very interested to hear what you will think. I wish I were better trained for analysis of this kind of work,—but as it is I can only “feel” the power of it. I may send you a few of his drawings at any time,—and later if you have time around N.Y. after school is out, you might care to show some of them to people who could give him a chance perhaps, of exhibition somewhere. —/—/

I agree with you about your distinction between the earlier and later Anderson. I have never got hold of Windy McPherson’s Son, but I never could clap very loudly for Marching Men, although I imagine that it is an improvement on the former. He, I understand, is anxious for these two books’ extinction. They will probably never be issued by the publisher again. I’m anxious to read his “Out of Nowhere into Nothing” that The Dial announces for three summer issues. By the way, a new book of essays by my acquaintance, Charles S. Brooks, has a chapter in it, “A Modern Poet,” which is a burlesque on me, the Baroness, and my rooms over The Little Review on 16th Street. His effort is all the funnier for the especial lack of comprehension he has for The L.R. and “modern poetry.” I promise you a laugh or two anyway. The Yale Press has just got it out,—its title is Hints to Pilgrims. Brooks lives a few houses down the street from me here, but at that time he was a New Yorker, and used to be very hospitable to me with theatres and dinner at his apartment on 10th St. —/—/

64: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] May 16th, ’21

Dear Gorham: I am delighted that you have found so much to hold your interest in Sommer’s work. Some later things that he had recently shown me only confirm my convictions the more. I’ll send you more of his work as soon as I can assemble what I want to. Sent two watercolours to The Dial again last week, which I don’t see how they can let pass by—but all things are possible to them. —/—/ There is a French-Swiss artist here just eight months from Paris,—doing very interesting work with a peculiar sharp diabolism in it. Willy E. Lescaze. His work at a local exhibition here recently caused a terrible furor, being in company with Burchfield’s, the only work worth looking at. It amuses me to see Lescaze praise Sommer’s work—there [are] all the differences between them that distinguish Baudelaire from Rabelais. I recently sent some of L’s work to The Little Review along with S’s—but what ever keeps Margaret Anderson so impolitely silent I cannot figure out. Do what I will, I can’t seem to get a word out of her. I begin to despair. At least I hope she will return the drawings someday. If you want more to take about with you, you might call on her when you next are in town and find out if she wants them. If not you will find some interesting additions to add to your bundle. I cannot but feel that there is an audience in N.Y. ready for such work. Sommer has tried Cleveland people and found them so indifferent that he didn’t even send one canvas or sheet to this last exhibition here. In one way, a mistake, I think. Before I forget your request,—William Sommer is as completely as he signs himself.

Went yesterday to see the first movie for a long time. Did you see it—Deception—the foreign picture of the affairs of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn? It really was stimulating. I could wish for more of such fare, even though it should (horrid thought!) impoverish our native celluloid manufactories. There were mob scenes in it, perfect in every detail, that only the screen can produce. And the old sensualist king was well acted.

I am still without work. There is absolutely nothing doing here. Things are at such a standstill that I hate to think of it. I am practically on my mother’s hands here at home,—and you can believe me that such a situation is far from a pleasant one for me who have been used to paying my own way now for some time. If only that promise I have for a job with a local advertising house fulfills itself next month I shall be all right. But most friends and friendly offers have proved themselves such slippery fish! Two years thrown away at the feet of my father without the gain of a jot of experience at anything but peon duties in a shipping room! I can never forgive him, nor my own foolishness. Just now I am too uneasy to concentrate on any writing. Have got to prepare myself for some kind of practical activity—and so I do not even read much but advertising books and business folders! Roger Fry’s Vision and Design, a large tome beautifully illustrated, is good to unloosen one’s tongue about such work as Sommer’s. He brought it around one evening, and I have enjoyed it. Haven’t read Main Street or Moon Calf yet, nor Miss Lulu Bett. I am beginning to feel rather distinguished about it all.

65: To Gorham Munson

Cleveland May 21st

Dear Gorham: I’m glad to say that my tension is less acute at present than when I last wrote you. An improvement of the weather with opportunities for tennis and getting out and around more helps me work off surplus energies generated by my “change of life.” And you are, of course, very much right in urging me not to be ridiculously bourgeois in accepting bourgeois standards.

I’m very glad you liked “A Persuasion.” Perhaps it seems a bit tame to me on account of having used several phrases coined some years ago in it. I was much pleased this week to get word from Double Dealer accepting “Black Tambourine” for publication and urging me to send them some prose. They claim they are much in need of some. Haven’t you some to offer them? I might write something on Joyce or Anderson—but I don’t know. I always feel singularly lacking in ideas about these people excepting to blindly enthuse or refute some ridiculous criticism of them. Their (“D.D’s”) check has not arrived yet but they promise it soon—before the June number when they expect to use the poem. It surprises me to find such a Baudelairesque thing acceptable anywhere in U.S. I sent it out as a kind of hopeless protest—not expecting to see it printed at all. I’m beginning to lose interest in it now—it cannot be as good as I had thought it. —/—/

66: To Gorham Munson

Cleveland, Friday

Dear Gorham: —/—/ Excuse my apparent evasion of your request for an explanation about “Black Tambourine.” The Word “midkingdom” is perhaps the key word to what ideas there are in it. The poem is a description and bundle of insinuations, suggestions bearing on the Negro’s place somewhere between man and beast. That is why Aesop is brought in, etc.,—the popular conception of Negro romance, the tambourine on the wall. The value of the poem is only, to me, in what a painter would call its “tactile” quality,—an entirely aesthetic feature. A propagandist for either side of the Negro question could find anything he wanted to in it. My only declaration in it is that I find the Negro (in the popular mind) sentimentally or brutally “placed” in this midkingdom, etc. Tell me if I have made it plain or not to you.

67: To Gorham Munson

Cleveland, June 12th ’21

Dear Gorham: —/—/ Sommer said you had something in a very recent Freeman which I’ve been trying to get, but guess I’m too late. Sometimes I get so exasperated with the “intellectual” attitudes of these papers like The Freeman, New Rep., Nation, etc., where everything is all jumbled together,—politics, literature, painting, birth control, etc., etc., etc., that I ignore them for a time and probably miss some good things. It’s the way they are served that I object to. I’m beginning to be somewhat pained by this “Intelligentsia” mood when it comes upon me. This probably indicates that I am not a very responsible individual—and truth is—I’m not. How tired I am of the perpetual ferment of The New Rep. Those fellows are playing a canster game nonsense. Does anything they ever say have any concrete effect? Old Washington goes on just the same on the old rotten paths. These gentlemen are merely clever at earning their livelihood in clean cuffs. But hear me rant on!!! I don’t care two-pence for the whole earth & heavens and least of all for politics. It’s only when the political gentlemen (Irish potatobeds) obstruct my view of my petunias and hollyhocks that I’m thus aroused,—and even that is a small complaint in the long list of larger ones I have. —/—/

No job in sight even now! I’m about convinced of the hopelessness of the advertising plan. Business gets worse and worse and they don’t have enough to do to keep a new man busy.

Oh well!—I manage to get drunk once a week on delicious wine served out by a friend of mine here and I have an evening a week with Sommer when we do all kinds of stunts from Chopin Ballades and Heine lyrics to sparring with an old set of gloves I have. Wish I could think of something entertaining to write—but, at present I’m mostly trying to regain a mental and spiritual status that has been lost to me for over a year. What I want to do is gather up the threads again and go on, to put it stale-ly.

I have reached such blind alleys and found no way out of them that there is nothing at present for me to do but laugh a little and endure—which I hope to do. —/—/

Did I tell you I’d been drawing and painting some? I find it a tremendous stimulation—and you begin to see so many more things than before wherever you look. My drawings are original, at least, and Sommer professes to see much in ’em. —/—/

68: To Gorham Munson

Cleveland June 16th ’21

Hail! Citizen of the world! —/—/No work here except what I’ve lately been making myself. This has all been occasioned by a very cordial letter from the editor of The Double-Dealer, Basil Thompson, who urged me to write something for them on Anderson. This has been done (to the extent of 2000 words which, if taken, means $20.00) and dispatched. In my present mood it seems to have been a good job. Also, I got up courage and erudition enough to “do” a Vildrac translation for them which in the original at least is fine.

I was very disappointed to find quite a bad typographical error in “Black Tambourine.” “Mingle” instead of “mingling”—last line 2nd verse. How foolish it makes me feel that way! It quite destroys the sense of the thing.

They pay .30 per line of verse & 1 cent per prose word and want prose badly. As I need money worse, I may do something in the short story way for them if they fancy the Anderson thing. This last little effort has rewarded me much already merely in getting my mind to working a little again. I don’t dare hope for an ultimate success as a “free lance” but am beginning to think that this writing game offers a chance to augment one’s savings a little now and then at least.

69: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] Saturday midnight

Dear Gorham: Well. It has been a day I shall not soon forget. I have just a little time since returned from my first visit to the Sommer farm and studio—about half way between here and Akron in a beautiful untrodden valley. He has an old old-fashioned schoolhouse for his studio—the walls are white and hung with such an array of things as you never have seen. Forgive my enthusiasm—I have been so dazzled for the last 8 hours that I may seem somewhat incoherent in my expression. I have brought home with me a considerable number of water-colours and drawings which I am going to send on to you within a few days. These are representative of his best in this medium and I think you will be enthusiastic about them. I could picture a dozen N.Y. picture dealers in that studio today—radical or pedantical—all tearing [each] other’s hair for the first chance of exhibiting such stuff. I feel convinced now that all that needs be done is to get some samples of this work before them,—and if they have any sense at all—either artistic or commercial—they will seize upon it. —/—/

“Dynamism” is the splendid & fitting word for Sommer—the word I had been looking for and got only as far as the adjectival use. —/—/

70: To Gorham Munson

Cleveland, July 8th

Dear Gorham: —/—/ The weather has been terrifically hot here, making action and thought alike impossible,—but I am slowly trying to labor out in the suitable style for Shadowland an article on Ezra [Pound] which may bring me in a little money. This magazine is popular and in some ways becoming more interesting than Vanity Fair. I would like a foothold in it if it is possible. It seems evident enough that I have accomplished something in the estimation of the editors of The D.D. as they have incorporated me in their list of contributors on their stationery. I got word the other day that they will bring out my Anderson article in this July issue. I haven’t got my check yet but it ought to be twenty dollars or so.

I have a query for you. What would you think of a play on or around the figure of John Brown? There is plenty of material, but the only trouble I see is the issue of slavery, North and South, etc., which might kill it. I am reading a fine biography of the man by Villard. As I am principally interested in this idea for mere commercial reasons the possibility of popularity is the largest factor. I tend to think the subject, in this light, too forbidding.

— — — — I always seem to choose the wrong moment for my letters, when the ice-man is hammering at the door or the family is waiting to be driven to town, so my letters are more like bulletins and telegrams than anything else. Things pan out the same way when I start on an essay, article or poem,—but I hope for better days. —/—/

71: To Gorham Munson

Cleveland, July 14th, ’21

Dear Gorham: This is the kind of note I got yesterday from JH of The Little Review, returning some mss.,—“Found this as I was going through Mart’s files. She’s crazy. The drawings are fine but we haven’t any hope of printing them for ages, so I sent them back.—jh.” So it looks as though The L.R. was done for, and perhaps poor Mart. Doesn’t the way jh puts it makes you feel rather uneasy. I wish I knew more details,—whether it is a mere — — — — rumpus that is all the matter, or whether Mart Anderson has worn herself out in vain assaults against the decision against her in the Joyce trial. I wish I could get in touch with her direct, but as she hasn’t answered any letter for the last six weeks she probably cannot write. I happen to know from Mart’s friends too much inside information on the two women’s mutual relationships to feel certain of any direct truth about Mart from jh. If you hear anything about them or their plans please let me know. You know my admiration and (yes) affection for Margaret Anderson is very strong, and I detest nothing more than such a brutal squib as this thing that jh just sent. —/—/

The cover for the July Double Dealer gives me the shivers, but my Anderson article is all there. Write me what you think of it now that you have read him more or less completely. I enclose a letter of introduction [to Anderson]. My Pound article is a far more difficult thing and progresses slowly, but I am bent now on making as much money writing as I can, and I’m going to get it published one place or another. Your encouragement anent the John Brown adventure is very gratifying. This is a long winded matter, but I think I shall go ahead with it, hoping by the time you get back from Europe to have something to show you. By the way, when you are in Paris there is one place you must go. Joyce’s Ulysses is to be brought out complete in Paris this fall. I enclose a subscription blank with address, etc. I have already subscribed for it. —/—/

72: To Gorham Munson

Cleveland July 22nd, ’21

Dear Gorham: The “march of events” has brought upon me Cleveland’s 125th anniversary with all its fussy & futile inanities and advertisements to make hideous the streets. Blocked, and obliged to wait while the initial “pee-rade” went by today, I spent two hours of painful rumination ending with such disgust at America and everything in it, that I more than ever envy you your egress to foreign parts. No place but America could relish & applaud anything so stupid & drab as that parade—led by the most notable and richest grafter of the place decked out in Colonial rags as the founder of the city Moses C. Ah—the Baroness, lunatic that she is, is right. Our people have no atom of a conception of beauty—and don’t want it. One thing almost brought tears to my eyes (and I hope you do not think me too silly in mentioning it)—the handful of Chinese who came along in some native and antique vestments & liveries to prostitute themselves in the medley of trash around them. To see them passing the (inevitable) Soldier’s Monument ablaze with their aristocratic barbarity of silk, gold and embroideries was an anachronism that could occur only in America. And the last of their “section” brought a float with a large “melting pot”—its significance was blazoned in letters on it!! All I can say is—it’s a gay old world! If ever I felt alone it has been today. But I must encounter fireworks, bawling “choruses” and more “pee-rades” for 7 more days—as the community believes in celebrations that are productive of business.

Your letter came this morning, and I agree largely with what you have to say about the Anderson article. A friend of mine here, Lescaze the painter, who is an excellent literary critic as well, told me that reading it gave him the impression of a young man inflating and playing with a series of variously-colored balloons in the boredom of his chambre—which in an imagistic way singularly seems to agree with the substance of your opinion on it. Well,—this is true & rather painfully so—I must admit. My only justification is the singularly inadequate surroundings I have here for any kind of concentration. My one hope is to do better with more practice at such work and relieved somewhat of the haste that the pressing necessities for money presently force upon me. I struggle with the Pound article still,—but the subject itself is so complex and (I fancy) the audience interested so small, that I may be forced to give it up.

You are right about The D.D.’s exceedingly uneven quality. To my mind almost every issue has been largely filled with utter weakness and banality. Will some one tell me how an (often) good poet like Haniel Long can bring himself to allow to be printed such stuff as he has signed himself to in The D.D.? As a matter of fact I am continually being more and more horrified at what names we had always been accustomed to hoping rather much of,—are rushing into print with, and obviously out of the urgent need or desire of more money. Shadowland, especially the August number with Babette Deutsch’s list of American poets! Alas—what Fletcher wrote on the artist’s conscience in The Freeman (July 12th or so) makes me think a good deal. Living is at last becoming quite impossible, at least here,—when you get to Italy I advise a permanent residence there for you. Later, perhaps I’ll come over and join you. In time there may be only D. H. Lawrence, the rainbow, and Capri left. I shall (with my millions acquired by that time in flattering biographies of rich businessmen)—I shall rejuvenate the baths and temple there of Tiberius and we shall live in state,—waited on by the only fair and unsullied youths & maidens then procurable in Europe. —/—/

73: To Gorham Munson

Cleveland, O. Aug. 9th ’21

Dear Gorham: —/—/ My unemployment lingers. I learn a Scriabin Prelude,—make a drawing,—stroke my black cat (a recent acquisition) and read intermittently. Lately I had a good letter from Colum, who likes my “Black Tambourine,” and yesterday a long letter from Matthew Josephson, the first word for almost a year. He is up in Maine with Carl Springhorn and Kenneth Burke in a kind of camp. (Also his wife.) They both expect to sail for Italy six weeks from now, to stay two years or more. I don’t know their proposed localities, but hope you will meet. — — — —

74: To Charmion Wiegand

Cleveland, Ohio August 13, ’21

Dear Charmion: —/—/ I am very glad to know that you have been keeping up the writing,—whether prose, poetry, or drama doesn’t so much matter. The point about it all is that it serves to keep you alert and alive much more than any other activity I know of,—and especially anything as warm as a “Byzantine drama of blood” sounds interesting. The historical drama seems to me as legitimate as any other provided it has enough organic life of its own and doesn’t depend merely on the fame, etc., of the protagonists for effect. Have you read Stendhal’s Chartreuse de Parma? So far as I know it has never been dramatized, and there is much good material in it. I find Stendhal, incidentally, one of the few men who wear deeper with familiarity. You probably have read his Rouge et Noir. —/—/

75: To Gorham Munson

Cleveland, Ohio Sept. 19th ’21

My dear Gorham: —/—/ The L. R., I was informed on a card from j.h. the other day, is recovering, will shortly re-appear as a quarterly under Pound, Picabia, etc., 24 illustrations and 96 pgs! Mart Anderson also recovering “sanity,” etc. — — — — I sold them [The Dial] the poem you read just before leaving, “Pastorale”—which will come out soon. I also sold one, “Persuasion,” to The Measure—and “Porphyro in Akron” came out in the last Double Dealer in first place.

The result of all this is that I am “sold out” and will have to rush rhymes and rhythms together to supply my enthusiastic “public” as fast as I can. But the family is all upset about my unemployment and money is needed. I am too uneasy to accomplish a thing, but hammer out a translation of de Gourmont’s marginalia on Poe & Baudelaire for The D.D. I have projects and a few lines started on poems,—but nothing “comes through”—it is at times discouraging. I do not expect to hear from Josephson again. He wrote me several letters full of brilliant criticism and suggestions—but we do not exactly agree on theory and he has become so complex—that the lack of sympathy my last letter offered him will bring no response from [him] I’m quite sure—especially now after an unusually long interstice. But this extremity of hair splitting palls on one after awhile. A little is interesting—but goes a long ways. He seems afraid to use any emotion in his poetry,—merely observation and sensation,—and because I call such work apt to become thin, he thinks me sloppy and stupid,—as no doubt I am. But after all,—I recognize him as in many ways the most acute critic of poetry I know of—the only trouble is that he tries to force his theories into the creative process,—and the result, to me, is too tame a thing. —/—/

76: To Gorham Munson

Cleveland Oct. 1, ’21

Dear Gorham: My terrible hay fever days are over, and the fine autumn weather that I like the best of the year has arrived to console me. My mood is neither happy nor desperately sad. It will best be conveyed to you by the quotation of a new poem, “Chaplinesque”—only started (if I can help it) as yet: —/—/[15]

And I must tell you that my greatest dramatic treat since seeing Garden in The Love of Three Kings two winters ago, was recently enjoyed when Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid was shown here. Comedy, I may say, has never reached a higher level in this country before. We have (I cannot be too sure of this for my own satisfaction) in Chaplin a dramatic genius that truly approaches the fabulous sort. I could write pages on the overtones and brilliant subtleties of this picture, for which nobody but Chaplin can be responsible, as he wrote it, directed it,—and I am quite sure had much to do with the settings which are unusually fine. If you have not already seen it in N. Y., it may now be in Paris. It was a year late in arriving in Cleveland, I understand, on account of objections from the state board of censors!!!! What they could have possibly objected to, I cannot imagine. It must have been some superstition aroused against good acting! But they will always release any sickening and false melodrama of high life and sex, lost virginities, etc., at the first glance. Well, I am thankful to get even what their paws have mauled of the Chaplin and Caligari sort. My poem is a sympathetic attempt to put in words some of the Chaplin pantomime, so beautiful, and so full of eloquence, and so modern.

—/—/ It will be time for me to raise my voice in praise of Anderson soon, as his new book The Triumph of the Egg, and other stories, is on the market. This also includes the serial “Out of Nowhere into Nothing,” recently completed in The Dial. I would lay a bet on it that long after Zona Gale, Lewis, etc., are forgotten, Sherwood will hold his own. There are lots of things I want to read but haven’t the money to buy, like Hecht’s first novel, a great success they say, Erik Dorn, recently out. I wrote you how much I enjoyed Shaw’s Back to Methuselah, a review of which I wrote for The D.D.

I am taking a course in advertising two nights of every week until next May which is very good and ought to help me get started. It has the advantage, at any rate, of giving one a diploma which, I understand, has a real value. I am now pretty sure of making advertising my real route to bread and butter, and have a strong notion that as a copy writer I will eventually make a “whiz.” —/—/

77: To Gorham Munson

Cleveland, Oct. 6th, ’21

Dear Gorham: Here you are with the rest of the Chaplin poem. I know not if you will like it,—but to me it has a real appeal. I have made that “infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing” of Eliot’s into the symbol of the kitten. I feel that, from my standpoint, the pantomime of Charlie represents fairly well the futile gesture of the poet in U.S.A. today, perhaps elsewhere too. And yet, the heart lives on....

Maybe this is because I myself feel so particularly futile just now that I feel this pathos, (or is it bathos?). Je ne sais pas.

Yesterday I worked my first day foreman-ing three men on a distribution job, and walked untold miles of city blocks. I am stiff,—but the exercise did me much good. No work today,—perhaps tomorrow. At this work the most I can hope to get before spring is $30.00 per week. Yesterday brought me $2.50. Needless to say, I will look for something better as soon as I can get hands on it.

A new light and friend of my friend, the Swiss-French painter, Willy Lescaze, has arrived in town,—Jean Binet, teacher of Eurythmics in our very alive Cleveland School of Music which Ernest Bloch heads. I am to meet him tonight and with some anticipations, as I am told he is a remarkable and inspired amateur pianist, playing Erik Satie, Ravel, etc., to perfection. Lescaze has proved an inspiration to me. Knowing intimately the work of Marcel Proust, Salmon, Gide, and a host of other French moderns, he is able to see so much better than anyone else around here, the aims I have in my own work. We have had great times discussing the merits of mutual favorites like Joyce, Donne, Eliot, Pound, de Gourmont, Gordon Craig, Nietzsche, etc., ad infinitum. After this it goes without saying that I never found a more stimulating individual in N. Y.

78: To William Wright

Cleveland, O. Oct. 17, 1921

Dear William: I can come half way with you about Edna Millay,—but I fear not much further. She really has genius in a limited sense, and is much better than Sara Teasdale, Marguerite Wilkinson, Lady Speyer, etc., to mention a few drops in the bucket of feminine lushness that forms a kind of milky way in the poetic firmament of the time (likewise all times);—indeed I think she is every bit as good as Elizabeth Browning. And here it will be probably evident that most of her most earnest devotees could not ask for more. I can only say that I also do not greatly care for Mme. Browning. And on top of my dislike for this lady, Tennyson, Thompson, Chatterton, Byron, Moore, Milton, and several more, I have the apparent brassiness to call myself a person of rather catholic admirations. But you will also notice that I do run joyfully toward Messrs. Poe, Whitman, Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, John Donne!!!, John Webster!!!, Marlowe, Baudelaire, Laforgue, Dante, Cavalcanti, Li Po, and a host of others. Oh I wish we had an evening to talk over poetic creeds,—it is ridiculous to attempt it in a letter. I can only apologize by saying that if my work seems needlessly sophisticated it is because I am only interested in adding what seems to me something really new to what has been written. Unless one has some new, intensely personal viewpoint to record, say on the eternal feelings of love, and the suitable personal idiom to employ in the act, I say, why write about it? Nine chances out of ten, if you know where in the past to look, you will find words already written in the more-or-less exact tongue of your soul. And the complaint to be made against nine out of ten poets is just this,—that you are apt to find their sentiments much better expressed perhaps four hundred years past. And it is not that Miss Millay fails entirely, but that I often am made to hear too many echoes in her things, that I cannot like her as well as you do. With her equipment Edna Millay is bound to succeed to the appreciative applause of a fairly large audience. And for you, who I rather suppose have not gone into this branch of literature with as much enthusiasm as myself, she is a creditable heroine.

I admit to a slight leaning toward the esoteric, and am perhaps not to be taken seriously. I am fond of things of great fragility, and also and especially of the kind of poetry John Donne represents, a dark musky, brooding, speculative vintage, at once sensual and spiritual, and singing rather the beauty of experience than innocence.

As you did not “get” my idiom in “Chaplinesque,” I feel rather like doing my best to explain myself. I am moved to put Chaplin with the poets (of today); hence the “we.” In other words, he, especially in The Kid, made me feel myself, as a poet, as being “in the same boat” with him. Poetry, the human feelings, “the kitten,” is so crowded out of the humdrum, rushing, mechanical scramble of today that the man who would preserve them must duck and camouflage for dear life to keep them or keep himself from annihilation. I have since learned that I am by no means alone in seeing these things in the buffooneries of the tragedian, Chaplin, (if you want to read the opinions of the London and Paris presses, see Literary Digest, Oct. 8th) and in the poem I have tried to express these “social sympathies” in words corresponding somewhat to the antics of the actor. I may have failed, as only a small number of those I have shown it to have responded with any clear answer,—but on the other hand, I realize that the audience for my work will always be quite small. I freely admit to a liking for the thing, myself,—in fact I have to like something of my own once in a while being so hard to please anyway.

The job I mentioned lasted just one day. I took the men out and carried the thing through to success, sore feet, and numb limbses,—but,—there was no work to be done next day, nor the next,—and I got tired of trailing around hoping for only $2.50 for a fortune, and don’t care whether there is little or much awaiting me there now, having hit the employment trail again toward other fields. When I once get pastured again, I’ll praise even Edna Millay—may even buy her Second April (if it is in Season) and not bore you so much with long diatribes on Poetry. Just now, though, that is all I have. Can’t even buy the books I long to read, like Three Soldiers, Erik Dorn, and the new Little Review (Quarterly—AND $2.00). Write me soon and cheer me up. Just for fun, look up the poems of Donne in the Library and read some of the short lyrics like “The Apparition,” “A Jet Ring Sent,” “The Prohibition,” “The Ecstasy,” and some of the longer things like “The Progress of the Soul,” etc., if you feel intrigued.

79: To Gorham Munson

Cleveland Nov. 1st, ’21

Dear Gorham: —/—/ Yes,—I much wish I could share your horizons,—instead of retracing day after day a few familiar circles of routine & thought. Keep on writing me your bright kindly letters. They are a lantern of hope and a warmth to the heart. I sometimes wonder if, without you, I should have kept writing so long.

Just read Erik Dorn and am shy a little of criticizing it. Undoubtedly it is a fine piece of work,—and an odd addition to Am. literature. Almost European in viewpoint. I cannot, though, yet make sure whether Hecht has his tongue in his cheek part of the time or not. Hecht is a virtuoso, and arouses suspicions that one would never feel for Dreiser or Anderson. One sees an influence of Joyce in the book,—diluted or “rationalized” just enough to be more pleasing to the public taste. Carl Sandburg and Anderson are given parts in the scenery in an interesting way. —/—/

80: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] Nov. 3

Dear Gorham: —/—/ You are very much right about the poems. I can’t blame you for not seeing as much in “Chaplinesque” as myself because I realize that the technique of the thing is virtuosic and open to all kinds of misinterpretations. Maybe, though, since you have seen The Kid which “inspired” it, you have got nearer to my meaning. For me, it holds double the interest of “Pastorale” which is more perfectly done, but to me, not so rich. Chaplin may be a sentimentalist, after all, but he carries the theme with such power and universal portent that sentimentality is made to transcend itself into a new kind of tragedy, eccentric, homely and yet brilliant. It is because I feel that I have captured the arrested climaxes and evasive victories of his gestures in words, somehow, that I like the poem as much as anything I have done. But we will see. My mind changes sometimes sooner than I plan. I was much surprised that Sherwood Anderson should like it, who is not prone to care for complicated expressions. He was, further, more or less in agreement with you about the sea poem.[16] —/—/

Further time and thought on Erik Dorn lessen my opinion of it. It hangs somewhere between the prose symphonies of Huysmans and the poetic symphonies of Aiken. Impressionistic. However, there is little character. As long as we have Ulysses and Tarr to praise we need not spend too much breath on it, recognizing it, nevertheless, as a hopeful sign, not much more. One misses any actual sincerity,—and somehow the issue or accusation of meretriciousness creeps in. It brings back to me something about Hecht that Saphier once told me:—“A brilliant fellow,” he said. “He can sit down to a typewriter and reel off that stuff by the yard. Has three or four of them (short stories) on hand at once.” This was apropos of the really fine little things of his that were appearing in The L.R. then. In fact I am moved into sympathy with Seldes’ review of it in the Oct. Dial which you will have read by this time. —/—/

Tonight I attend the weekly “salon” that Lescaze gives to his friends. There will be banter and chatter enough to be tiresome. Somehow, when there are women present (the kind one has around here) no conversation can be had uninterrupted by little compliments, concessions to them, etc. They insist upon being the center of attention irrespective of their ability to take part in any argument. Consequently there are interminable innuendoes and clucking and puffings that never terminate anywhere. One of the few women who would carefully avoid this kind of thing is Margaret Anderson. Hommage to Margaret!!

The Dada dramas are tres amusant,—but—well—alright56789—*!!

81: To Gorham Munson

Cleveland, Nov. 21st.

Your letter about the Gargoyle plan has just come and as I haven’t written you for some time, I’m giving some kind of answer, however unworthy. These enclosed poems you are welcome to use if you care to. — — — — The L. R. has it [“Chaplinesque”] in hand now, but I shall probably not hear from them about it for months and should they decide to take it,—I cannot see that its publication in France should complicate matters any. The same applies to “Black Tambourine” which came out misprinted in The D.D. last July. I would like to see it printed right sometime and it occurs to me that this may be an opportunity. I am doing nothing new worth while, so I can’t send you anything else. If you get the names your letter mentions together as contributors you will have something worth while. Burke’s contribution to the new L.R. quarterly just out is about the only good thing in it. I don’t need to go on about it, as you have probably seen it in Paris by this time. About the only thing to be gathered from Pound’s article on Brancusi is that Pound wishes to avoid being obvious at the cost of no matter what else. For myself—I [have] just finished a week’s trial at selling real estate—of which, of course, I didn’t sell any. Trying now to get into a bookstore to help out during the Christmas rush.

There is nothing but gall and disgust in me,—and there is nothing more for me to tell you but familiar, all-too-familiar complaints. I wish I could cultivate a more graceful mask against all this. —/—/

82: To Gorham Munson

Cleveland Nov. 26th, ’21

Dear Gorham: —/—/ I’ve been having a wonderful time diving into Ben Jonson, so you see I haven’t been so far off, after all. After one has read Bartholomew Fair it isn’t so hard to see where Synge got his start,—a start toward a husky folk-element in the drama. I can see myself from now rapidly joining Josephson in a kind of Elizabethan fanaticism. You have doubtless known my long-standing friendship with Donne, Webster, and Marlowe. Now I have another Mermaid “conjugal” to strengthen the tie. The fact is, I can find nothing in modern work to come up to the verbal richness, irony and emotion of these folks, and I would like to let them influence me as much as they can in the interpretation of modern moods,—somewhat as Eliot has so beautifully done. There are parts of his “Gerontion” that you can find almost bodily in Webster and Jonson. Certain Elizabethans and Laforgue have played a tremendous part in Eliot’s work, and you catch hints of his great study of these writers in his Sacred Grove. I don’t want to imitate Eliot, of course,—but I have come to the stage now where I want to carefully choose my most congenial influences and, in a way, “cultivate” their influence. I can say with J[osephson] that the problem of form becomes harder and harder for me every day. I am not at all satisfied with anything I have thus far done, mere shadowings, and too slight to satisfy me. I have never, so far, been able to present a vital, living and tangible,—a positive emotion to my satisfaction. For as soon as I attempt such an act I either grow obvious or ordinary, and abandon the thing at the second line. Oh! it is hard! One must be drenched in words, literally soaked with them to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. When they come, as they did in “Pastorale” (thin, but rather good), they come as things in themselves; it is a matter of felicitous juggling!; and no amount of will or emotion can help the thing a bit. So you see I believe with Sommer that the “Ding an Sich” method is ultimately the only satisfactory creative principle to follow. But I also find that J[osephson] stirred up a hornet’s nest in me this summer with his words about getting away from current formulae, from Heine to Wallace Stevens, by experimentation in original models, etc., and my reaction to this stimulation is to work away from the current impressionism as much as possible. I mean such “impressionism” as the Cocteau poem (trans.) in The Little Review, which you have probably seen. Dada (maybe I am wrong, but you will correct me) is nothing more to me than the dying agonies of this movement, maladie moderne. I may be even carried back into “rime and rhythm” before I get through, provided I can carry these encumbrances as deftly and un-selfconsciously as, say, Edward Thomas sometimes did. I grow to like my “Black Tambourine” more, for this reason, than before. It becomes to my mind a kind of diminutive model of ambition, simply pointing a direction. S’much for this endless tirade, but write as usual and keep me cheered and momentarily thrilled.

Maybe J[osephson] has already started on his novel, burlesquing the Americans in the Quartier, that he intended. Tell him to send me some poetry, anything he is writing. It’s sure to be better than anything the magazines offer here.

83: To Gorham Munson

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.