PART ONE Ohio (1916-1922) (continued 3)

1922

85: To Sherwood Anderson

Cleveland Jan. 10th

Dear Anderson: Waiting on shoppers in a book store during the holiday hurricane deferred my answer to your letter. I was glad to get any kind of work, however, after my empty-pocketed summer and fall. Now I am working as a copy-writer for the Corday and Gross Co. here which you may have heard of. I like this better than any bread-and-butter work I’ve ever done. You were right about the real estate job. Ogling poor people for small investments against their will didn’t appeal to me very long. I had given it up before you wrote.

If I can satisfy the requirements of my position here, I shall feel a little hope returning for the satisfaction of a few aims again. I mean, of course, to turn out a little verse or prose this winter. When out of work I am not able to rid myself of worries enough to accomplish anything. Some pecuniary assurances seem necessary to me to any opening of the creative channels. Now things begin to look a little better for me.

I saw your story “The Contract” in the last Broom, and would like to offer a criticism. It may be an infraction, but if it is I want to ask your forgiveness. This story in some ways strikes me as inferior to the intensity and beauty of your other recent work, and I have an idea that it is something you wrote quite a while ago. Coming from anyone else, I would think, “This is good; but this fellow is trying to imitate Anderson and can’t quite do it.”

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

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

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

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

86: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] Jan. 23rd, ’22

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

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

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

87: To William Wright

Cleveland, O. February 11, 1922

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

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

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

88: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland?] Feb. 25th —’22

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

89: To William Wright

Jamestown, New York March 2, 1922

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

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

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

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

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

90: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] March 2, ’22

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

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

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

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

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

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

91: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] March 24th

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

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

92: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] March 29th, ’22

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

93: To William Wright

Cleveland, O. April 2nd

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

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

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

94: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] April 19th —’22

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

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

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

95: To Charmion Wiegand

Cleveland, Ohio May 6th, ’22

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

96: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] May 16th ’22

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

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

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

97: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] Same evening (May 16th)

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

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

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

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

98: To Allen Tate

Cleveland May 16th ’22

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

99: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] June 4th ’22

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

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

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

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

100: To Allen Tate

Cleveland June 12th

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

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

101: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] [ca. June 18]

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

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

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

102: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] June 22nd

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

103: To ——

[Cleveland] 4th of July

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

104: To Allen Tate

[Cleveland] July 19th, ’22

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

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

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

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

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

105: To ——

[Cleveland] July 27th, ’22

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

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

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

106: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] Aug. 7th, ’22

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

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

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

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

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

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

107: To Charmion Wiegand

Cleveland, O. Aug. 15th, ’22

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

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

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

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

108: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] Friday night

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

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

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

109: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] Thursday

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

110: To Gorham Munson

[Cleveland] Monday

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

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. —/—/