Chapter X: Part II: is, of course, the DANCE and sensual culmination. It is also an (1)

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

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

132: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Feb. 9th, ’23_

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

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

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

133: TO ALLEN TATE

[_Cleveland_] _Feb. 12th ’23_

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

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

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

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

Macadam, gun grey as the tunny’s pelt,
Leaps from Far Rockaway to Golden Gate,
For first it was the road, the road only
We heeded in joint piracy and pushed.

134: TO ALLEN TATE

[_Cleveland_] _Feb. 15th, ’23_

Dear Allen: --/--/ I enclose a note from James Daly, whose poetry you may have sampled in _Broom_. He was here last Fall visiting a mutual friend, and I think I showed him some of your verse. After you have seen what “some others” think of you, please return the enclosed. _Broom_, by the way, has busted; N. Y. office closed last Saturday; March issue, the last, to be distributed from Berlin while the tent-stakes are being pulled up. I rejoice in a way. At least they won’t get a chance to murder my “F and H” any more. _Secession_ will publish the three parts together probably sometime next summer. (There is no use in my sending anything more to _The Dial_; they just rejected my “Stark Major,” and it is plain that their interest in helping American letters is very incidental. Note the predominance given to translations of the older generation of Germans, etc., who have absolutely nothing to give us but a certain ante-bellum “refinement.” They aren’t printing the younger crowd of any country.) All this should convince you, as well as myself, of the real place and necessity for _Secession_. Of course I’m sorry now that I fooled around sending “F and H” anywhere else at all. _Dial_ had a chance at that, too, you know.

You may be indisposed to Waldo Frank, but I must recommend to you _City Block_ as the richest in content of any “fiction” that has appeared in the American 20th century. Frank has the real mystic’s vision. His apprehensions astonish one. I have also enjoyed reading Ouspensky’s _Tertium Organum_ lately. Its corroboration of several experiences in consciousness that I have had gave it particular interest.

135: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _Feb. 18th, ’23_

Dear Gorham: -- -- -- -- Your summary of praises for “F and H” was such a fine tribute that it might account for my backache and confinement to the bed yesterday. But the more probable cause for _that_, however, is liquor and the cogitations and cerebral excitements it threw me into regarding my new enterprise, _The Bridge_, on the evening precedent. I am too much interested in this _Bridge_ thing lately to write letters, ads, or anything. It is just beginning to take the least outline,--and the more outline the conception of the thing takes,--the more its final difficulties appal me. All this preliminary thought has to result, of course, in some channel forms or mould into which I throw myself at white heat. Very roughly, it concerns a mystical synthesis of “America.” History and fact, location, etc., all have to be transfigured into abstract form that would almost function independently of its subject matter. The initial impulses of “our people” will have to be gathered up toward the climax of the bridge, symbol of our constructive future, our unique identity, in which is included also our scientific hopes and achievements of the future. The mystic portent of all this is already flocking through my mind (when I say this I should say “the mystic possibilities,” but that is all that’s worth announcing, anyway) but the actual statement of the thing, the marshalling of the forces, will take me months, at best; and I may have to give it up entirely before that; it may be too impossible an ambition. But if I do succeed, such a waving of banners, such ascent of towers, such dancing, etc., will never before have been put down on paper! The form will be symphonic, something like “F and H” with its treatment of varied content, and it will probably approximate the same length in lines. It is perhaps rather silly to go on this way before more than a dozen lines have been written, but at any rate it serves to excuse my possible deficiencies in correspondence in the near future, should the obsession carry me much further. I hate to have to go to work every day! When I get _The Bridge_ done, or something of equal length, I think it will be time to try Liveright or Huebsch or Knopf for a collected publication. Just now I have hardly enough of even quality and tone to satisfy me. Of course I’m glad to know that Wheeler and Wescott are interested in me, especially as I am led to respect their standards, but I might as well relinquish my mss. to the desk drawer as to offer its publication to Wheeler, at least so far as I know. Did he publish Turbyfill in Chicago? or was it Berlin? You will naturally see my reasons for at least attempting the more standard publishers first, I’m sure. And until I have the extra and necessary amount to add, there is no use committing myself to any arrangements at all. In passing I do want to thank you, Gorham, for your constant interest in interpreting me to others whose added interest all makes me confident that I have more to offer than I once supposed. And I am even more grateful for your very rich suggestions best stated in your _Frank Study_ on the treatment of mechanical manifestations of today as subject for lyrical, dramatic, and even epic poetry. You must already notice that influence in “F and H.” It is to figure even larger in _The Bridge_. The field of possibilities literally glitters all around one with the perception and vocabulary to pick out significant details and digest them into something emotional.

Your visit to Amy Lowell was a characteristic literary experience in American letters of the day, a baptism, as it were, from the Episcopal font, endowing you with the proper blessing and chastisement necessary for the younger generation. All hail to Amy’s poetry propaganda! but I should not enjoy talking to her.

I think you discovered the weak points in my review pretty well. However, I think Wheelwright’s recent letter about _Secession_ in _The Freeman_ displayed very little evidence as prose workmanship, even of the most fundamental nature. He certainly sustained himself much better as “Dorian Abbott.” In the letter his partis pris emotionalism was too evident to convince his readers properly. In this sense, a course in advertising would be good for him, which reminds me that I’ll soon send you one of my campaigns that not only “went over big” but is theoretically a good piece of work. Are you still studying this modern science?

It must be rather hellish reading through so many books every week that your eyes pop out. Truly, you must look for some editorial post, copywriting job, or something that will relieve you of such strains. I think you will probably find things much smoother in your new apartment which I’m delighted to think of. Is it in the Village? I can’t quite place it. When I come down in June, I’ll probably plan on staying with you and Elizabeth [Mrs. Munson].

Just now, it’s Vulcan back to the Furnace! The “bowels” poem comes out in the next _S4N_, which bunch Tate writes that he has just joined through my communications. He has submitted “Pins and Needles,” which I imagine Fitts will use. I’m waiting now for _The Dial_ to send back my “Stark Major.” Just sent a caricature of Paul Rosenfeld to _The Little Review_, telling them to publish it, if they cared to, “along with the rest of my inadvertent correspondence.” It is called “Anointment of our Well Dressed Critic,” or “Why Waste the Eggs?”--Three-dimensional Vista, by Hart Crane. Allons!

136: TO ----

[_Cleveland_] [_Feb. 20_]

Dear ----: Those who have wept in the darkness sometimes are rewarded with stray leaves blown inadvertently. Since your last I have [had] one of those few experiences that come,--ever, but which are almost sufficient in their very incompleteness. This was only last evening in a vaudeville show with -- -- -- --. -- -- -- -- has manifested charming traits before, but there has always been an older brother around. Last night--it sounds silly enough to tell (but not in view of his real beauty)--O, it was only a matter of light affectionate stray touches--and half-hinted speech. But these were genuine and in that sense among the few things I can remember happily. With -- -- -- -- you must think of someone mildly sober, with a face not too thin, but with faun precision of line and feature. Crisp ears, a little pointed, fine and docile hair almost golden, yet darker,--eyes that are a little heavy--but wide apart and usually a little narrowed,--aristocratic (English) jaws, and a mouth that [is] just mobile enough to suggest voluptuousness. A strong rather slender figure, negligently carried, that is perfect from flanks that hold an easy persistence to shoulders that are soft yet full and hard. A smooth and rather olive skin that is cool--at first.

Excuse this long catalog--I admit it is mainly for my own satisfaction, and I am drunk now and in such state my satisfactions are always lengthy. When I see you ask me to tell you more about him for he is worth more and better words, I assure you. O yes, I shall see him again soon. The climax will be all too easily reached,--But my gratitude is enduring--if only for that _once_, at least, something beautiful approached me and as though it were the most natural thing in the world, enclosed me in his arm and pulled me to him without my slightest bid. And we who create must endure--must hold to spirit not by the mind, the intellect alone. These have no mystic possibilities. O flesh damned to hate and scorn! I have felt my cheek pressed on the desert these days and months too much. How old I am! Yet, oddly now this sense [of] age--not at all in my senses--is gaining me altogether unique love and happiness. I feel I have been thru much of this again and again before. I long to go to India and stay always. Meditation on the sun is all there is. Not that this isn’t enough! I mean I find my imagination more sufficient all the time. The work of the workaday world is what I dislike. I spend my evenings in music and sometimes ecstasy. I’ve been writing a lot lately. --/--/ I’m bringing much into contemporary verse that is new. I’m on a synthesis of America and its structural identity now, called _The Bridge_. --/--/

137: TO WALDO FRANK

_Cleveland, O._ _Feb. 27th, ’23_

Dear Waldo Frank: Such major criticism as both you and Gorham have given my “Faustus and Helen” is the most sensitizing influence I have ever encountered. It is a new feeling, and a glorious one, to have one’s inmost delicate intentions so fully recognized as your last letter to me attested. I can feel a calmness on the sidewalk--where before I felt a defiance only. And better than all--I am certain that a number of us at last have some kind of community of interest. And with this communion will come something better than a mere clique. It is a consciousness of something more vital than stylistic questions and “taste,” it is vision, and a vision alone that not only America needs, but the whole world. We are not sure where this will lead, but after the complete renunciation symbolized in _The Wasteland_ and, though less, in _Ulysses_ we have sensed some new vitality. Whether I am in that current remains to be seen,--but I am enough in it at least to be sure that you are definitely in it already. What delights me almost beyond words is that my natural idiom (which I have unavoidably stuck to in spite of nearly everybody’s nodding, querulous head) has reached and carried to you so completely the very blood and bone of me. There is only one way of saying what comes to one in ecstasy. One works and works over it to finish and organize it perfectly--but fundamentally that doesn’t affect one’s _way_ of saying it. The enclosed poem will evidence enough meaning of that, I fear, in certain flaws and weaknesses that, so far, I’ve not had the grace to change. The norm of accuracy in such things is, however, at best so far from second-reader penetration, that bad as it is, I can’t resist sending it to you now.

Please do not feel it necessary to answer me until you are perfectly free from other preoccupations. I know what such things cost, and knew before your last letter exactly why you delayed. (Now that I see this written, it sounds all-too presumptuous; however, my appreciation was “prematurely ripe,” for that idea did occur.)

Munson’s _Study_ came to me today. I think Liveright did a very good job, better than I expected. The photograph seconded an impression I remembered of you several years ago in New York. I may be repeating myself when I mention that you came into Brown’s Chop House one evening and greeted some friends near a table where Harrison Smith and myself were dining;--only, of course this Stieglitz portrait gives me a much deeper impression. --/--/

138: TO GORHAM MUNSON

[_Cleveland_] _March 2nd, ’23_

Dear Gorham: --/--/ The last several days have been equally among the most intense in my life. The annoyance comes in only on the swing of a repressive _fate_. To be stimulated to the nth degree with your head burgeoning with ideas and conceptions of the most baffling interest and lure--and then to have to munch ideas on water heaters (I am writing another book for house fraus!) has been a real cruelty this time, however temporary. The more I think about my _Bridge_ poem the more thrilling its symbolical possibilities become, and since my reading of you and Frank (I recently bought _City Block_) I begin to feel myself directly connected with Whitman. I feel myself in currents that are positively awesome in their extent and possibilities. “Faustus and Helen” was only a beginning--but in it I struck new _timbres_ that suggest dozens more, all unique, yet poignant and expressive of our epoch. Modern music almost drives me crazy! I went to hear D’Indy’s _II Symphony_ last night and my hair stood on end at its revelations. To get those, and others of men like Strauss, Ravel, Scriabin, and Bloch into _words_, one needs to _ransack_ the vocabularies of Shakespeare, Jonson, Webster (for theirs were the richest) and add on scientific, street and counter, and psychological terms, etc. Yet I claim such things can be done! The modern artist needs gigantic assimilative capacities, emotion,--and the greatest of _all_--_vision_. “Striated with nuances, nervosities, that we are heir to”--is more than a casual observation for me. And then--structure! What pleased me greatly about Frank’s comment was the notice of great structural evidence in “F. and H.” Potentially I feel myself quite fit to become a suitable Pindar for the dawn of the machine age, so called. I have lost the last shreds of philosophical pessimism during the last few months. O yes, the “background of life”--and all that is still there, but that is only three-dimensional. It is to the pulse of a greater dynamism that my work must revolve. Something terribly fierce and yet gentle.

You have no doubt wondered why I have behaved so strangely about the review for your _Study_. It is coming sometime. At present I have developed a chronic hesitation against it which must seem almost pathological. I am so enthused about it that I can’t seem to adopt a level-headed, conventionally-critical attitude about it. Also, the space for such considerations as I would [get?] into is too restricted in the Double-Skull to permit much more than either a screed, ineffective or broken, or mere jacket type of advertisement. I hope you won’t misinterpret my delay at any rate. As I said in my last note, the typography, paper, cover, photograph--everything in fact, is of the best taste and distinction. This book is bound to do you as much good as Frank. The latter is shown by Stieglitz’s picture to be an extremely mystic type. Don’t think me silly when I call the head and the eyes extremely beautiful. Frank has done me a world of good by his last letter (which promised another soon including further points on “F. & H.”) and, as I wrote him, now I feel I can walk calmly along the sidewalk whereas before I felt only defiance. He gripped the mystical content of the poem so thoroughly that I despair of ever finding a more satisfying enthusiast.

And now to your question about passing the good word along. I discover that I have been all-too-easy all along in letting out announcements of my sexual predilections. Not that anything unpleasant has happened or is imminent. But it does put me into obligatory relations to a certain extent with “those who know,” and this irks me to think of sometimes. After all, when you’re dead it doesn’t matter, and this statement alone proves my immunity from any “shame” about it. But I find the ordinary business of earning a living entirely too stringent to want to add any prejudices against me _of that nature_ in the minds of any publicans and sinners. Such things have such a wholesale way of leaking out! Everyone knows now about B----, H---- and others--the list too long to bother with. I am all-too-free with my tongue and doubtless always shall be--but I’m going to ask you to advise and work me better with a more discreet behavior. --/--/

139: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK

[_New York City_] _Sunday_ [_March_]

Dear Lotte and Richard: --/--/ I am quite happy. A long walk this afternoon in salt air and clear sunlight. Everyone carrying canes and wearing bright clothes. Lunch tomorrow with Waldo Frank. Munson is enthusiastic about my staying with them. They have a fresh and charming apartment with room enough for me, so everything is FINE.

I sat a long while thinking about how beautiful you both were when I left you last night. Yes,--of course, Life is very beautiful when there are such people to meet and love as I love you both. Be very happy. Along with me. I never felt better before.

140: TO WALDO FRANK

[_New York City_] _Easter_

Dear Waldo: --/--/ I don’t need to mention that it was great to shake hands and talk with you. This I must mention, however,--that we have not yet had a real meeting. My mind has been packed with things that must be talked over with you when conditions are opportune. I am not intending mysterious words. But I am looking forward to the time--perhaps the times--that we shall get together and (in the wonderful slang phrase) “spark.” Since reading _City Block_ I have not wavered in an enthusiastic conviction that yours is the most vital consciousness in America, and that potentially I have responses which might prove interesting, even valuable to us both. My statements are awkward, and I really do not know how to proceed about such conversations: they “usually,” as you know, “just happen.” All this leads to a very simple suggestion, however,--and that is that I hope you will let me know when you are next in town when we can lunch or dine together. -- -- -- --

141: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK

_New York City_ _April 13th, ’23_

Dear Lotte: I am glad that you can use the smock. Richard’s illustration of you using it is very effective, and the “covers the earth” drawing is exemplary and inspirational indeed. --/--/

I am glad that you like _Our America_. Frank says some very wonderful things in that book. It is coming out again next year and with new additions. This time, as I understand him, he intends to mention my work in it. Meeting some of the older poets and writers down here is an odd experience. Most of them are very disagreeable, and don’t talk the same language as we do, they are not concerned with the same problems. I read “Faustus and Helen” to a group of people last evening, and very few of them, of course understood anything that I was talking about. If it weren’t for the praise and understanding I have received from people like Frank and Munson and Allen Tate, etc., I would begin to feel that I might be to blame. But this “new consciousness” is something that takes a long while to “put across.” I want Richard to meet my friends, the Habichts, who have their apartment filled with lovely things to touch and look at, and who serve wonderful sherry and Benedictine. I have too many invitations to really enjoy. Your friends quickly turn into enemies here, unless you limit the time you give for social affairs. --/--/

142: TO ALFRED STIEGLITZ

[_New York City_] _April 15th, ’23_

Dear great and good man, Alfred Stieglitz: I don’t know whether or not I mentioned to you yesterday that I intend to include my short verbal definition of your work and aims in a fairly comprehensive essay on your work. I had not thought of doing this until you so thoroughly confirmed my conjectures as being the only absolutely correct statement that you had thus far heard concerning your photographs. That moment was a tremendous one in my life because I was able to share all the truth toward which I am working in my own medium, poetry, with another man who had manifestly taken many steps in that same direction in _his_ work. Since we seem, then, already so well acquainted I have a request to make of you regarding the kernel of my essay, which I am quoting below as you requested. Until I can get the rest of my essay on your work into form, I would prefer that you keep my statement in strict confidence. I would like to give it a fresh presentation with other amplifications and details concerning what I consider your position as a scientist, philosopher or whatever wonder you are. You know the world better than I do, but we probably would agree on certain reticences and their safe-guarding from inaccurate hands. I shall be up to see you probably very soon, and we can talk again. The reason for my not accompanying Mr. Munson this afternoon, however, is that I want to get into certain explanations of your photographs about which, now, I feel a certain proud responsibility.

* * * * *

“The camera has been well proved the instrument of personal perception in a number of living hands, but in the hands of Alfred Stieglitz it becomes the instrument of something more specially vital--apprehension. The eerie speed of the shutter is more adequate than the human eye to remember, catching even the transition of the mist-mote into the cloud, the thought that is jetted from the eye to leave it instantly forever. Speed is at the bottom of it all--the hundredth of a second caught so precisely that the motion is continued from the picture infinitely: the moment made eternal.

“This baffling capture is an end in itself. It even seems to get at the motion and emotion of so-called inanimate life. It is the passivity of the camera coupled with the unbounded respect of this photographer for its mechanical perfectibility which permits nature and all life to mirror itself so intimately and so unexpectedly that we are thrown into ultimate harmonies by looking at these stationary, yet strangely moving pictures.

“If the essences of things were in their mass and bulk we should not need the clairvoyance of Stieglitz’s photography to arrest them for examination and appreciation. But they are suspended on the invisible dimension whose vibrance has been denied the human eye at all times save in the intuition of ecstasy. Alfred Stieglitz can say to us today what William Blake said to as baffled a world more than a hundred years ago in his ‘To the Christians’:

‘I give you the end of a golden string:
Only wind it into a ball,--
It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate,
Built in Jerusalem’s wall.’”

143: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK

[_New York City_] [_ca. May 7_]

My dear Lotte: --/--/ R[ichard Rychtarik] wanted me to ask Frank about the privilege of translating some of the stories in _City Block_. I got an answer from Frank this morning, suggesting that Richard translate the book if I thought him able. Well,--translating is difficult, and especially Waldo Frank is hard to translate, I am sure. I think it would be fine if Richard went ahead with the stories. But before any are published I think it would be wise to try them out on some other people who do Czech trans. from _Czech into English_ and see how true the original style has been preserved. You are going to be angry with me for all this fuss, I am sure, but you see I have no way of judging how well Richard understands English as a literary language. I don’t want to misrepresent Richard to Frank either. Please let me know what you think of my plan. I shall send you back the copy of _City Block_ that R. brought. It is your copy _to keep_; Frank is going to send me another for myself.

I am going over to the office of _The Dial_ now to leave Richard’s drawings, etc., for their consideration. We can’t expect to hear anything about them for two or three weeks. I’ll let you know as soon as I do. --/--/

144: TO WILLIAM SOMMER

_N. Y. C._ _May 9th, ’23_

Dear Bill: At LAST a letter from you!!! And let me mention that it was one of the most beautiful I ever got from anyone. AND I am expecting more. I read it the second and third times during my meal last night down in one of the Italian restaurants on the lower East Side. There you get a bottle of wine (fine, too!) and a good meal (that delights the eyes as well as the stomach) for about $1. And such service! The waiters all beam and are really interested in pleasing you. As Rychtarik said when he was here last week, it’s just like Europe. I don’t know where I should have been by this time, however, had it not been for three or four fine people,--Gorham and his wife, and Slater Brown (the friend of Cummings, “B” in _The Enormous Room_) who, in spite of knowing me only a couple of weeks, has put me up nights in his room during the recent spell of grippe in the Munson household, and who has kept me in funds, poured wine into me, and taken me to the greatest burlesque shows down on the lower east side that you ever imagined. We went to one last night, and I so wished you were along. (They do everything but the Act itself right on the stage, marvelous jazz songs, jokes, etc., and really the best entertainment there is in N. Y. at present.) I have bids in for jobs at two very good agencies. The thing is a farce, however, the way you are kept waiting to know the outcome of one interview after another with various executives. J. Walter Thompson have had me on the string for three weeks, and a letter this morning tells me that within the next few days I must drag myself up there again for another interview with one more Thompson executive. It is the same way at Batten’s. I shall have to cast about for anything available from stevedoring to table-waiting pretty soon if they don’t get a move on.

Of course I have been rushing around to a lot of other agencies, too, but the ones I just mentioned are the only ones who have anything to offer me at the present time. I am very glad that you reminded me about the cost of the photographs as I certainly can use as much of that money as you can afford to send me at the present time. Hill charged me $20.00 for the six reproductions. I can’t cash any check here, so if you can send me whatever portion of this amount in currency through the mail (I enclose an addressed envelope) I’ll be immensely grateful. There is, you realize, no use whatever in my thinking about returning to Cleveland. I should simply have to go through the same process there of looking around for work, and under embarrassing conditions. You need me HERE, now, more than _there_, too, Bill, as I want to do everything I can to get your pictures shown around and maybe bought. And also, in almost every way, N.Y. is getting to be a really stupendous place. It is the center of the world today, as Alexandria became the nucleus of another older civilization. The wealthier and upper parts of the city have their own beauty, but I prefer as a steady thing the wonderful streets of this lower section, crowded with life, packed with movement and drama, children, kind and drab-looking women, elbows braced on window ledges, and rows of vegetables lining the streets that you would love to paint. Life is possible here at greater intensity than probably any other place in the world today, and I hope and pray that you will be able to slip down here for a week or so during the summer. You must plan on it. Later on I shall probably take a small apartment with Brown, and then there will be plenty of room for you to stay with us at no expense at all. --/--/

145: TO CHARLOTTE AND RICHARD RYCHTARIK

[_New York City_] _June 5th, ’23_

Dear Charlotte and Richard: If you have seen or heard from my mother lately you know already that I am all fixed up in my own room and as happy as a bug in a rug! I wish you could see it for it is very pleasant. Two windows opposite each other so there is almost always a breeze, square high ceiling, newly-painted light-grey walls, black floor and white ceiling, and all black furniture very plain but plentiful. I have a fine large table to write on. When my luck turned it seemed to turn equally favorably in every direction. I am not having to live in any rooming house with an inquisitive landlady always looking through the keyhole. A friend of my friend, Slater Brown, who has just left for a long trip in Europe, has let me take his room with all his own furniture and all for a very low price in comparison with the high rents everywhere around here. It’s also right in the neighborhood where most of my friends are living. Add to this good fortune a fine new Victrola, and you see I am all ready to begin on _The Bridge_ again. It would not have been possible to have done this if you had not been so generous and helped me out so much,--but I can’t tell you how fine I feel to get my feet on the ground again and put my nose up into the sky again for a few minutes with the _Meistersinger_ Overture.

New York has been like a blazing furnace for the last two days, but I shall be glad to stay here all summer working at my job and writing. I feel that I am getting now just where I have longed to be for so long. I can have absolute quiet and seclusion when I want it, wine when I need it, and the intense and interesting spectacle of the streets and all the various people. --/--/

146: TO HIS MOTHER

[_New York City_] _June 10th ’23_

Dear Grace: --/--/ Really, I’m having the finest time in my life. There’s no use trying to describe the people I go round with. Not that there are so many--there could easily be, but I’m always cutting down on all but the few I like the most. Last night marketing with Sue [Jenkins] and Bill Brown down in the Italian section (where everyone looks so happy!) was a perfect circus. We carried pots and pans, spinach, asparagus, etc., etc., from place to place--only buying one kind of thing in each store--jostling with the crowds, etc. I’ve never been with young people I enjoyed so much, and they, of course, have had real lives. Then there is Kenneth Burke up at the _Dial_ office, Matty Josephson (who has suddenly been moved to value me highly), Edward Nagle, Gaston Lachaise, Malcolm Cowley--but what’s the use going on with so many mere names. You can see how much fun I am having--and all the more because I have a job and a totally different world to live in half the time. Did I write you that I am getting quite a reputation with my “Faustus & Helen” poem? Although it is only now being printed in Florence, those critics and writers who have seen it are acclaiming me with real gusto. Waldo Frank asked me to luncheon with him recently and said I was the greatest contemporary American poet with that piece alone. And John Cowper Powys, whose _Suspended Judgments_ and _Visions and Revisions_ you have read, is very enthusiastic. Since I got presented with my Victrola I am ready to start again on _The Bridge_. Waldo Frank is very anxious for me to have that finished, as he intends to take me up to his publisher (Boni & Liveright), and have me published in volume form. But, of course, such things _can’t_ be rushed as he understands.

I have not seen or heard from Miss Spencer since I made her my initial bow. She spoke of finding me something but evidently didn’t sprain herself in the attempt. That’s all right, however. There was little reason why she should have. I didn’t _ask_ her, anyway. I shan’t see her again, as she is your friend and we have nothing special in common anyway. Waldo Frank, Alyse Gregory & others used some influence in getting me my job with _J. Walter Thompson_ (get the name right this time!), but I never would have got it if my samples and conversation had not convinced them. I begin to see N. Y. very much more intimately since I’ve been working. It makes living here far more pleasant than ever before. Such color and style (on men, too) I’ve never seen before--no two alike. That’s what is so interesting--the perfect freedom of wearing what you want to, walking the gait you like (I have a much less hurried gait than you’re familiar with) and nobody bothering you.

I don’t know many at the office yet. It’s too immense and I’m confined to a highly specializing dept., but I’ve already been invited out to tea by the personnel secretary. They employ a lot of real writers as copywriters at Thompson’s, and have an entirely different feeling about art & business than you encounter any place west of N.Y. In fact it’s a feather in your cap if you know a little more than you’re “supposed to” here. I think I’ve gained immeasurably by coming here now instead of dragging along in Cleveland month after month. --/--/

147: TO RICHARD RYCHTARIK

[_New York City_] _June 21st, ’23_

Dear Richard: --/--/ Dr. Watson, President of _The Dial_ (Magazine), has seen your drawings, etc., and wants me to ask you if you would care to sell him “one” of them, and the rights for reproduction for _two_ others in _The Dial_. He is offering the same price and terms to you that he made to Sommer,--$25.00 for the original, and the reproduction rights without any payment. So will you kindly let me know what you think about the matter very soon?

I don’t know what selections he has made yet, and will probably have no time to see him for weeks, as I have office hours and he is seldom at _The Dial_ offices,--but regardless of these details, I think that it would be wisdom for you to accept the terms, however modest, in view of the amount of prestige it will possibly give you, in the first place to be “hanging in his house,” and in the second place to have your work shown to about 18,000 people through the pages of the magazine. Of course, I am _very_ happy that he has liked your work so well. This makes _Two_ artists’ work that I have had a hand in getting exhibited,--both from my “home town.” --/--/

148: TO ALFRED STIEGLITZ

[_New York City_] _Fourth of July_

Dear STIEGLITZ: Your letter was the most welcome thing that has come to me in these last two weeks since you left, however late and partial my response may seem to be. You should have heard from me much before this if I hadn’t been neck high in writing some climacterics for my _Bridge_ poem. That simply carried me out of myself and all personal interests from the dot of five until two in the morning sometimes--for several days during which I was extremely happy. Those were also the very days when I wanted most to write you,--paradoxically as it sounds, I _was_, of course, for you and I meet on the same platform in our best and most impersonal moods,--SO, I’ve been with you very much. The thing which hurts me now that I have the time to write letters, is that I not only have left the creative currents that would have prompted me to better statements than I am usually equal to,--but also that I’m in a low state of reactions towards everything, following an evening with Mr. J----. Malice seems to settle inertly but very positively in some people, and as he is somehow attached to several really fine friends of mine whose company I would hate to forego on such account, I suppose I must learn to face this little clown with better results. So far, I can only say that wine is no ally against such odds. It even turns to vinegar! and that is much less pleasing than pure water. I don’t need to say any more to you about this man, his vacant mind, vague eyes and empty hands. We’ve given that enough attention. I rant here merely because I have been cheated (willy-nilly) of pouring out a clearer cup today, as I had planned. I, in the end, am really the one to blame.

When I say that I welcomed your letter it doesn’t mean that I was unconcerned enough with its testament of pain and accident not to think about you and your situation many hours. What the details of those matters were certainly would not help me to realize any the better that you have been going through a very tumultuous period and that it has been very fortunate that you should arrive in the country when you did, not that you escaped them,--but that you were able to _see_ them more tranquilly. The city is a place of “brokenness,” of drama; but when a certain development in this intensity is reached a new stage is created, or must be, arbitrarily, or there is a foreshortening, a loss and a premature disintegration of experience. You are setting the keynote now for a higher tranquillity than ever. It is an even wider intensity, also. You see, I am writing to you perhaps very egoistically, but you will understand that I am always seeing your life and experience very solidly as a part of my own because I feel our identities so much alike in spiritual direction. When it comes to action we diverge in several ways,--but I’m sure we center in common devotions, in a kind of timeless vision.

In the above sense I feel you as entering very strongly into certain developments in _The Bridge_. May I say it, and not seem absurd, that you are the first, or rather the purest living indice of a new order of consciousness that I have met? We are accomplices in many ways that we don’t yet fully understand. “What is now proved was once only imagined,” said Blake. I have to combat every day those really sincere people, but limited, who deny the superior logic of metaphor in favor of their perfect sums, divisions and subtractions. They cannot go a foot unless to merely catch up with some predetermined and set boundaries, nor can they realize that they do nothing but walk ably over an old track bedecked with all kinds of signposts and “championship records.” Nobody minds their efforts, which frequently amount to a great deal,--but I object to their system of judgment being so regally applied to what I’m interested in doing. Such a cramping cannot be reconciled with the work which you have done, and which I feel myself a little beginning to do. The great energies about us cannot be transformed that way into a higher quality of life, and by perfecting our sensibilities, response and actions, we are always contributing more than we can realize (rationalize) at the time. We answer them a little vaguely, first, because our ends are forever unaccomplished, and because, secondly, our work is self-explanatory enough, if they could “see” it. I nearly go mad with the intense but always misty realization of what _can_ be done if potentialities are fully freed, released. I know you to feel the same way about your camera,--despite all that you actually _have_ done with it already. In that sense I hope to make it the one memorable thing to you in this letter that I think you should go on with your photographic synthesis of life this summer and fall, gathering together those dangerous interests outside of yourself into that purer projection of yourself. It is really not a projection in any but a loose sense, for I feel more and more that in the absolute sense the artist _identifies_ himself with life. Because he has always had so much surrounding indifference and resistance such “action” takes on a more relative and limited term which has been abused and misunderstood by several generations,--this same “projecting.” But in the true mystical sense as well as in the sense which Aristotle meant by the “imitation of nature,” I feel that I’m right.

I shall go on thinking of you, the apples and the gable, and writing you whenever I can get a moment. So much has to be crammed into my narrow evenings and holidays, that I am becoming a poor correspondent with everyone, I fear. You will realize how much I am with you, I feel sure, by other signs. I am sending you a roughly typed sheet containing some lines from _The Bridge_.[29] They symbolize its main intentions. However, as they are fragmentary and not in entirely finished form, please don’t show them around. I only want you to get a better idea of what I’m saying than could be “said” in prose. Some of the lines will be clear enough to give a glimpse of some of my ideas whether or not the Whole can be grasped from such fragments or not. -- -- -- --

149: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK

[_New York City_] _July 21st ’23_