Chapter VI: Part ONE: Ohio (5)

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.