No More Learning

In Petrushka, the Blackamoor infers that the coconut contains a powerful god and salutes it, and the Old Wizard defuses the dismay of onlookers by showing that Petrushka is merely a puppet.
7 MayandFrankBecketthadmovedtemporarilytoahouseinKilliney.
8 RavenhillreactedpositivelytoMcGreevy'srecentpublications:Poems(1934),and his translation, Lament for the Death of an Upper Class.
While McGreevy was away from London, SB renewed the loan of a library book by Gaston Boissier (ne Marie-Louis-Antoine-Gaston Boissier, 1823-1908), French classical scholar.
280
8 October 1935, McGreevy
9 AntoinedeMontchretien(c. 1575-1621),Frenchdramatistandeconomist.
Guy de Pourtales (1881-1941), Chopin; ou, le Poete (Paris: Gallimard, 1926), which was translated as Frederick Chopin: A Man of Solitude, tr. Charles Bayly Jr. (London: T.
Butterworth, 1927).
10 SB had purchased Rabelais's Gargantua et Pantagruel (1532-1533) in the Genie de la France edition (Paris: R. Hilsum, 1932; Paris: Gallimard, 1932) in four volumes (SB to McGreevy, 25 Uuly 1935], TCD, MS 10402/77). Rabelais relates a quest around the world to reach the "oracle of the Holy Bottle" (Books III-V). Although notes taken from this edition are included in TCD, MS 10969, there are none from books IV or V (Everett Frost and Jane Maxwell, "TCD, MS 10969: Germany, Europe, and the French Revolution. Rabelais," Notes Diverse Holo, Special issue SBT/A 16 [2006] 96-97, 102-103).
11 TheendingofMurphy:see8September1935.
12 With her children Nancy, Deirdre, and Morris, Cissie Sinclair had moved to 85 Moyne Road, Rathgar, Co. Dublin; the house belonged to the Beckett family estate. Boss Sinclair was being treated at the National Hospital for Consumption in Ireland, known as Newcastle Sanatorium, in Newtownmountkennedy, near Greystones, Co. Wicklow.
13 Robert Martin Hilliard (1904-1937) studied at Trinity College Dublin, repre­ sented Ireland as a featherweight boxer in the 1928 Olympic Games, was ordained and took a parish in the Church of Ireland in Belfast (1933-1934); he moved to London where he worked as a journalist (1935) (Chalmers [Terry] Trench, 27 August 1993, and 13 September 1993; Rev. Barr to Terry Trench, 28September 1993; John Corcoran, "The Rev. Robert Martin Hilliard (1904-1937)," Keny Archaeological and Historical Society Journal, 2nd series, 5 [2005] 207-219).
Patrick Trench (1896-1939), the elder son of the TCDEnglish Professor Wilbraham Fitzjohn Trench, lived at 351 King's Road in September 1935.
16 BridgetMcGreevy(knownasDelia,1896-1977)hadnotfoundateachingposi­ tion, and thus remained in Tarbert at the McGreevy family home.
THOMAS McGREEVY TARBERT, CO. KERRY
Oct. 8th '35 34 Gertrude St [London] S. W. 10
Dear Tom
I did not find your letter in Observer but expect it will be
in next Sunday. What a paper - tout de meme! The pompous
281
8 October 1935, McGreevy
trimming of that pisspot Garvin. Next week you will have it starched & unfurled. 1
It is good news that your sister has found even temporary work, I supposed [for suppose] it has saved the situation vis-a-vis your mother.
I think I saw Hester last Saturday night week. I went round & found her with the niece & husband. 2 I have not been round since. I dined one evening with Bion, a hurried but good sole at the
Etoile in Charlotte St. , & went on to hear Jung at the Institute of
Psychological Medicine. He struck me as a kind of super AE, the
mind infinitely more ample, provocative & penetrating, but the
3
He let fall some remarkable things nevertheless. He protests so
vehemently that he is not a mystic that he must be one of the
very most nebulous kind. Certainly he cannot keep the termi­
nology out of his speech, but I suppose that is a difficulty for
everyone. His lecture the night I went consisted mainly in the
so called synthetic (versus Freudian analytic) interpretation of
three dreams of a patient who finally went to the dogs because
he insisted on taking a certain element in the dreams as the
Oedipus position when Jung told him it was nothing of the kind!
However he lost his neurosis among the dogs - again according
4
same cuttle-fish's discharge & escapes from the issue in the end.
to Jung. The mind is I suppose the best Swiss, Lavater & Rousseau, mixture of enthusiasm & Euclid, a methodical rhap­ sode. 5 Jolas's pigeon all right, but I should think in the end less than the dirt under Freud's nails. 6 I can't imagine his curing a fly of neurosis, & yet he is said to have actually cured cases of schizophrenia. If this is true he is the first to do it. He insists on patients having their horoscopes cast! 7
Bion off the job is pleasant, but against a background
8
of tooth & yank camps that makes me tremble. I hope he
282
pis. I must use me to them.
As to going away even to Spain, I fear that is unlikely for
8 October 1935, McGreevy
hasn't done us both a disservice by inviting me to meet him in that way.
I don't think I shall go on with the analysis after Xmas.
I don't expect the troubles I hoped first & foremost to get rid of
via analysis will be gone then any more than they are now. Tant
9
some time. Mother will be feeling there is a lot of me due to
her, & perhaps after all I may find myself immune to Dublin
now, & able to work there. She writes from Killiney more happily
I think than since it happened, & with a new sense of how she
must accept what is left behind. She went to see Count of
10
of sending be done. The Undertaker's Man is well changed, the rest more or less as you know them. It will be a relief to have them out & abused. 11
I have been working hard at the book & it goes very slowly,
but I do not think there is any doubt now that it will be finished
sooner or later. The feeling that I must jettison the whole thing
12
I never see Geoffrey. He is leaving Bethlem at the end of this month, & so far as I know his plan to get married on Nov. 2nd still
13
There are
283
Montecristo film with Frank! Miracle.
I expect the proofs of the poems this week. All this business
has passed, only the labour of writing the remainder is left. There is little excitement attached to it, each chapter loses its colour & interest as soon as the next is begun. I have done about 20 000 words. Perhaps I will send you a chapter & chance its getting through, but I think I would rather wait till you can have it all together.
holds good, with me holding the hat. What a bloody nuisance.
I went one day to the Gallery & saw a lot in the Segers that
14
I had not seen before & in the Fabritius musician.
8 October 1935, McGreevy
various shows one might go to, but I have not been to any. Hillis
wants me to go to Boris on Thursday, but even purified ofRimsky
that strikes me as too large & too hot a potato altogether. I think
there is a quartet at Wigmore Hall that evening playing Brahms,
Wolf & Sibelius, & we might go to that. Hillis - c;a va. There is
Otway's Soldier's Fortune, T. S. E. 's Sweeney & the Ballets Jooss
15
Ervine broke all his records in the Ob. I sent you. "Yes, my
dear"! But Maccarthy on Mr 'Awkins wasn't far behind. Thank
16
little late in the day.
Did I tell you I had a letter from Jack Yeats with news of the
picture which he has traced? He had been to Tobias & Angel at Abbey. What is that? 18
Mrs Frost has had a row with the pair of Lieblings above,
over their wireless which never stops, & they are going. Next
Saturday. God be praised. Now perhaps I shall be able to keep
some stamps. She wonders would Geoffrey & wife take it over!
and a new Garbo Karenina. Perhaps the last might be managed.
God one can write without an eye on these pukes.
I trust Devlin was kind to us. I fear he has hooked on to Dev a
17
19
Your Boissier falls due again this week & I shall not forget
20
Cissie owes me a letter this long time. I do not think Boss is
strong enough to write. He will not leave Newcastle. No news
22
Then the bed would creak to a purpose.
to renew it.
Standard & Baedeker's Paris before starting to lie awake. Sleeping very badly, I suppose because of the book. How hard it is to reach a tolerable arrangement between working & living.
I have been reading nothing at all. The Evening
21
from Simon & Schuster. I wonder did Chatto's let me down. Haven't the interest to inquire.
God love thee Sam
284
ALS; 2 leaves, 4 sides; env to Thomas McGreevy Esq. Tarbert, Co Keny, Irish Free State; pm 9-10-35, London; TCD, MS 10402/83.
1 McGreevy'sletter,"ItalianArtProblem,"discussedthenudefiguresintheback­ ground of Michelangelo's Holy Family with the Infant St. John the Baptist (c. 1506/1508, painted for the Doni family, Uffizi Gallery, Florence) as representing the Law of Nature while the foregrounded Holy Family represented the Law of Grace (The Observer 13 October 1935: 15).
"Tout de meme" (all the same).
James Louis Garvin (1868-1947) was Editor of The Observer from 1908 to 1942 and of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica (13th and 14th edns. ). His editorial, "Keep Out This Time," claimed that the attack of the Italian army on Adowa, Abyssinia, confirmed his view that Mussolini and Hitler posed a genuine threat, that Britain's policy of sanctions was fallacious and inept, and that the Letter of Covenant of the League of Nations was invalid after the withdrawal of the United States, Japan, and Germany (The Observer 6 October 1935: 18).
2 SBreferstoMcGreevy'ssisterDelia.
Hester Dowden's niece has not been identified; her sister Hilda Mary Dowden (1875-1936) did not many.
3 L'Etoile,30CharlotteStreet,Soho.
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was invited by the Institute of Medical Psychology (Tavistock Clinic) to give a series of five lectures from 30 September to 4 October 1935. Bion was a discussant for lectures two and four; he took SB to the third lecture (Wednesday, 2 October 1935).
AE was interested in theosophy, ancient Irish myth, and mysticism.
4 Followinghislecture,Jungwasaskedhowhewouldfitmysticismintohisscheme of psychology and the psyche. He responded: "Mystics are people who have a partic­ ularly vivid experience of the processes of the collective unconscious. Mystical expe­ rience is experience of archetypes. " He added that he made no distinction between archetypal forms and mystical forms (C. G. Jung, Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice, The Tavistock Lectures [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1968] 110-111). Jung discussed the "anima figure" in dreams in his lecture (99-100). He also told of a patient who wanted to be a professor although his dreams indicated this goal to be beyond his ability; the patient, however, thought his dreams represented an unrealized incestu­ ous wish that could be overcome. Jung reported: "it took him just about three months to lose his position and go to the dogs" (96-105).
5 SBwrote"<Heisvery>Themind. "
Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801), Swiss poet, physiognomist, and theologian, a close friend of Herder and Goethe. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, citizen of Geneva. Euclid, (third century BC).
6 "InJung'swritingsJolasfoundthemetaphysicshehadsoughtinvaininFreud's work" (Eugene Jolas. Man from Babel, xxi-xxii).
7 In discussion following the third Tavistock lecture, Jung concluded, "I cannot cure schizophrenia in principle. Occasionally by great good chance I can synthesize the fragments" Uung, Analytical Psychology, 113).
Jung wrote on 6 September 1947 to B. V. Raman, Astrological Magazine (India): "In cases of difficult psychological diagnosis I usually get a horoscope in order to have
285
8 October 1935, McGreevy
8 October 1935, McGreevy
a further point of view from an entirely different angle" (C. G. Jung, C. G. Jung: Letters, I, ed. Gerhard Adler and Aniela Jaffe, tr. R. F. C. Hull [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973] 475; see also Aniela Jaffe, From the Life and Work of C. G. Jung, tr. R. F. C. Hull and Murray Stein [Einsiedeln, Switzerland: Daimon Verlag, 1989] 17-45).
8 "Toothandyankcamps,"anallusiontotheproponentsofrivalpsychoanalytic theories.
9 "Tantpis"(toobad). "Usemetothem"(Gallicismfor"getusedtothem").
10 The Count of Monte Cristo (1934), directed by American-born Rowland V. Lee (1891-1975), featuring Robert Donat (1905-1958) and Elissa Landi (nee Elizabeth Marie Christine Kiihnelt, 1904-1948), was shown at the Metropole in Dublin during the week of23 September 1935.
11 Europa Press, publisher of SB's Echo's Bones, depended upon subscriptions to underwrite the costs of printing a book. SB refers to his poem "Malacoda. "
12 SBwasworkingonthedraftofMurphy.
13 TheThompsons'wedding:see22September1935,n. 5.
14 A Mountainous Landscape (NGL 4383), then ascribed to Hercules Segers (also Seghers, c. 1589-c. 1638) is now ascribed to an imitator ofSegers (Neil Maclaren, The Dutch School, 1600-1900, 1, rev. Christopher Brown [London: National Gallery, 1991[ 420). Dutch painter Carel Fabritius (1622-1654), A View ofDelft with Musical Instrument Seller's Stall (1652, NGL 3714).
15 Hillis proposed that they attend the opera Boris Godunov by Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839-1881), which opened the Sadler's Wells 1935-1936 season on 29 September 1935. The production was billed as the first English production of the original 1869 version ofthe opera; Mussorgsky revised it in 1872, and his musical executor Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov also reorchestrated the opera in 1896 and 1908.
SB conflates two concerts. On Saturday, 12 October in Wigmore Hall, the Isolde Menges Quartet played String Quartet in D minor, op. 56 ("Voces Intimae"), by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957); the string quartet Serenade in G major ("Italian Serenade") by Austrian composer Hugo Wolf(1860-1903); and String Quartet in D major, op. 9, by Belgian-born French composer Cesar Franck (1822-1890). On Thursday 17 October in Wigmore Hall, the Isolde Menges Quartet led by violinist Isolde Menges (1893-1976), with the addition of Helen Just (1903-1989) and Alfred De Reygher[e] (fl. 1930s-1940s), played Tchaikovsky's string sextet Souvenir de Florence in D major, op. 70; Brahms's String Sextet no. 2 in G major, op. 36; and the String Sextet by English composer Frank Bridge (1879-1941).
"<;:a va" (is all right).
The Soldier's Fortune (1680) by English playwright Thomas Otway (1652-1685) was playing at the Ambassadors Theatre. T. S. Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes (1926) was at the Westminster Theatre; the Ballets Jooss, the company ofGerman dancer and choreo­ grapher Kurt Jooss (1901-1979), was performing The Green Table and The Mirror in repertoire with Ballade, The Big City, and Ball in Vienna at the Gaiety Theatre. The film
286
of Anna Karenina (1935) with Greta Garbo (1905-1990) was playing at the Empire Theatre in Leicester Square.
16 St. John Ervine (ne John Greer Ervine, 1883-1971), Irish-born playwright and novelist, wrote a column, "At the Play," for The Obsen,er; a young reader had written that a sector of theatre audiences wished merely to be entertained by plays "that have nothing to do with their everyday life . . . Do you see what I mean? " Ervine's retort was "Yes, my dear, I see" ("The Generations Disagree," 6 October 1935: 17).
As Book Editor of The Sunday Times, Desmond MacCarthy reviewed Anthony Hope ana His Books (1935) by Sir Charles Mallet (1863-1947) ("Anthony Hope: Achievements and Disappointments," 6 October 1935: 6). Anthony Hope ana His Books was a biography of Anthony Hope (ne Anthony Hope Hawkins, 1863-1933), author of The Prisoner of Zenda (1894).
17 Denis Devlin broadcast readings and comments on literature on Irish radio; he wrote to McGreevy: "I don't know whether you may have listened to 2RN last night (i. e. the 4th instant) and heard my marvellous recital of your Nocturne of the Self-Evident Presence. It ran 'Mr. Thomas McGreevy, an Irishman, who has been most incomprehensibly neglected. ' [. . . ] Are you pleased? I am glad to have got the chance. '' Apparently McGreevy had not heard the broadcast, because Devlin continued this letter on 22 October: "I am chagrined that you did not hear me" (5 October 1935 continued 22 October 1935, TCD, MS 8112/7). The Dublin radio station was 2RN. "Nocturne of the Self-Evident Presence" was originally published by MacGreevy under the pseudonym L. St. Senan in The Irish Statesman 7. 3 (25 September 1926) 57; rpt. MacGreevy, Collected Poems of Thomas MacGreevy, ed. Schreibman, 42-43.
Devlin worked in the Department of External Affairs; as Secretary to the legation, he accompanied Eamon De Valera (popularly known as Dev, 1882-1975), then Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of the Irish Free State and Head of Council of the League of Nations, to the League of Nations in Geneva (3 September to 2 October 1935) (Devlin, Collected Poems of Denis Devlin, 19; "Back from Geneva," The Irish Times 2 October 1933: 7).
18 Yeats may have traced the provenance of Comer Boys, which had had an owner previous to SB (see 5 May 1935, n. 4).
Tobias and the Angel by Scottish playwright James Bridie (ne Osborne Henry Mavor, 1888-1951) was performed at the Gaiety Theatre (not the Abbey Theatre) as part of the Dublin Summer School of Acting on Sunday, 22 September 1935 (The Irish Times 23 September 1935: 8).
19 Mrs. Frost,SB'slandladyat34GertrudeStreet. The"Lieblings"(lovers),presum- ably the couple described in 8 September 1934.
Geoffrey Thompson and Ursula Stenhouse were shortly to be married.
20 Boissier:see22September1935,n. 8.
21 GermanpublisherKarlBaedeker(1801-1859)publishedtravelguidesforvarious regions of Europe; updated versions continue to be published.
22 Simon and Schuster and SB's request to Chatto and Windus: 8 September 1935.
287
8 October 1935, McGreevy
13 October 1935, Reavey GEORGE REAVEY
LONDON
13/10/35
Dear George
34 Gertrude Street London SW10
Thanks for letter & prospectus. Further victims:
Charles Rowe, Esq. , F. T. C. D. , Trinity College, Dublin.
1
It is better for you to diffuse them, but let me have a dozen in case I think of someone else.
The American publishers I have in mind are Messrs. Simon &
Schuster, 386 Fourth Avenue, New York. They wrote to me about
a month & a half ago, asking to see whatever material I had
available for publication in USA. I sent them Proust & Pricks &
have not yet had their decision. They seem well disposed. This
being the position, it occurs to me that they ought to be offered
the first refusal ofBones, also that it might be advisable to wait for
their decision as to prose before submitting the verse. However
I leave you to deal with the matter as you think best. I am quite
2
pectus. Ifthis is your dastardly intention and the covers have not
3
Frances Steen (n. d. ), schoolmate of SB's at Earlsfort House School, Dublin; her brother, RobertEllsworth Steen (1902-1981) was a friend of SB's at TCD, and they golfed together at Carrickrnines, Co. Dublin.
288
Miss Frances Steen, Carrickmines, Co. Dublin.
satisfied with 20% for EP [for EB].
I hope the Bones are not covered in the canary of the pros­
yet been put in hand, be an angel and change it to PUTIY. Yours ever
s/ Sam
TIS; 1 leaf, 1 side; AN in another hand: checkmarks, and underscoring; TxU.
1 CharlesHenryRowe,ProfessorofMathematicsatTrinityCollegeDublin.
Saturday [after 13 October 1935}, Reavey
2 Echo's Bones.
3 Thecoloroftheprospectuswaswarmgold;thecolorofthefinalcoverforEcho's
Bones was putty. GEORGE REAVEY
LONDON
Saturday [after 13 October 1935]
34 Gertrude St [London] SWlO
Cher ami
It might be a good idea to send a copy to Observer, "for favour
of etc. ", & if so to Humbert Wolfe, lest it should fall into black
1
Clare St. & both Tom & Brian know
Mr NAIRN, Combridge's, Grafton Street
Hodges & Figgis also might take a few copies. 2
Looking over it at leisure I am very pleased with layout.
I only find one mistake: there should be a space in Enueg 2 between "doch I assure thee" & "lying on O'Connell Bridge. " Pas serieux-3
I have sent out 5 more prospectuses this morning that may bring a few more bob.
A mardi Sam
I have found MS of Serena III which you can have 4
ALS; 1 leaf folded, 2 sides; from "Looking over it . . . ", text appears upside down because SB has turned the folded page; PS written to left of signature; TxU. Dating: in 15 March 1935, SB gives his choice of title for the volume of poems; in 8 October 1935, SB anticipates proofs that week; in SB's letter toReavey of 13 October 1935, SB discusses the color of the cover. The imprint of Echo's Bones gives the publication date as November 1935. "Enueg 2" was published in Echo's Bones without the correction SB
289
claws of Austin Clarke.
For distribution in Dublin I know:
Mr PEMBRY [for Pembrey] Green's [for Greene's] Library,
Saturday [after 13 October 1935}, Reavey
requested in this letter, and with "Serena III" (published as "Serena 3," Echo's Bones [31-321). The date, therefore, is after 13 October, but before 30 November 1935, probably early to mid-November.
1 Humbert Wolfe (1885-1940), English poet, satirist, and civil servant. Austin Clarke reviewed for the Times Literary Supplement and The Spectator; SB was wary of retaliation (see 8 September 1934, n. 2).
2 HerbertS. Pembrey(1909-2000),sub-postmasterandproprietorwithhisfather, Herbert H. Pembrey, of Greene's Library, 16 Clare Street.
Thomas McGreevy; Brian Coffey.
Ernest Nairn (d. 1970), a book expert who worked for about fifty years at Combridges, at 18-20 Grafton Street in 1935. Hodges & Figgis, bookstore, was then at 20 Nassau Street.
3 Seediscussionofdatingabove.
"Pas serieux" (anglicism for "pas grave" [no great matter]). Reavey may have mis­ understood SB's comment, as the page layout was not altered in this or in subsequent editions.
4 "Amardi"(tillTuesday).
290
1936 January 18January
24January 1 February
2March
7 March By25 March
By 9April 2May
6May
By 7 May By 9June 11June
27 June 29June
CHRONOLOGY 1936
SBpursuesinterestinfilmtheoryandmethods. VisitsJack B. Yeats.
T. S. Eliot speaks at University College Dublin. SB visitsJack B. Yeats withMorris Sinclair. Applies to study with Eisenstein.
Germans occupy the Rhineland.
SB travels with Frank Beckett to Galway. Visits Clonmacnoise.
Tells Reavey that transition can choose any poems to publish from Echo's Bones.
Declines to undertake more translations of Eluard's poems for Reavey.
Offers transition the unpublished "Censorship in the Saorstat," updating it with the censorship registry number for More Pricks Than Kicks.
Buys Jack B. Yeats's painting Morning. Finishes a first draft ofMurphy.
Opening of the International Surrealist Exhibition, New Burlington Galleries, London. Publication ofEluard's Thorns of Thunder with SB's translations.
Murphy typescript finished.
SB sends Murphy to Ian Parsons at Chatto and Windus, to Charles Prentice, and to
McGreevy.
291
Chronology 1936
July
By 7 July
15 July Mid-July By 17 July
17 July
By 6 August 12 August
18 August By 19August
c. 31 August
6 September 29September 30 September 2 October
By 5 October
7 October
3 November 5 November
13 November 4 December
Dublin Magazine publishes "An Imaginative Work! " SB's review of The Amaranthers by Jack B. Yeats.
SB sends Murphy to Simon and Schuster in New York.
Chatto and Windus rejects Murphy.
SB sends poem "Cascando" to Dublin Magazine.
Sends Murphy to Frere-Reeves at Heinemann. Receives author's copy of Thorns of Thunder.
Spanish Civil War begins. Heinemann rejects Murphy.
SB translates Samuel Johnson's Letter to Lord Chesterfield into German in his notebook.
Drafts German translation of"Cascando. "
Sends Murphy to Reavey so that he can act as agent.
Visits Arland Ussher at Cappagh with Joe Hone; sees Ardmore and Cashel.
Reavey visits Dublin from Belfast. SB leaves for Germany.
Arrives in Le Havre.
Arrives in Hamburg.
Simon and Schuster rejects Murphy. Dublin Magazine publishes poem "Cascando. "
SB settles in the Pension Hoppe, Hamburg. Visits Lubeck.
German museums ordered to remove "decadent art. "
SB refuses to accept cuts in Murphy requested by Houghton Mifflin, Boston. Asks Reavey how to acquire permission to use "apes at chess" for frontispiece ofMurphy.
Leaves Hamburg; visits Liineburg.
292
Chronology 1936
5 December
6 December
7 December
8 December
10 December
11 December
c. 16-17 December
In Hanover; visits home of Leibniz.
In Brunswick.
In Riddagshausen.
In Wolfenbiittel; visits Lessing Museum. In Hildesheim.
Arrives in Berlin.
Settles in Pension Kempt, Berlin.
293
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
9/1/35 [for 1936] 6 Clare Street Dublin
Dear George
Thanks for your card. I am more or less all right again now. Coffey left here I think last Friday, for a lecture at Sorbonne
Sat. morning, so I suppose you didn't see him in London. He said he had sent you some more Bones. 1 Yes, let me have as many more as I am due. I think he got my copy of the This Quarter in question. I said i [sic] was not keen on doing more translations, but would if necessary. 2 He appears to want to make the philo­ sophical series very serious & Fach. But my Geulincx could only be a literary fantasia. 3
I am glad to hear of the European Quarterly. I suppose I have odd poems, or perhaps I might let you have an excerpt from the prose work I mentioned. But there doesn't seem to be much, among my papers or in my mind. 4 I have not seen Devlin. He works in an office, you know. Then in the evening the ballroom. Codpiece Bordel de Danse, Gipsy Scrotum and his Band. Ne suis pas a la hauteur. 5
My friends here esquivent the Bones for the more part, which means the bolus has gone home. What shall they say, my not even enemies. May it stick in their anus. "I am sure you were not born with a pop. " But am I not sparkling? Then how should the birth be still? Sois calme, 6 mon souleur . . 6 Andersen was the byblow of a Frenchman from the Marne. Ca explique Dieu. 7
295
9 January 1935 {for 1936}, Reavey
How much longer London? As I broached the stairs to your
party, as to observatory platform at uranal distance from the
young lady whose name escapes me altogether don't you know,
the gan;on tirebouchon (ce qui m'interesse, c'est le tirebouchon,
non pas le Chandon - Gide) smirked his inadequacy. His heart
8
was not pure. Non pas le condom.
Hommages to Miss Cordon non pas bas bleu.
Your obedient servant s/Sam
9
Ce n'est pas au pelican Pas si pitoyable
Ni a Marie
Pas si pure
Mais a Lucie
Egyptienne oui et peaussiere aussi
Qui ne m'a pas gueri mais qui aurait pu Et a. Jude
Dontj'ai adorore la depouille Quej'adresse la cause desesperee Qu'on dirait la mienne. 10
TLS; 1 leaf, 1 side; TxU. Dating: Echo's Bones was published in November 1935, and so the year must be 1936.
1 SB had been ill with pleurisy (SB to McGreevy 31 December [1935J, TCD, MS 10402/84).
Brian Coffey left Dublin for Paris on Friday, 3 January 1936. Before he had left Paris for the Christmas holidays in Dublin, he had sent George Reavey copies ofEcho's Bones, which had been published byEuropa Press in Paris (Brian Coffey to George Reavey, 17 December 1935; TxU).
2 SBwrote"<Hecamedownheretoseeme,asIwasnotyetpromenable,>Ithink. "
Coffey had taken SB's copy of This Quarter 5. 1 (September 1932} in which SB's translations of Paul Eluard's poems ("Lady Love," "Out of Sight in the Direction of My Body," "Scarcely Disfigured," "The Invention," "Definition," "A Life Uncovered or The Human Pyramid," "The Queen of Diamonds," "Do Thou Sleep," "Second Nature," "Scene," "All-Proof: Universe-Solitude," and "Confections") had appeared (86-98). Reavey was preparing Thorns of Thunder, a collection ofEluard's poems in translation,
296
9January 1935 [for 1936}, Reavey
which included SB's translations already published in This Quarter; Reavey had appa­ rently asked, through Coffey, ifSB would prepare more.
3 BrianCoffeyhadinmindamonographseriesonphilosophers;hewasstudying the philosophy of science with Catholic thinker Jacques Maritain {1882-1973) at the lnstitut Catholique de Paris.
"Fach" {professional).
Despite his disclaimer, SB pursued study ofFlemish metaphysicanArnold Geulincx {1624-1669) in the library ofTrinity College Dublin, as he wrote to McGreevy: "I put my foot within the abhorred gates [ofTCDJ for the first time since the escape, on a commis­ sion from Ruddy. And I fear I shall have to penetrate more deeply, in search ofGeulincx, who does not exist in the National, but does in TCD" (9 January 1935 [for 1936[, TCD, MS 10402/85). SBreadandtookextensivenotesinLatinfromtheEthicaofArnoldGeulincx, in the edition Arnoldi Geulincx antverpiensis Opera Philosophica. Sumptibus providernnt Sortis spinozianae curatores, 3 vols. , ed. Jan Pieter Nicolaas Land {The Hague: apud Martinum Nijhoff, 1891-1893). For SB's notes on his reading ofGeuiincx, see TCD, MS 10971/6; EverettFrostandJaneMaxwell,"TCDMS10971/6LatinexcerptsfromArnoldusGeulincx and R. P. Gredt," Notes Diverse Holo, Special issue SBT/A 16 (2006) 141-155.