No More Learning

Marguerite Guggenheim (known as Peggy, 1898-1979), American patroness ofthe arts, moved to Paris in 1920; Guggenheim was married to Laurence Vail, a Dada sculptor and writer, from 1922 to 1930. In 1938 she opened the Guggenheim Jeune gallery in London, exhibiting surrealist and other contemporary art. Her attachment to SB dates from this period, and her autobiographies present her view of their affair. At SB's urging, Guggenheim gave Geer van Velde a one-man show at her gallery in May 1938. SB translated several essays related to the exhibitions of Guggenheim Jeune, published in London Bulletin. Guggenheim planned to establish a museum for contemporary art in London and was often in Paris in 1939 and 1940 to amass her collection which included works by Picasso, Ernst, Miro, Magritte, Man Ray, Dali, Klee, Chagall, and Tunnard. Facing the impending German invasion of France, she asked Maria Jolas to secure her collection until it could be shipped to the United States. In 1941 Guggenheim had moved to New York where she opened the gallery Art of This Century in 1942. She was married to Max Ernst from 1942 to 1946. When the New York gallery closed in 1947, Guggenheim moved to Venice; her villa there, now the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, houses her collection.
Arthur Henry Macnamara Hillis (1905-1997), lawyer and inter­ national economist, was a student with SB at Trinity College Dublin;
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both were Honours graduates, Hillis in Classics and Law. Hillis was called to the Bar in London in 1931, where SB met him again in 1934-1935; they developed a close friendship through their shared inter­ est in music and literature. Hillis later served the British Government in the Department of the Treasury (from 1941), in the United Nations (1958-1961), and as Comptroller General ofthe National Debt Office, London (1961-1968). His wife Lillian Mary Hillis (nee Francis, 1907-1990) worked with the BBC in the Spanish Section and the South European Service from 1942 to 1967. In later years, SB frequently visited their home in London, often playing four-hand piano duets and listening to music.
Joseph Maunsel Hone (1882-1959), Irish historian, biographer, and writer, was a friend ofSB's father William Beckett; although twenty-five years his senior, Hone came to know SB well through shared interests in cricket and literature. Hone was Literary Director ofthe Dublin pub­ lisher Maunsel and Co. and edited the quarterly Shanachie (1906-1907) that published writings by John Millington Synge and W. B. Yeats. Hone translated The Life ofFriedrich Nietzsche (1911), and wrote Irishmen ofTo-day (1915) and William Butler Yeats (1916). He collaborated with the Italian scholar ofIrish culture Mario Manlio Rossi, translating his Viaggio in Irlanda (1932; Pilgrimage in the West, 1933) and co-authoring Bishop Berkeley: His Life, Writings and Philosophy (1931) and Swift; or, The Egoist (1934). Later, he edited George Berkeley's The Querist (1936), and wrote The Life of George Moore (1936), The Moores of Moore's Hall (1939), and an expanded biography, W. B. Yeats 1865-1939 (1943). He became President ofthe Irish Academy ofLetters in 1957.
Eugene Jolas (1894-1952), American-born poet, writer, and journalist; having been raised both in the United States and in the borderland of Alsace-Lorraine, he was keenly aware oflinguistic and cultural divisions.
Jolas began his career as a journalist in the United States and became Literary Editor ofthe Paris edition ofthe Chicago Tribune (1923-1926); his column "Rambles Through Literary Paris" reflected his interest in surre­ alism and established his reputation among the city's literati. In 1927 Jolas and Elliot Paul founded transition, with Maria Jolas as Managing Editor. Having met the Jolases through James Joyce and Thomas McGreevy, SB assisted when transition published portions ofJoyce's Work in Progress.
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Jolas saw Work in Progress as "the principal text of the avant-garde," an
"'8 "exemplar of'the Language of the Night at the center of his own poet:ry.
Jolas was also drawn to Jung's work in archetypes as a means to link individual experience with the "collective unconscious. " Jolas issued the "Verticalist Manifesto" in 1932 which was "signed" by SB, Georges Pelorson, and Thomas McGreevy, among others. In 1935,Jolas accepted a position in New York with the French news service Havas; withJames Johnson Sweeney in the USA and MariaJolas in France, he continued to publish transition irregularly until 1938. Jolas also published Vertical: A Yearbook for Romantic Mystic Ascensions (1941, begun but not continued as an annual). In 1941, he worked with the US Office of War Information; after the War he was made Editor of Deutsche Allgemeine Nachrichten-Agentur and covered the Nuremberg trials. He lived and worked in Paris, New York, and Germany until 1950, when he joined the New York Herald Tribune in Paris. His memoirs have been edited by Andreas Kramer and Rainer Rumold as Man. from Babel (1998).
Maria Jolas (nee MacDonald, 1893-1987) was an American musician who studied voice in Berlin in 1913 and in Paris after World War I, where she met Eugene Jolas. They married in 1926 and together edited the Paris literary journal transition (1927-1938); she acted as Managing Editor and translated articles on art and literature, including works by Andre Breton, Philippe Soupault, and Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1931, she founded the Ecole bilingue de Neuilly; Georges Pelorson and his Irish wife Marcelle (nee Graham) were teachers at the school. Jolas evacuated the school to St. Gerand-le-Puy in 1939. MariaJolas was always a close friend of the Joyce family, joining their celebrations and musical evenings; as war threatened, the Joyces moved from Paris to be near their grandson Stephen who was a student at the school. Maria Jolas joined Eugene in New York in the autumn of 1940 and was active in the "Free France" movement there. After the War, she returned to Paris and advised Georges Duthuit when he became Editor of Transition. Maria Jolas remained active as a literary translator, particularly known as a translator of the work of Nathalie Sarraute. Her memoirs have been published as MariaJolas, Woman ofAction (2004), edited by Mary Ann Caws.
8 Eugene Jolas, Man from Babel, xx-xxi. 700
Giorgio Joyce (1905-1976), son of James and Nora Joyce, met SB in 1928. At his father's urging, Giorgio began a professional career as a singer; SB attended his public debut in April 1929 with the Joyce parents. Giorgio married Helen Fleischman (nee Kastor) in December 1930, and their son, Stephen James Joyce, was born in 1932. The couple lived in New York during the mid-1930s, where Giorgio pursued his singing career. Following their return to France in spring of 1938, Helen suffered a nervous breakdown; the couple eventually separated. SB remained a close friend to Giorgio Joyce and his son; in 1955, SB made an extended visit to Giorgio and his second wife, Dr. Asta Jahnke-Osterwalder, in Zurich.
James Joyce (1882-1941) and Nora Joyce (nee Barnacle, 1884-1951) met SB in Paris in 1928. Although Harry Sinclair had given SB a letter of introduction, it was Thomas McGreevy who brought SB to meet James Joyce. AtJoyce'srequest,SBwrote"Dante. . . Bruno. Vico. . Joyce"forOur Exagmination Round His Facti. ficationfor Incamination ofWork in Progress, first published in transition Uune 1929). Joyce asked SB to prepare a French translation of"Anna Livia Plurabelle"; SB and Alfred Peron finished a first draft in August 1930, which was then revised by a group that included Philippe Soupault, Paul Leon, and Joyce himself. SB, like a number of others, assisted Joyce with research for Work in Progress, finding and summarizing books, occasionally taking dictation because of Joyce's failing eyesight, and later correcting proofs. When SB distanced himself from Lucia Joyce's affections in May 1930, the family's fondness for him cooled for a time; but over the years, SB attended Joyce's birthday cele­ brations, and the two met frequently, often walking together in Paris. SB wrote an acrostic poem to Joyce in 1932, "Home Olga. " After SB was stabbed in 1938, Joyce arranged for SB's medical care; in 1940, he pro­ moted SB's work. Although SB's early writing was seen as derivative of
Joyce's style and SB vowed to Samuel Putnam that he would"get overJ. J. ere I die," SB nonetheless maintained that he had learned artistic integ­ rity fromJoyce, saying that whatJoyce had achieved was"epic, heroic . . . But I realised that I couldn't go down that same road. "9
9 SB to Samuel Putnam, 28 June 1932, NjP; Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 111.
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LuciaJoyce (1907-1982) met SB in 1928 at theJoyces' flat in Paris. Lucia Joyce studied dance (1926-1929) with Jacques Dalcroze and Raymond Duncan; SB, who often accompanied the Joyces on family outings, attended her performance on 28 May 1929 at the Bal Bullier with the family and other friends. Her artistic interests also included drawing; Joyce incorporated her designs in Storiella as She is Syung (1937). Lucia Joyce, who is widely considered be the model for the Syra-Cusa in SB's Dream ofFair to Middling Women, became increasingly infatuated with SB, but in May 1930 SB made it clear that he did not reciprocate her interest. This caused a temporary falling-out with the Joyces. By 1931 she was showing signs ofthe illness that was later diagnosed as schizophrenia. SB saw Lucia Joyce when she was in London in 1935, and he was a regular visitor after she was institutionalized in Paris. In 1951 Lucia Joyce was moved to Northampton, England, where she remained until her death.
Axel Kaun (1912-1983) was introduced to SB by Gunter Albrecht. When they met for the first time at the Nicolaische Buchhandlung in Potsdam in January 1937, Kaun had just taken a position with the Berlin publisher, Rowohlt. Kaun lent SB books by Hans Carossa, Hermann Hesse, and Walter Bauer. After SB returned to Ireland, Kaun asked SB to consider selecting and translating poems by German poet Joachim Ringelnatz for possible publication by Faber and Faber in their Criterion Miscellany series. Although SB began a selection of poems, he refused the commission in a letter to Kaun that has become a touchstone in the understanding of SB's aesthetics. Kaun edited the Berliner Theater­ Almanac (1942), was a dramaturg for the Wiirttemberg Staatstheater in Stuttgart from 1950, and published Ballett ohne Pose (1958). In the 1960s and 1970s Kaun was a literary translator of works by emerging Black writers Uohn Howard Griffin, James Baldwin, Eldridge Cleaver, and Lee Lockwood), as well as by Christopher Isherwood, Clancy Sigal, Charles Reich, and George Steiner. SB had no contact with Axel Kaun after 1937; when he tried to locate him in the early 1980s, he learned only that Kaun lived in California. Kaun died in San Francisco in 1983.
Henri Laugier (1888-1973) was a Professor of Physiology at the Sorbonne and Director of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) from 1938. SB knew Laugier as McGreevy's acquaintance. Laugier and his companion Marie Cuttoli built an
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important collection of contemporary art, including works by Jean Lur<;at, a friend ofMcGreevy. From 1936 to 1938, Laugier was a member of the Cabinet of the Foreign Affairs Ministry under Yvon Delbos. In 1938, SB offered to pursue with Laugier a subvention that would allow McGreevy to reside in Paris while writing articles for English audiences on French subjects; although SB offered to write the required nomina­ tion for Laugier's approval. McGreevy declined the suggestion.
Abraham Jacob Leventhal (known as Con, 1896-1979), Irish and Jewish, critic and scholar, studiedModern Languages at Trinity College Dublin (1920, BA, French and German; 1925, MA; 1933, Ph. D. with a thesis on "Post-War Tendencies in French Literature"). Throughout his career, Leventhal was involved in publishing and teaching; he interrup­ ted his studies to spend a year in Palestine as a secretary with the First Zionist Commission where he helped found Palestine Weekly (1919). In 1923 he founded the single-issue literary review The Klaxon (Winter 1923/24) to publish his review of Joyce's mysses (under the pseudonym L. K. Emery), which the printer for Dublin Magazine had refused to print. With Francis Stuart, F. R. Higgins, and Cecil Salkeld, Leventhal founded the Dublin review Tomorrow in 1924; despite contributions by W. B. Yeats, this lasted only two issues. Leventhal filled the post that SB had resigned as Lecturer in French at TCD Uanuary 1932 through 1933) and served TCD in various administrative positions from 1937; he was Assistant to the Professors of French and German from 1938 to 1939, then (although his title varied) Lecturer in Modern Languages until 1963. Leventhal was a member of the Dublin Drama League, contrib­ uted "Dramatic Commentary" (1943-1958) and other writings to Dublin Magazine, was a regular broadcaster on Radio Eireann and the BBC, Assistant Editor of Hermathena from 1956 to 1963, and reviewed for The Irish Times, Envoy, and Irish Art. After the death of his wife Gertrude (nee Zlotover), he married Ethna Maccarthy in 1956. Leventhal fre­ quently visited SB in Paris; following his retirement in 1963, Leventhal moved to Paris and began a bibliography of SB's work and assisted him with correspondence. He remained a close friend until his death. In 1984, SB helped to establish a scholarship at TCD in his name.
Ethna Mary Maccarthy (1903-1959), granddaughter of the Irish poet Denis FlorenceMaccarthy and daughter of Dublin physician Brendan
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Maccarthy, was a poet, linguist, and physician. She studied French and
Spanish literature at Trinity College Dublin; like SB, she was a Scholar,
and a First Class Moderator (1926). James Knowlson claims that she was
the "Alba" of the eponymous poem and of Dream of Fair to Middling
10
Although SB had already made plans to travel to Germany by Christmas 1931, he indicated later to Lawrence Harvey that he would not have resigned from TCD had it not been for the automobile accident in which Ethna Maccarthy, his passenger, was badly hurt. When she taught one of Professor Rudmose-Brown's courses in 1936, SB helped her prepare the Provenc;al lectures. Her poems, stories, translations from Spanish and German poetry, and a short play appeared in Hermathena, Dublin Magazine, Ireland To-Day, and an anthology of New Irish Poets (1948). Maccarthy continued her studies, receiving an MA in 1937; from 1939 to 1949 she was "Assistant to the Professor of French" at TCD, and she lectured in Spanish and French even as she studied Medicine (MB, 1941; MD, 1948). Maccarthy practiced medicine in Dublin and then in the East End of London. She married A. J. Leventhal in May 1956. SB remained a close friend to them both, particularly during MacCarthy's illness and death from cancer in 1959.
Women.
Thomas McGreevy(after 1943 known as MacGreevy, 1893-1967), Irish poet, critic, translator, art historian, and Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, was born in Tarbert, Co. Kerry. McGreevy worked in Dublin and London with the British Civil Service (1911-1914), served in World War I as an Officer of the Royal Field Artillery, and then studied History and Political Science at Trinity College Dublin (BA, 1920). While an assistant secretary to the Irish Advisory Committee of the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, McGreevy published articles for The Leader, The Irish Statesman, and The Gael. He moved to London in May 1925, where he joined the editorial staff of Connoisseur and wrote criticism for The Criterion, the Times Literary Supplement, The Nation and Athenaeum and the New Statesman. In January 1927, he was appointed as Lecteur d'anglais at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, and when SB took up the same post he and McGreevy became close friends. McGreevy introduced SB to many of his acquaintances in art and
10 Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 75. 704
literary circles in Paris, London, and Dublin, among them James Joyce, Richard Aldington, Jack B. Yeats, Charles Prentice, and Eugene Jolas. Both men published on Joyce in transition and Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work In Progress. SB stood in for McGreevy in his role as Secretary of the fine art journal Formes when McGreevy had to be away from Paris. In 1931, McGreevy published two monographs in the Chatto and Windus Dolphin Book series: Thomas Stearns filiot: A Study and Richard Aldington: An Englishman; SB's Proust, also in this series, came about as a result of McGreevy's suggestion. McGreevy stimulated and guided SB's interest in painting. He insisted that SB meet Jack B. Yeats. McGreevy's collection Poems was published in 1934. In London, he became chiefArt Critic for The Studio (1938-1940); returning to Dublin in 1941, he became Art Critic for The Irish Times (November 1941 to December 1944). A practicing Catholic all his life, he also wrote for The Father Matthew Record and The Capuchin Annual.
McGreevy's study JackB. Yeats was published in 1945.
McGreevy served as Director ofthe National Gallery oflreland from
1950 until his retirement in 1963. He was made Chevalier de l'Ordre de la Legion d'Honneur by the French Government for his services to the arts, made Cavaliere Ufficiale al Merito della Repubblica Italiana by the Italian Government, and awarded the Degree of Doctor of Letters by the National University oflreland. In the early 1960s, he wrote a critical study on Nicolas Poussin, was made Officier de la Legion d'Honneur, and organized an exhibition of Jack B. Yeats's work for the Venice Biennale.
Macy Manning Howe Adams (1905-1999), playwright, novelist, critic, childhood friend of SB (their mothers were close friends). Mary Manning studied at Alexandra College Dublin and the Abbey Acting School, and joined the Gate Theatre as Publicity Manager, editing the GateTheatrejournal,Motley. HerearlyplayswereYouth'stheSeason . . . ? (1931), in which SB had a hand - suggesting a wordless character called Horace Egosmith; Storm Over Wicklow (1933); and Happy Family (1934). In 1934 Mary Manning moved to Boston and married Harvard law profes­ sor Mark DeWolfe Howe, Jr. In the summer of 1936, while visiting Ireland, she had what she later claimed was an affair with SB. The first of her novels Mount Venus (1938) was published with Houghton Mifflin, whom she tried to interest in SB's Murphy. Director ofDrama at
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Radcliffe College during World War II, Mary Manning was a founder of
The Poets' Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1950-1968, 1987- ).
which staged her play The Voice of Shem (1955, published 1957), an
adaptation of Finnegans Wake, as well as a reading of SB's radio play All
That Fall (1958). After her husband's death in 1967, Mary Manning
returned to Dublin where she was Drama Critic for Hibernia. Her adap­
tation ofFrank O'Connor's novel The Saint and Mary Kate was produced at
the Abbey Theatre in 1968, and she wrote a volume of satirical short
stories, The Last Chronicles of Ballyfungus (1978). In 1980, she married
Faneuil Adams (1899-1981), and again lived in Boston. Of her mother's
quick and sometimes cutting wit, the poet Susan Howe has written:
11
Sean O'Sullivan (1906-1964), Irish painter and draftsman. studied at the Metropolitan School ofArt in Dublin, the Central School ofArts and
Crafts in London, and at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and the Academie Colarossi in Paris. In 1931, he was the youngest artist to be elected to the Royal Hibernian Academy. Although he painted Irish landscapes, O'Sullivan is best known for portraits, done as drawings and in oils, including ones ofsuch Dublin notables as Douglas Hyde, Eamon De Valera,JamesJoyce, W. B. Yeats, Maud Gonne MacBride,Jack B. Yeats, SB, and Ethna Maccarthy (see illustrations). He aimed to "record every person of prominence on the Irish scene during his period," and was said to have a story about every person he had painted. 12 O'Sullivan knew McGreevy andJoyce in Paris. Although SB first mentions him in a letter in 1933, the two were most frequently together from 1935 to 1937 in Dublin; in 1939, SB arranged for him to rentJankel Adler's studio in Paris.
Seumas O'Sullivan (neJames Sullivan Starkey, 1879-1958), Irish poet and founding editor ofthe Dublin Magazine (1923-1958), was active in the Irish Literary Revival, appearing in W. B. Yeats's play On Baile's Strand at the Abbey Theatre in 1904, and was a supporter ofSinn Fein. A friend ofW. B. Yeats,JamesJoyce, AE, and Oliver St. John Gogarty, O'Sullivan championed young authors, among them Patrick Kavanagh, Padraic
11 Susan Howe, The Midnight (New York: New Directions Books, 2003) 64.
12 Ryan, Remembering How We Stood, 46.
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"She loved to produce and destroy meanings in the same sentence. "
Fallon, Mary Lavin, and SB. "Alba" was SB's initial publication in the Dublin Magazine (1931), followed by "Gnome" (1934), "Cascando" (1936), and several reviews. O'Sullivan was President of Irish PEN, a founding member of the Irish Academy of Letters, and was given an honorary degree by Trinity College Dublin in 1939. He was married to the painter Estella Solomons.
Georges Pelorson (later known as Georges Belmont, b. 1909), French poet, journalist, editor, and translator, entered the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1926 and was SB's first student there in 1928. Pelorson came to Trinity College Dublin as part of the exchange with the ENS, beginning in January 1930; in February 1930, he co-authored with SB the dramatic parody Le Kid for the Modern Languages Society produc­ tion at the Peacock Theatre; according to Knowlson, Pelorson figures as Liebert in SB's Dream of Fair to Middling Women. Pelorson married Marcelle Graham in Dublin, then returned to Paris in autumn 1931, leaving the ENS with a licence in English, rather than going on to sit for the agregation; with his wife Marcelle, Pelorson translated Emily Bronte's poems in 1933. He wrote for Paris-Midi and Paris-Soir (1931-1940), was Director of the Ecole bilingue de Neuilly founded by Maria Jolas, and published in La Nouvelle Revue Fram;aise, Mesures, and transition.
With Raymond Queneau, Henry Miller, Le Corbusier, and Frederic Joliot-Curie, Pelorson co-founded Volontes (1937-1939); he published Essai sur une reforrne de l'enseignement en France (1940) and was involved in the literary section of the Jeune France educational movement. A collaborator, Pelorson held positions with the Vichy Government: as Chef de la propagande des jeunes for the Occupied Zone (1941), Secretaire general adjoint (1942-1943), and Secretaire general de la jeunesse (1943-1944). Blacklisted after the Liberation by the Comite national des ecrivains, briefly imprisoned, and stripped of his civil rights for ten years, Pelorson wrote under the name Georges Belmont. In the early 1950s SB and Belmont resumed their friendship. Belmont worked with Editions Robert Laffont (1952-1953; 1964-1979), as Editor-in-Chief of Paris Match (1953-1954), Editor of]ours de France, of Marie Claire, Review Editor ofArts (1953-1964), and as Literary Director for Editions Acropole (1980-1985). As Georges Belmont, he is widely known as the French translator of works by Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Burgess, Henry James, and Henry Miller.
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Alfred Remy Peron (1904-1945), writer and teacher, was in the class of 1924 at the Ecole Normale Superieure; Peron came to Trinity College Dublin on the exchange program from the ENS (1926-1928) and first met SB there. As a Lecteur d'anglais at the ENS in 1928, SB helped Peron study for the agregation. The two worked together on the initial French translation of Joyce's "Anna Livia Plurabelle" in 1930. Peron taught at the Lycee Buffon in Paris. When SB moved to Paris in 1938, Peron encouraged and helped SB to begin the translation of Murphy into French; Peron's translation of SB's poem "Alba" was published in Soutes (1938). When Peron was mobilized in the French Army, he asked SB to assist his family in the event of evacuation from Paris. Peron served as an agent de liaison for the British Army. He was a member of the Resistance reseaux "Etoile" and "Gloria SMH"; he recruited SB to the latter in September 1941. When Peron was arrested by the Gestapo in August 1942, his wife Maria Peron (known as Mania to SB) warned SB and Suzanne by telegram. Alfred Peron was sent to the concentration camp at Mauthausen; shortly after being freed from the camp, he died on 1 May 1945 in Switzerland, in transit back to France. SB remained supportive of Peron's family. SB enlisted Mania Peron's help with his writings in French, and he helped her as she taught English, translated, and wrote her novel. SB's correspondence with Mania Peron continued into the 1980s.
Charles Prentice (c. 1892-1949) was born in Scotland, studied Classics at Oxford, and was a senior partner in Chatto and Windus when, at Thomas McGreevy's suggestion, SB wrote and submitted Proust to the Dolphin Books series. In Prentice SB found a frank yet sympathetic reader. Prentice continued to further SB's writing career, publishing More Pricks Than Kicks (1934) despite the reservations of his colleagues at Chatto and Windus. Even when he could not publish SB's work, Prentice reassured SB and suggested other outlets for his writing. Richard Aldington characterized Prentice as a "man utterly without affectations . . . of simple dignity and straightforward utterance," con­ siderate, generous, and "full of laughter. "13 Prentice joined Aldington in providing funds so that McGreevy could travel in Italy and have time
13 Richard Aldington, Life for Life's Sake: A Book of Reminiscences (London: Cassell, 1941) 322-323.
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to write. Prentice retired from Chatto and Windus in 1935, but he returned to work there during World War II; in retirement he pursued interests in archeology in Italy, Greece, and Africa. He died in Nairobi.
Samuel Putnam (1892-1950), American editor, journalist, and trans­ lator, was a feature writer for the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Evening Post in the 1920s, and edited Youth (1921-1922) and Prairie (1923). In 1927, he moved to Paris, where in 1929 he was an editor at This Quarter with Edward Titus and then in 1930 founded The New Review, which expired with the April 1932 issue. SB published some ofhis own work as well as translations in both journals. Putnam initiated The European Caravan: An Anthology of the New Spirit in European Literature (1931), planned as a two-volume anthology to introduce modern European literature to American and English readers; the editors included Maida Castelhun Darnton, George Reavey, and Jacob Bronowski. Some ofSB's poems were published in the Irish section ofthe first volume; Putnam enlisted SB to help with the selection and translations for the Italian section of a second volume that remained unpublished. He published George Reavey's Faust's Metamorphoses (1932). Putnam returned to the United States in 1933, becoming a contributor and editor to several small magazines; in 1947 he published his memoirs, Paris Was Our Mistress.
George Reavey (1907-1976), Irish poet, literary agent, publisher, and translator ofRussian and French literature, was born and lived in Russia until 1919, when his father was arrested; the family fled to Belfast and moved to London in 1921. From 1926 Reavey studied at Cambridge University, where he knew William Empson, Jacob Bronowski, and Julian Trevelyan through their association with the journal Experiment. SB met Reavey in 1929 through Thomas McGreevy in Paris where Reavey was Associate Editor of Samuel Putnam's The New Review (1930-1932) as well as ofThe European Caravan (1931); Putnam published his first book of poetry, Faust's Metamorphoses (1932). In 1934 Reavey established Europa Press in London and Paris, which published SB's Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates (1935) in a series ofpoetry collections that included his own Nostradam: A Sequence ofPoems (1935), Signes d'adieu (1935), and Quixotic Perquisitions (1939); Intercessions (1937) by Denis Devlin; and Third Person by Brian Coffey (1938). Reavey edited and
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translated Soviet Literature: An Anthology with Marc Slonim (1934), and was a prolific translator from Russian, particularly of the works of Nikolai Berdyaev and Andrei Bely. He edited Thorns of Thunder (1936), a collection of selected poems by Paul Eluard translated by SB and others. Having established the European Literary Bureau in Paris, Reavey moved it to London in 1935; the agency represented SB's Murphy. Reavey served with the British Institute in Madrid in 1940 and with the British Foreign Office in Russia from 1942 to 1945, where he edited the journal Britanskii Soyuznik in Kuibyshev and Moscow. After the War, he published Soviet Literature Today (1946), taught at the University of Birmingham, England, and in 1949-1950 was a Rockefeller Fellow at Columbia and Stanford universities; thereafter, he resided primarily in the United States. Reavey continued to write poetry, publishing Colours of Memory (1955) and Seven Seas (1971), and to translate Russian litera­ ture. SB remained a close friend of Reavey; following his death, SB wrote: "Adieu George, to whom I owed so much, with whom shared so much, for whom cared so much. " 14
Gwynedd Cade Reavey (nee Clodine Gwynedd Vernon-Jones, 1901-? ), Welsh wife of George Reavey, helped Reavey establish the European Literary Bureau in London. During 1938 and 1939, she spent time in Cagnes-sur-Mer with Geer and Lisl van Velde, and she frequently saw SB as she passed through Paris. In 1940 she moved from London to Madrid with her husband, who was then working for the British Institute. In September 1941, she joined the Ministry of Economic Warfare. SB saw her in London as he returned from France to Ireland after the Liberation; she went to Germany with the Control Commission (autumn 1945-1947). After returning to London in 1949, she was employed by the British Iron and Steel Federation; SB lost contact with her after her divorce from George Reavey in 1950.
Lennox Robinson (ne Esme Stuart Lennox Robinson, 1886-1958), Irish playwright, was appointed by W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory to manage the Abbey Theatre in 1909 and was sent to London to gain theatrical experience with George Bernard Shaw; Robinson resigned
14 Samuel Beckett, "In Memoriam: George Reavey," Journal ofBeckett Studies 2 (Summer 1977) [lJ.
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from the Abbey in 1914 following a dispute about his decision to keep the theatre open during the mourning period for King Edward VII. In 1919, Robinson returned to the Abbey, where he was a director-pro­ ducer and served on the theatre's board of directors from 1923 until his death. In 1931 he married the artist and set designer Dorothy Travers Smith, daughter of Hester Dowden. A writer of fiction, biography, autobiography, and essays, Robinson was best known as a playwright. He wrote a history of the Abbey, Ireland's Abbey Theatre (1951), and he organized and traveled with the Abbey on lecture tours throughout the world.
Thomas Brown Rudmose-Brown (popularly known as Ruddy, 1878- 1942) was Professor of Modern Languages at Trinity College Dublin, and taught SB French and Proven�al Literature. Rudmose-Brown studied at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Grenoble and was appointed to TCD in 1909. He had a wide range of scholarly interests, from Pierre de Ronsard and Jean Racine to modern French writers, among them Marcel Proust, Francis Viele-Griffin, Stuart Merrill, Louis Le Cardonnel, Paul Valery, Valery Larbaud, and Charles Peguy. He also knew personally many of the poets of the Proven�al literary renais­ sance. TCD awarded him an honorary D. Litt. in 1931. He edited plays by Corneille and Marivaux, published French Literary Studies (1917), French Short Stories (1925), Contes du moyen age (1926), A Book of French Verse from Hugo to Larbaud (1928), French Town and Country (1928), and a collection of his own poetry, Walled Gardens (1918). Rudmose-Brown nominated SB as Lecteur d'anglais to the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1927; when this appointment was delayed, he arranged for SB's appointment to Campbell College in Belfast (from January 1928). Following two years at the ENS, SB returned to TCD in 1930-1931 as Rudmose-Brown's Assistant in French. Although he later regretted it, SB portrayed Rudmose-Brown as the "Polar Bear" in Dream of Fair to Middling Women. SB said of his mentor: "Much needed light came to me from 'Ruddy', from his teaching and friendship. I think of him often and
always with affection and gratitude. "15
15 Samuel Beckett to Roger Little, 18 May 1983, cited by Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 64. 711
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Profiles
Frances Beckett Sinclair (known as Fanny and as Cissie, 1880-1951),
artist and musician, was the only sister ofSB's father William Beckett. She studied painting at the Dublin MetropolitanSchool of Art and at the Academie Colarossi in Paris in 1904, along with her good friends Estella Solomons and Beatrice Elvery (later Lady Glenavy). As Fannie Beckett, she exhibited her paintings in the Royal Hibernian Academy (1897, 1901-1908). In 1908, she married William Abraham (Boss)Sinclair, an art and antiques dealer; their home in Baily, Howth, Co. Dublin was a gathering-place for writers and artists. TheSinclairs moved to Kassel, Germany, in the early 1920s, where SB frequently visited them, sharing in their family and artistic life. In his Aunt Cissie, SB found a mature confidante with whom he could share interests in literature, art, and music. CissieSinclair traveled between Dublin and Kassel in 1931-1932, a time when personal difficulties, economic depression, and growing anti-Semitism were making life increasingly difficult in Germany. After the death of their daughter Ruth MargaretSinclair (known as Peggy) in May 1933, the family returned to Dublin in June. SB remained close to the Sinclairs, especially during Boss's illness and death in 1937; when Cissie was confined by rheumatoid arthritis and Parkinson's disease in her later years,SB was particularly attentive and visited her whenever
he was in Ireland.
Morris Sinclair (known as Sunny or Sonny Sinclair, 1918-2007) was
SB's first cousin, the only son of Frances (Cissie) and William (Boss) Sinclair. Despite the twelve-year age difference, the cousins were close. Sinclair and his family moved permanently from Germany to Dublin in
1933. SB helped him prepare for his examinations in Modern Languages (German and French) at Trinity College Dublin. Sinclair was a gifted violinist and studied at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. His father and sister Peggy had died of tuberculosis, so when Sinclair became ill in autumn 1936, it was arranged for him to go to the more favorable climate ofSouth Africa (1937-1938) as a private tutor. He completed his studies at TCD in winter 1940. In 1945,Sinclair received a scholarship to study in Paris; as he hesitated about a thesis subject,SB suggested that he might write on Sartre and the influences of Husserl and Kierkegaard, offering to introduce him to Sartre. From 1948 to 1952, Sinclair worked for UNESCO, first in English translation and editing and then as a writer and producer for radio broadcasts in German. He then moved to Geneva,
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where he worked in the Public Information Office of the World Health Organization (1952-1971), becoming Director of Public Information (1971-1974). He corresponded with SB and often visited him in Paris.
Ruth Margaret Sinclair (known as Peggy, 1911-1933), daughter of Frances (Cissie) and William (Boss) Sinclair, was SB's first cousin. When her family moved to Kassel in the early 1920s, SB often visited. SB and Peggy were attracted to each other when she visited Dublin in mid-summer of 1928. Peggy studied art, music, and movement at the Schule Hellerau-Laxenburg, near Vienna, where SB visited her in September 1928 before beginning his appointment at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, but by early 1929 their intimacy had ended. She figures in several of SB's early poems and many of her qualities are reflected in the character of Smeraldina-Rima in Dream of Fair to Middling Women and "The Smeraldina's Billet-Doux," first pub­ lished in More Pricks Than Kicks. Peggy Sinclair died of tuberculosis in Germany in May 1933.
William Abraham Sinclair (known as Boss, 1882-1937),Jewish, an art and antiques dealer, SB's uncle by marriage to his aunt Frances (Cissie) Sinclair, was an amateur violinist and a member of the Dublin Musical Society; he had been active in the Republican movement. They lived in Howth, Co. Dublin, before their move in the early 1920s to Kassel, Germany, where he dealt in contemporary German art. Sinclair published Painting (1918), contributed art criticism to the Irish Review, lectured on art, and taught English. SB grew close to the Sinclairs during his visits to Kassel, appreciating their warmth, their easy ways, and their encouragement of his writing. In the early 1930s, economic depression and anti-Semitism made life in Germany inhospitable; Sinclair returned to Dublin in the summer of 1933 after the death of his daughter Margaret (Peggy) Sinclair. He died from tuberculosis in 1937. Fulfilling a death-bed promise to Boss, his twin brother Henry Sinclair pursued a lawsuit against Oliver St. John Gogarty, who had libeled them and their grandfather in his book As I Was Going Down Sackville Street; SB gave testimony in the case in November 1937.
Estella Solomons(1882-1968),Irishpainter,wasmarriedtoSeumas O'Sullivan, but used her maiden name professionally. She was a
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Profiles
Profiles
political activist who became involved in the Easter Rising and the War of Independence. She studied with William Orpen at the Metropolitan School ofArt in Dublin, and with Walter Osborne at the Royal Hibernian Academy, and in London. Solomons painted portraits of many Irish liter­ ary and artistic figures, including Jack B. Yeats, and showed her work regularly at the Royal Hibernian Academy Exhibitions. She was named an Honorary Royal Hibernian Academician. SB attended the opening of Solomons's exhibition (with her cousin Louise Jacobs and friend Mary Duncan) at the Arlington Gallery in 1935. Having studied Art together, Estella Solomons and Frances (Cissie) Sinclair were close friends. Estella Solomons took an interest in SB and his work, and her sister the singer Sophie Jacobs (nee Solomons, 1887-1972) befriended SB in the 1930s in Paris and London. SB occasionally visited the home of Solomons and O'Sullivan, "The Grange," in Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin.
Francis Stuart (ne Henry Francis Montgomery Stuart, 1902-2000),
Australian-born Irish novelist, poet, and dramatist, converted to
Catholicism in 1920, and was married to Iseult MacBride, the daughter
ofMaudGonne. WithA. J. Leventhal,CecilSalkeld,andothers,hebegan
the short-lived literary magazine Tomorrow (1924). SB's letters mention,
among Stuart's prolific early writings, the novels Women and God (1931),
which was dedicated to Thomas McGreevy; The Coloured Dome (1932);
and The Great Squire (1939). In 1939, Stuart gave a series of academic
lectures in Germany, and then taught English and Irish Literature in
Berlin in 1940. From 1942 to January 1944, Stuart read German radio
broadcasts aimed at Ireland. Although Stuart claimed that he wrote to
SB in August 1942, and that SB replied, the letter has not been found.
After World War II, Stuart lived in Germany, France, and England; he
married Gertrude Meissner in 1954, returning to Ireland in 1958. He is
perhaps best known for his book Black List Section H (1971). Although
"men ofdiffering viewpoints," he and SB met occasionally in Paris after
16
Jean Thomas (1900-1983), French educator, entered the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1920, became Agrege-repetiteur (1926-1932), and Secretaire general of the ENS (1933). He taught French Language and
16 Elbom. Francis Stuart. 8. 714
World War II.
Literature at the Sorbonne (1934-1936), French Literature at the University of Poitiers (1936-1938), and Modem Comparative Literature at the University of Lyon (1938-1944). Thomas published studies of Diderot, Musset, and Sainte-Beuve. He was appointed as Directeur du cabinet du Ministre de ! 'Education Nationale (October 1944) and Chef du service des relations universitaires et artistiques avec l'etranger (1945); having been a member of the French delegation to the constituting conference of UNESCO, he became its Director of Cultural Activities (1947-1954), and then Assistant Director General of UNESCO (1955-1960). In 1932, Thomas wrote a letter of reference for SB, and in his position with UNESCO suggested SB for various translation projects during the 1950s, most notably the English translation of The Mexican Anthology edited by Octavio Paz. Thomas's eminence in French public and international education culminated in his appointment as President de la Commission de laRepublique Frarn;aise pour ! 'education, la science, et la culture (1972-1980).
Arthur Geoffrey Thompson (known to SB as Geoffrey, 1905-1976) was, with his brother Alan, a childhood friend of SB; they studied together at Portora Royal School and Trinity College Dublin. They shared interests in music, literature, and sports, and, while students at TCD, attended the Abbey Theatre together. Thompson qualified in Medicine at TCD in 1928, then studied Biochemistry in London and Paris as a Rockefeller Research Fellow. Returning to Dublin in 1930, he took up the position of Physician at Baggot St. Hospital. Thompson became increasingly interested in mental illness manifested as physical symptoms, and moved to London in 1934 to train in psychoanalysis, a specialty that could not be pursued in Dublin at that time. He was resident Senior House Physician at Bethlem Royal Hospital and later worked at the Maudsley Hospital and St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. When SB came to see Thompson, he would also visit long-term patients who otherwise were seldom visited. Thompson has said that SB was "preoccupied with decrepitude, people who could hardly help themselves. "17 It was Thompson who suggested that SB begin psychotherapy with W. R. Bion in 1934. In 1935, Thompson
Pro. files
17 Geoffrey Thomson interviewed by Andy O'Mahoney, RTE. 1976.
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took a post in the Tavistock Clinic. In November 1935, SB was best man at Thompson's wedding to Ursula Stenhouse.
After war-time service, Thompson practiced privately and at the Tavistock Clinic, qualifying in psychoanalysis in 1949. He worked with the National Health Service and was a member of the Institute of Marital Studies, retiring from the Tavistock Clinic in 1970. In later years, the Thompsons and SB saw each other from time to time in London and in Paris.
Edward William Titus (1870-1952), Polish-born American bibliophile, translator, and publisher, opened his anglophone bookstore, At the Sign of the Black Manikin, in Paris in 1924. Subsidized by his wife Helena Rubinstein, he published twenty-five books under the Black Manikin imprint from 1926 to 1932: ranging from works by Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler to those by British modernist Mary Butts, from Harlem Renaissance poets Claude McKay and Countee Cullen to Anai:s Nin's An Unprofessional Study ofD. H. Lawrence, and also translations of Rimbaud and Baudelaire. In 1929 he became Editor of This Quarter (1925-1932), initiating prizes to attract submissions and encourage young writers. In This Quarter SB published translations from Italian of work by Eugenio Montale, Raffaelo Franchi, Giovanni Comisso (1930), as well as his own story "Dante and the Lobster" (1932), and many of his translations from French for the surrealist number (1932) guest­ edited by Andre Breton. In 1932, SB translated Rimbaud's "Le Bateau ivre" (Drunken Boat), unpublished until 1976, as a commission from Titus.
transition (1927-1938), an international avant-garde literary magazine, was founded by EugeneJolas, MariaJolas, and Elliot Paul to present new European writing to American readers and to create a forum for lin­ guistic experimentation: as Jolas put it, "a laboratory of the word. " Eugene Jolas's ideas about language and literature were expressed most concisely in two manifestos, "The Revolution of the Word" (1929) and "Poetry is Vertical" (1932). Among the writers published by transition were Andre Breton, Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane, and Dylan Thomas; transition may be best known for serially publishing sections of James Joyce's Work in Progress (1927-1935), a process in which SB was involved. SB's first published
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writing, his essay "Dante. . . Bruno. Vico. . Joyce," appeared in transition Uune 1929). He also published in transition the short stories "Assumption" and "Sedendo et Quiesciendo [sic]," poems ("For Future Reference," "Malacoda," "Enueg II," "Dortmunder," and "Ooftish"), and a review of Denis Devlin's collection of poetry Intercessions.
AfterWorldWar II, the Jolases transferred the publishing licence of transition to Georges Duthuit, who capitalized its title and changed the focus of the journal (see profile of Transition in Volume II).
Percival Arland Ussher (known as Percy until mid-1937, then as Arland, 1899-1980), essayist, critic, and translator, was born in London and studied at Trinity College Dublin (1917-1919) and St. John's College, Cambridge (1920). He settled on his family's estate in Co. Waterford, where he wrote on the Gaelic language and the way of life of the Deise Gaeltacht. His translation from Irish of Brian Merriman's The Midnight Court (1926) was prefaced byW. B. Yeats. SB visited Ussher at Cappagh, and Ussher often sent him his essays on philosophy, history, politics, and art, especially in the late 1930s and again afterWorldWar II, when he occasionally visited SB in Paris. Acerbic wit and strong opinions mark his writing, which he called "philosophical belles lettres. " He published Postsoipt on Existentialism and Other Essays (1946); The Twilight of Ideas and Other Essays (1948); The Face and Mind ofIreland (1949); a study of Jewish culture and an analysis of anti-Semitism, The Magic People (1949); a study of Shaw, Yeats, and Joyce, Three Great Irishmen (1952); a book on existentialism with reference to Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre, Journey Through Dread (1955); Sages and Schoolmen (1967); and Eros and Psyche (1976). His interest in folklore and divination is reflected in his study Twenty Two Keys to the Tarot (1957). Edited selections from Ussher's diary (1943-1977) were published as From a Dead Lantern (1978) and The]oumal ofArland Ussher (1980).