The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder
Page 47
If by then I’ve done a good hunk of work I may drive down to Key West; work there a bit, then leave my car and go over to Habana.
I eat around. Everybody says the season’s not begun and there’s nobody here; but there are thousands—either old folks from the farm or honeymoon couples; and they too eat around. The food isn’t good, of course, but I never was choosey that way.
One of my ears has cleared up. I can’t hear my watch ticking with the other.
My landlady’s name is Mrs Joseph Ginsburg. Like all landladies she has a beautiful daughter (in her opinion); and like all girls who fancy they are beautiful she had to come over and slay the new lodger.
Very funny about my name. Mrs Ginsburg like all the motel and hotel clerks where I stopped and wrote my name did a take on it. Where had they heard it before? In sports? in crime? am I under investigation? a playboy millionaire? since none of them ever crack a book it never occurs to them that it would be literature. But they think they’ve heard it before and it leaves ’em confused and puzzled. The younger ones ask. The older ones—foxy—probably go and phone Cousin Beulah who once taught school and who reads the papers. At Williamsburg the hotel manager called up and asked if I was comfortable. I guess he thought I was writing a piece for Saturday Evening Post on how phoney the Williamsburg Reconstruction is.42
Well, you can see the results already of having to hold my tongue. It makes me loquacious on paper. You’ll have to put up with a lot of this. Or else fly down with something for me to sign.
There’s no phone here, but Mrs Ginsburg next door is Daytona Beach # 5320
I always forget to ask you: can you read my handwriting? I think it’s fine, but that’s what I think of my singing, too.
Well, the sound of those waves breaking makes me sleepy.
All my best to you and yours
x
Think it over
Thornt
237. TO MALCOLM COWLEY. ALS 4 pp. (Stationery embossed The Princeton Inn / Princeton, New Jersey
50 Deepwood Drive Hamden March <1952>
Dear Malcolm:
Wish I could be there—not for the performance, but for the dress rehearsal. That would give me a chance to urge them not to make the last act lugubrious. (But I got to be in NY April 1—those tickets bought long in advance for Caesar and Cleopatra.43)
There’s one word in Our Town that causes me endless distress. At the close of Act II the clergyman thinks aloud and ends up with “one marriage in a thousand times is interesting.” How did I happen to give such a chilling and cynical impression? because I had incorporated into myself G. Stein’s use of the word—and I had failed to realize that the rest of the world didn’t use it in the same sense.
She’d say: human nature is occupying but it’s not interesting; it’s the human mind that’s interesting.
Or: Science is not interesting; once you know that there can be an answer to a question it is not interesting… etc.
What she meant was: basically important… or of significance for all.
What I meant was: “a Mozart is born. …<”>
It’s awful the way one’s “associations” can play one false; but I suppose its worse not to have a lively network of just such associations.
[One of the reasons I like to play that role is that I can attempt to “save” that moment; I do the first half of the speech dreamy and grave and then suddenly break out into smile on that word!]
I’ll soon have the first two (rewritten) Nortons to send you. As non-fiction you may wish to see a short paper I did for “Poetry” on the death of Joyce and which has been widely reprinted esp. abroad.44
x
I’ve decided to insert a short passage about Emerson into the Norton book.
Isn’t he awful? Yet how that colossus bestrode the world for so long! his ideas basely, soothingly, flattering all that is facile and evasive in the young republic. Wonderful field for the Marxian kind of literary criticism. The very syntax breathes 3 meals a day with hardworking maids in the kitchen preparing them while the Seer entertains these messages and promptings from the Over-Soul. Melville’s copies of the Essays are in the Harvard Library and its a joy to see how Melville dug his pencil into the page in scornful annotation.
x
What do you read for sheer recreation after the day’s work?
Anything I can lend you?
Have you ever done a Kierkegaard course?
Have you got a strong stomach and can you read Jean Genet—and Sartre on Jean Genet?45
Have you read Cécile, the recently discovered sequel to Constant’s Adolphe?46
x
‘Thought I was going up to the Institute meeting on the first, but was reminded that I had that Caesar date.
Still ashamed of myself for speaking at that other Institute meeting against the candidacy of Oscar Hammerstein. Hell, what did it matter? Why should I have gone on the warpath as to whether he were a lyric poet or not?—Especially, as it was interpreted by many as a movement of rabid antisemitism. Ever since June I’ve held my tongue on every subject—and that’s why I feel so well.
When you’ve got a clear spell from whatever other work you’re doing I’ll drive up and bring a packet of material.
Ever
Thornton
238. TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT.47 ALS 1 p. Virginia
As from American Express Co. 11 rue Scribe Paris
Venice Oct 11. <1952>
Dear Elizabeth:
At last the racket has abated. I am alone, wearisomly writing the 3 reports for the State Dept.
I’ve got loyal friends. Of such a thing as the Conference, they cry: Oh, you’re just the person. How glad we are you are representing us. Etc. Horsefeathers. That kind of oratory and marshalling of material and public argumentation, I am a perfect dub at. You know the pressure that made me go. The Conference I think was useful but not at the overt level. I wont take time here to weigh its successes and insuccesses.
This is my first visit to Venice. More fascinating than anything had prepared me for. I find nothing in it of Thomas Mann’s discovery of morbidezza.48 Beautiful as the fabric is, my chief joy is in the painting—in the Veronese<,> the Tintoretto<,> Titian and Bellini Venice. Oh glory oh art. I went to Florence for 3 days. Those edifices of ivory green and rose, dear, are still there; Michelangelo’s figure still lost in deep thought or under the ban of sleep. Venus is still blown toward us on a shell. I shall never be sufficiently grateful to Gertrude Stein for having directed me from being an ear-man to an eye-man; it was late in life but now that education of the eye is bringing me profit. When I was last in Florence I thought Santa Maria Novella was “that uninteresting church by the railway station”. Heigh-ho.
Where do I go next? I don’t know. I’m having a tug of wills with Ruth Gordon who wants me to come to Paris to confer with Tyrone Guthrie over that potential London revival of The Merchant of Yonkers.49 But I don’t want to go to Paris. I want to go to a little hotel in St. Moritz (already under snow) and work at what only pleases me. What is there to confer about? Let them come to me. I think that Monday or Tuesday I will entrain for Milan and there at 1:25 take the autobus arriving at 6:10 in St. Moritz. …. think of that drive, past Como, up up the dramatic Italian alps and then in evening light in the square of that Swiss village.
Oh, how badly I run my life. How I postpone from year to year the establishment of those conditions under which I can work. And I don’t mean work in the sense of producing volumes, I mean work in the sense of working on and in and with myself. I am a slow digester and a slow ruminator, altho’ I carry some of the external signs of a “bright” and a fast one. No, no,—I am a monastic and an umbraticle
It has been raining all day. The gondoliers under my
window have been quarreling with one another, loud, loud, all the time. A barnyard of angry raised voices. There is a beautiful passage in the Wings of the Dove where James describes Venice in bad weather; he does not mention this effect.
This letter shows my incoherence and ill-humor. I shall not be myself until I am settled in Switzerland. And now my ink has given out. I shall go to the Piazza San Marco to buy some ink! On the 15th you will be done with your book—you will celebrate the fact by your party to
Tout dévoué51
Thornton
239. TO AMOS N. AND CATHARINE K. WILDER. ALS. 2 pp. Yale
c/o American Exp. Co. 11 rue Scribe Paris
last day at St. Moritz Switzerland
Nov. 20. 1952
Dear Ones:
First: the translation of Hölderlin’s poem52 is splendid, noble and moving.
Second: just sent off some goodies to the children.
I hope to hear that Catharine in her cell at Clères found Tappy to be gradually adjusting. I’ve tried to remember back to my childhood. Father sent me to the craziest places. I seem to see a difference between saying of such experiences: “I suffered there” and “I hated it”. I hated my summer working on the farm at San Luis Obispo Calif. I hated it but endured it and continued in my (free) evenings all the eager reading and writing that was boiling in my head. Did I ever “suffer” at such transplantations? That is another thing: that is to feel oneself abandoned in a totally unrelatable world. It may be, dear ones, that the French over the centuries have made so schematic an all-French-motivated school that an American boy can only feel “abandoned in an unrelatable world.” You know that I do not like the French nature—while admiring many aspects of their mind. And least of all in this century when they are aware that they have fallen out of phase with the stream of spiritual advance. France is in malaise. They have not the British fortitude and they have not the Italian “resources in nature.” Their celebrated vanity (vide Stendhal passim) has been offended. The result is that they have even less human warmth than they had in their good ages. Sécheresse de coeur. Sécheresse de Coeur.53 Tappy is the most winning outward going fellow in the world. If he cant make a friendly situation for himself, no one can.
I leave next Tuesday to live in Baden-Baden—on my frozen marks. Rumor says I have thousands. I’ll report to you when I have explored the matter.
Give me a little time. I may join you in Gstaad. I’ll find some hotel or pension nearby. However, I may bring a company—Sally Higginson,54 Montgomery Clift, the Kanins even. People who can’t make up their mind attach themselves to me. And I can’t always make up my mind. My projects of work must come first—I’ve evaded work so long. So—à bientôt.
Loads of love
Thornton
240. TO ESTHER W. BATES.55 ALS 2 pp. BU
Will be home by the end of April
As from Hotel zum Hirsch, Baden-Baden
Stuttgart March 16. 1953
Dear Esther:
Isabel has at last sent me the Virginia Quarterly.
I write to you instead of to Mr. Scott.56
If I wrote to him something artificial would inevitably creep into the expression of thanks and appreciation; and perhaps an element of constraint into his feeling that he should reply.
What better intermediary than the deep pool of understanding which is Esther Bates?
Mr. Scott is the first person to have put on paper a recognition of the fact that the play is in counterpoint between the particular and the universal and he has found many striking ways of calling attention to it.
Is the play cruel?
I don’t know.
Some have said so.
Mr. Scott seems to think not.
Committed Christians are severe with me that I indicated without pressing their eschatology—I “dilletante’d” with the Great Affirmations. “The triumphant doctrine of the immortality of the soul one does not whisper tentatively.” That is right. All I did was to borrow the muted hope of Dante’s Purgatory; but his purgatory is a stage in a longer journey whose destination is—Dio mio!—not left in doubt.
Deep at the genesis of the play was the fact that I, as a young student in Rome, went on archaeological expeditions; saw an axe bring to light a once-busy streetcorner. There is a Pompeii aspect of Grovers Corners. (Ever since New York and Chicago are potential Pompeiis; and under my window much-bombed Stuttgart is an industrious anthill in a Pompeii—but that is “The Skin of our Teeth”.) The theme-words of Our Town are: hundred, thousand, million. I have no other subject; but now it is the one soul in the billion souls.
There is another literary borrowing in the play that may interest Mr. Scott: the catalogue of Emily’s goodbyes is after that of Achilles in the underworld. As a shoplifter said to a judge in Los Angeles: I only steal from the best department stores and they don’t miss it.
one more point: when Emily “returns” there is not even the table and two chairs: all, all is in our minds.
Give my deep thanks to Mr. Scott. I feel as though he had made the play respectable. Does he realize the extent to which it embarrasses “professionals”—professors and critics? “We’re all very fond of it in a way, but it’s not really a play about anything like those of x and y.<”> Just as Skin of Our Teeth was never listed among the war plays—everybody knows a war play when he sees one and obviously that’s not one. (It was in Germany that it became the war play and families denied themselves meals to see it for the third and fourth times in icy auditoriums. Funny!)
I’m going to be in Peterboro August and Sept. I’m speaking at the Jaffrey Forum Aug. 28.57 You want a ride?
Devotedly
Thornton
241. TO SALLY HIGGINSON. ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed Columbia University Club / 4 West 43rd Street / New York 18, N.Y.) Wisconsin
Someday get into the Vassar Club, dear—you can’t imagine how tranquil you’ll be.
As from 50 Deepwood Drive
Hamden Conn.
May 13. 1953
Dear Sally, ma belle et ma bonne:58
Just a word to tell you what a pleasure it was—Ware Street et obiter.59
And what interest I take in your trip and the work you’ll do there.60
Let your old uncle urge you:
women’s writing has to be truer than men’s. Yes, it does. To be really good. Men can construct literary works—not because they are inherently more capable than women—but because society for so many thousand years has put them in a situation where they have more self-confidence. The strength of women’s writing must come from their fierce truth-telling—see Katherine Mansfield’s Journals and letters.61
Your business as you face the task of being a writer is to be cruel to yourself——always more fiercely honest to tell your truth. She kept calling it being purer. You can’t afford to copy other writers—because that would be making it easier for yourself. She copied Chekhov; in her case it did no harm, precisely because he was the humblest and purest author she had seen.
Your truth—that’s what you must uncover—first in a Journal to yourself. Then in your stories.
This doesn’t mean that the material must be (what they call) “awful”. The simplest things admit of a hundred ways of telling: yours must be the one real right way for you.
Don’t be in a hurry. To be published; to be praised; to be “justified” in the eyes of others. Set yourself a five-years-plan. Mature your art without haste and without any desire to impress the neighbors. Rejoice that you are you. Your writing is you, and you have no need to rush out and assert yourself.
Don’t read many current books, the talked-about smart literature of the day. Have by your bedside always some of the great Unattainables. Let them be your companions, your weather.
in the meantime, rejoice in people, in the diversi
ty of life—affectionately, watchfully.
Love and you will be loveable.
Don’t be impatient, and people will find in you a haven. ¶ You are dear to your devoted uncle
Thornton
242. TO CHARLOTTE E. WILDER. ALS 4 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / Hamden 14, Connecticut) Yale
Dear Sharlie
Lord’s sakes … it’s been an age since I wrote you. … and yet I write from 8 to a dozen letters a day, most of them as dull as the letters they answer.
Many thanks for the suggestion about Cobb’s Mill Inn62… it is in a beautiful location; but too expensive. I took Maude Hutchins and 2 of her daughters there once. …. ouch, got away with barely my shirt on.
Today we drive up to Janet’s at Amherst,63 so as to be nearer to [Confidential: The Univ of New Hampshire] where I get a degree on Sunday. I’ll be eight times a Doctor! Wouldn’t that amaze your father? [All those conversations of his with Dean Jones, pleading that poor grades be forgiven.64] I tole ’em frankly I could not make a speech. Most of these “Honors” are accompanied by a request for a Commencement address… —but no more. A hood in exchange for a speech is not an equal swap.
I’ve got over my indisposition, honey, and I beg and pray you have made much progress.
Remember: you don’t only eat to support your body; you eat to support your soul.
Do you eat slowly?
Do not read while you eat—do as the Mohammedans do: eat in silent admiration: eating is thanking,—thanking for being. Why don’t you put a little half-solemn, half-playful ritual into eating?65
x
Honey, why will you collect old papers?
I’m the quickest tearer-upper in the world. Isabel’s always afraid that I’m about to throw away some “treasure”. Well, I aint got any treasures and I don’t want any treasures. I like rooms as near to monastic cells as possible. The Thew Wrights come to dinner not long ago and I filled up their arms with books to take home—Isabel making anguished signs. Bare walls bare floors—that’s my ideal. Again: to support the soul. As Thoreau cried: “simplify, simplify, simplify!”