The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder
Page 52
So who did they place me between at lunch? Lucky Wilder! Between Carson McCullers and Djuna Barnes. “You’re not eating that good roast-beef, Carson,” I said. “I can’t cut it up,” she said. So I—synchronizing with the television cameras—cut her meat very nicely. “I just saw that exhibit of your work in the Paris show about American-Expatriates-in-the-Twenties, Miss Barnes.” “Must’ve been horrible!” “No—very attractive. I went with Miss Toklas.” “Never liked her!” “Really—and Miss Stein?” “Loathed her.” “I was especially interested also in the Joyce exhibit.” “Detestable man.”
And they could have placed me between Dottie and Marylin
x
Well, that’s the penitence I had to pay for the good hours with you.
x
I owe you a dollar.
x
But who’s going to reimburse me for the beverages I had at the Colonial150 waiting on the chance that you’d turn up?
x
Tonight in Hamden it is as hot as (fooled you that time) gulyás.151
Ever
Thornton
268. TO LOUISE TALMA. ALS 5 pp. (Stationery embossed Hotel / Algonquin / 59 West 44th St., New York 36, N.Y.) Yale
Oct 3 <1959>152
Dear Louise:
I arrived here yesterday afternoon and found your letter waiting for me.
The first thing I wish to say about it is that I see that you are suffering. This calls out all my sympathy. I am distressed that you are unhappy.
The second thing is that you are suffering for no reason at all. Your suffering is real, the grounds for it are made up out of your own head.
The third is that you are unjust to me.
How do you suppose big productions are negotiated?
If I sent an elaborate play to the Theatre Guild, and they wrote back that they accepted; and if they said they could produce it in the 1959-1960 season but would produce it in the Fall of 1961, I’d call at the office and shake hands. I’d smile. They’d smile. They<’d> say: we’ll be thinking over casting and choice of director. And I’d say I’ll be thinking over casting and choice of director. They’d say we’ll send you a contract. And I’d say thank you, I’ll be away, but my lawyer or agent will read it and send it to me and I’ll sign it. And then we’d smile and shake hands. And I’d go.
If the play were to be performed, however, within the next few months, I’d cancel my sailing, and we’d go to work at once on various details of production.
If the opera The ALCESTIAD were to be produced within the next eight months, I would certainly stay long enough to be of moral support to you in the details of production. THE COMPOSER is THE “AUTHOR” of an OPERA—the 90% predominant ‘true author’ of an opera. When the time comes that this opera goes into production I shall be present at whatever conferences you wish me to attend.
You have known for a long while that as soon as Isabel’s health permitted, I must get away. I must escape from Connecticut and from Greater New York which extends as far as Hartford. I am leaving October 15; anybody who saw the life I lead would have wished me to leave Sept 1.
I think its very melodramatic of you to write “I have worked uninterruptedly four years with utmost devotion and under great pressure to make a fine work….. for you. … and now you go away at the crucial moment.<”>
Wem sagen Sie das?!153 The heroic years of work I love and honor. The finished product I love and honor. The rhetorical pointing out of it to me seems unworthy of you.
The phrase “for you” means I hope for my words—which you have gloriously transcended—; and for my pleasure which you have overwhelmed; “for me” in its dedication which honor I bear proudly. But great works of art should not be considered as for any single person or group of persons
Presumably in the next 90 days a committee of musicians will recommend to Mr. Bing that this opera be accepted or rejected. The decision will be made through a study of the score. Every person associated with such procedures assures me that it is unthinkable that the DECISION be reached by PIANO performance of the score. Any piano performance would come much later—when the work has been accepted—and will certainly be reduced to the Maestro’s ernest and deferential inquiries about many CRUCES. They hate the piano as a substitution for orchestra. PIANO Partchers<?> are for artists rehearsing with their coaches.
I leave in a few minutes for Hotel Claridge, Atlantic City, where I shall be finishing two plays for the typist.
Please show this letter to Dr Elizabeth.154
None of us escape suffering, but let us be sure we suffer about essential things. You have made me suffer at the spectacle of you in great distress over an emotional imagined situation of your own making.
Lots of love
Thornton
269. TO GILBERT AND JANET TROXELL. ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed: Hotel / Curaçao / Intercontinental / Waterfort, Willemstad, Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles) Yale
Jan. 11. 1960
Dear Troxells:
It’s the duty of every tourist in far places to represent the rewards of foreign travel as enviable. It is unsporting to share with the stay-at-homes the slightest intimation that there are many hours in the day when one does not know what to do with oneself, that there is a limit to the numbers of times when one can pinch oneself and say ‘oh what a privilege to be actually here’.
But.
There were three cruise shiploads in our port today.
As I sat on the terrace before lunch sipping my coca cola this is what I heard:
‘Oh, isn’t that too cute for words! I didn’t see that in any of the places I was at.’ ‘My niece is starting her second bracelet; see, I got her this charm—it’s the Dutch coat of arms, I guess’.—<“> I got this for my maid; she’ll love it.—The lanjree
Like I always said: There’s nothing so narrowing as foreign travel. By the time I’ve been five months away I’m right back to my Wisconsin boyhood; I start yearning for peanut butter sandwiches and a tricycle.
By sunset Wednesday I’ll be in Miami, Florida, and can start feeling international again.
I’ve got some new material to submit to Lincoln Street,155 but I’ll linger in the south a bit in the hope that Isabel will feel like coming down.
You will charitably ascribe the dullness of this letter to the heat.
Thy devoted
Thornton
I enclose the latest card from my mysterious correspondent. I assume the message is in Arabic. Who can it be?
270. TO LOUISE TALMA. ALS 8 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / Hamden 17, Connecticut) Yale
Sunday
Dear Louise:
What makes me thoughtful is that Mr. Bing didn’t ask you to lunch.157
If he—or his consultants—approved the work, he would
have asked you to lunch; and
given us some glimmer of his appreciation.
xx xx xx xx
You know me by now: that I don’t give a damn about the disfavor of this group or that. I glory in the opera and have the serenest confidence that it’ll be heard innumerable times. Nor am I crazy about the Met with its aroma of opera-grind and star-adulation. Nor about City Center158 whose public is being crammed with subsidized patriotism-inspired mediocrity. Where is both joy and dedication? Where is hushed listening?
TNW and Louise Talma.
TNW and Louise Talma. Courtesy of Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
xx xx
If Mr. Bing is very Viennese suave and kind. “We particularly wish that you had chosen a contemporary subject—” (that’s Mrs Belmont’s note159)—“the work is one of extreme difficulty” (any respectable crowd could sight-read
Vanessa160). Delicate Refusal.
xx xx
As I say, I shall hold my tongue until my silence has drawn all the position out of him. Then I shall ever so lightly adumbrate the overtures from elsewhere and my overtures to elsewhere.
xx xx
If I’m now mistaken, and if Mr. Bing (who has learned to make it a practice never to show enthusiasm about anything) does take the other line:. … “very much like to considerate it. … don’t see how I can fit it into the next two seasons. … would you and Miss Talma be very distressed if we asked you to wait… of course, we would wish to have the première. …” etc. Then I shall find the need of putting on a little pressure—not so much for advancing the date, but for nailing him down to a real committment.
xx xx xx xx
Now, Louise dear, I love to dine with you at any time; I love to be with you at any time—but I get as nervous as a witch when I’m in a conversation that goes round in circles and that’s what we do on this subject. And I get as nervous as a witch when any artist of stature starts talking about what THEY say—critics, neighbors, friends, wringers of hands, tearful loved-ones. Think of the works of art that the world loves and honors that have been repudiated, kicked around, had to wait for their éclosion (I hope that’s French).161 Why, it’s an honor to be rejected. And every now and then when you say something in that realm of status-nervousness or prestige-fearful I’m struck dumb. I cant find an answer. I’m embarrassed to look at you. You are so unjust to yourself. The composer of The Alcestiad should walk the streets and the corridors of Hunter College with the presence of the Nike of samothrace.
This “self-consciousness” on your part I put down to residence at places like the MacDowell Colony—and that’s why I look back on it with discomfort. Art in a world of kaffee-klatsch and “Rowena is having a one-man show in Wilmington, Delaware.”
xx xx xx
I’m certain that it’s best for all that’s best between us that we don’t have dinner Thursday night and dont talk around in circles and dont get me nervous as a witch. But, if certain positions to take—relative to Mr. Bing—have become clearer to you, do write me about them. I shall obey you implicitely and I know I shall grasp them much better in the written form. ¶ You remember that I have to return to that promised engagement in New Haven on Friday night with Mrs. Coffin. I wont know where to telephone (about Bing’s lunch) during the afternoon; and I can’t get out of my dinner party before 11:30 or so. Probably I shall best send you a night-letter.
xx xx
I was contracted to A and C. Boni for a second novel: They almost turned it down because they felt it was written “for a small over-cultivated circle of readers,” i.e. The Bridge of San Luis Rey
on tryout the manager cancelled the second week in Boston because the reviews were so bad. Our Town
The Lunts “liked” Skin of our Teeth but would not consider playing it because it was so defeatist. It reached New York and never was there a play “where so many people walked out at the end of the first act”
Merchant of Yonkers failed in New York—with not more than 100 words altered in
Bonis so disliked Heavens My Destination (“the American scene is not natural to you… and the comic spirit is not either<”>) that they gave up their contracted right to it and let me carry it to Harpers.
xx xx
There’s nothing that leads to more wasteful expenditure of the creative energy than to depend on the verdicts of others.
xx xx
Whenever I hammer this doctrine I feel fine and I hope you’re laughing, too
Lots of love
Thornt.
271. TO GERTRUDE HINDEMITH.162 ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed 50 Deepwood Drive / Hamden 17, Connecticut) Yale
April 11. 1960
Dear Mrs Hindemith:
Many thanks for your letter.
I must now explain to you this great delay in replying to it. Your letter was received here while I was about to take the slowest boat on the seas from Naples to Central America; it was forwarded to Venezuela, but I did not get off the boat at Caracas because there were riots in the streets. The agency in Caracas did not forward mail for weeks while I wandered from Curaçao to Florida. By that time it was to late to reach you in Switzerland as you said you were leaving for Paris and America. In Florida my sister joined me—convalescent after an operation. My concern over her improvement made me postpone all other interests. Finally, arriving home, I asked Grace Donovan163 where you could now be reached.
Please forgive this long delay.
x
I am indeed proud that your great husband has taken this interest in setting my play to music. I am most happy to leave in his hands any work of adaptation he would find advisable; his skill in the literary aspects of musical forms is well known and admired.
of all my plays it is the one that has found the widest variety of receptions. At some performances it has been played to constant laughter; some listeners are deeply moved and shaken by it; some find it cruel and cynical (“What? The dead are forgotten so soon?”) I once saw a production at the Stadttheater in Baden-Baden, infinitely slow and lugubrious—it took forty-five minutes.
When I wrote it, I directed that the characters as they age draw gray wigs from under the table and adjust them on their heads. I have seen it “work” quite effectively; but at most performances it has not been necessary; the actors have been able to indicate the advancing years by pantomime alone.
x
Whether Professor Hindemith approached such a work in English or German, the question of a German text would ultimately arise. The present German text is by Herberth Herlitschka who lives near Ascona. I assume that Professor Hindemith has also had much experience with translators and knows that they are the most sensitive, the most easily “wounded” of human beings. considering all the problems of translation that does justice to the musical line, your husband would, of course, be the ideal translator. If for any reason he were too occupied to do this, I trust the work would be assigned to Herr Herlitschka, who is a splendid translator, who has a rich musical background, and who particularly prides himself on just such adaptation toward musical requirements.
x
I hope that the unfortunate delay in replying to your letter has not caused yourself and your husband to change your mind about this project. It is with deep pride and happiness that I would know that any work of mine was to be expressed in music by so great a composer.
With many regards to you both,
Very sincerely yours,
Thornton Wilder
272. TO AMOS TAPPAN WILDER. ALS 2 pp. (Stationery embossed Hotel / Algonquin / 59 West 44th St., New York 36, N.Y.) Yale
Aug. 2. 1960
Dear Taps:
Uncles should write sententious letters to their nephews. Polonius-style.
But today I scratch my head and I haven’t got a glimmer.
You say you are about to turn to history and plunge into the “glorious past.” Watch your semantics.
“Glorious” is a concept which external-minded people apply to external things. Everybody thinks that Vth Century Greece was a glorious age—but Sophocles “the happiest man in antiquity” decided that next to dying quickly the best thing was never to have been born at all, and in the next generation Plato spins constructions that will keep him from falling into despair about man and society—The Republic is an opium dream. The Age of Louis XIV—“glorious”? La Bruyère wrote: “What are those blackened animals I see leaning over in the fields—can they be men?” A century later they straightened up and there were rivers of blood.
FOUND THIS AMONG MANY OTHER UNFINISHED LETTERS IN MY DESK.
Others say we study history in order not to repeat the mistakes we see there.
That was the hope of 19th Century “meliorism”; much was made of the phrase that “History repeats itself”. That is held by very few now. The circum
stances we confront while we live them are different from any others that ever befell. As Prof. Whitehead164 was never tired of saying “every occasion in the existence of a conscious being is unique. … happens but once.” The resemblances to previous occasions are there for the non-engaged to see and be impressed by (all historians, except the very greatest, are the quintessence of “outsiders”); but they are not
There is a kind of history that I find absorbing but I do not know its name. It is the bringing-to-light of the successive images and myths and prompting that move the masses of men, for good and ill. It is therefore “psychological”—the very word was first coined a hundred years ago. It is the meteorology, the ever-shifting weather of man’s and Man’s minds. This study lies partly in religion, in ethnology, in psychoanalysis, in comparative mythology. It’s focus is on mind—of which mere events have to
The whole category “history” and “historians” in our time has become mere academic stagnant pool. Occasionally the universities through