Airmail

by Robert Bly

Are you coming here before or after the presidential election? That’s going to be a terrible night. I mean, it’s not enough that Johnson will win, he has to win by a landslide. The ghosts must be decisively defeated. I read with nervousness and astonishment in Newsweek a fairly thorough overview of the situation in state after state. Wyoming for instance is considered “SAFE” for Barry. It’s said of some other state (Maine, I think) that people there have always been Republicans and they’ll go right on being Republicans even if they’re against the current candidate. That’s what’s so incomprehensible to a European. The same men who would have voted for Nelson Rockefeller if he were the candidate, are now working and voting for Goldwater. What is a Republican? What is a Democrat? This is the secret motive for my visit to the U.S.—to try to comprehend such things. My translators (especially Eric Sellin) are organizing a few readings for me as well so that I’ll be able to earn my keep (at the university and the YMCA, no, sorry, it was the YMHA). I leave around April 1.

  Once again, come and visit Sweden! Monica, Marie and Paula send greetings.

  Your pen pal

  Tomas T.

  23 Oct., ’64

  50 Rue Jacob

  Paris 6º

  Dear Tomas,

  Nå, her er vi alle i Paris! Kan man tenke om en så rar ting! We’ve been traveling about a bit, having fled from England, like the Hebrews in the dead of the night from Babylonia, and are now settled in an apartment in Paris, recovering on croissants.

  Thank you for your fine letter and for the exciting poems! Let me take up several questions in your letter in order—first, I am glad to hear that Paula has come prancing into this world, and is well, even though she cries a bit at night. It is also grand that you have some time off—how long will your vacation be? All the time until April?

  Thank you also for encouraging me to go forward enthusiastically with Martinson in my little 20 Swedish Poems, and to read a bit in Gullberg. You are right, one shouldn’t worry about covering the ground—just fall on favorite treetops, like some mad snow!

  As I expected, the comments on your translation of Snowfall were all nonsense! It is a magnificent translation—I can sense the same feeling in it—and the details brought up only show how little someone brought up in one language can know of another. I will mention details like this from time to time on other poems, I expect, but don’t even bother to answer them. Just look at them with one eye, like a bird. Only you can judge these things—all I can do is talk—look at them with one eye, and throw them away.

  Oh Goldwater is finished! Don’t worry about that! His secret is that he never wanted to be president. It is all turning out exactly as he wished. That’s why he makes so many odd blunders. (That, and the fact he has the I.Q. (intelligence) of a fairly good football player.)

  The Goldwater backers are the ambitious ones. Unfortunately their intelligence is not too strong either, proved by their choice of a man so clearly self-destructive. The best description I have seen of the group of people backing Goldwater, by the way, is the description of the “revolted masses” in Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt of the Masses. What Ortega thought was a characteristic of a certain part of the lower classes (insistence on self, contempt of civilization) has unexpectedly turned up in America in the middle classes.

  What a fine book that Revolt of the Masses is! One of the best books I’ve read for years. Another man I admire greatly is Groddeck. Has he been translated into Swedish?

  I must ring off now, as the English say, take off in a cloud of camel dust, as the Americans say, declare Adieu! I’ve enjoyed very much the poems you sent. That newspaper out in the weather, on the way to becoming a plant, is wonderful!

  Do write—your pen pal francais

  Roberto de Rue Jacob

  1965

  18 March, 65

  Dear Tomas,

  Oh I’m happy! I have nearly finished my new book! I’ve been working on it for several years, and the last months have worked like a North Dakota farmer, till late at night. Now that is over, and I am ready to travel, and talk, and here you are, going off to America! I think you said you are leaving about the first of April.

  However, our schedule is a little clearer now. We’ll be here in Paris until May 1st, then in May I’m going to pile the whole family in a car, and go down to Italy for a month. Then in early June we come up, back through Paris, and on up to Sweden to see you!

  Actually, we will be staying first at Bettna, with our old friend, Christina (Bratt) Paulston (her first husband was William Duffy, with whom I started The Sixties). She is Swedish and will be at Bettna in the summer with her family. I could therefore pop up to Roxtuna alone to see you, or I can bring my family along. We’ll let that go until we see how everything looks at the time.

  Now, suppose you aren’t back from America in June! Then we’ll postpone the Swedish trip until July. So let me know how your plans look.

  Even though I’ve been writing on poems, I’ve also been translating yours! I enjoyed Hemligheter på vägen very much, and have translated several there, “Efter Anfall” and “The Man Awakened by a Song Above His Roof” among them. I’m enclosing a first draft of “Efter Anfall” here. I’ve decided to restrict the TWENTY SWEDISH POEMS to Harry Martinson, Gunnar Ekelöf, and yourself. So each will have about 7 poems.

  I have translated 7 of yours already, and I’ve been trying to get them done so you could take them along with you to the U.S.! I should have them done in a week or so—just have tiny details left—so if you let me know when you’re leaving, I will get them up to you.

  Meanwhile I want to give you the address of Christina (Bratt) Paulston in New York. You must look her up. She will be at your reading, I’m sure, but if you are in New York for any time at all before the reading, call her, and she’ll invite you for dinner, no doubt. She is taking some graduate work in education at Columbia, and lives not too far from where your reading will be at the YMHA. Chris (married to a man named Roland Paulston) lives at 512 West 122nd Street, Apt. 102. The telephone is UN 4-6000, Extension 742. (It’s an extension because it is a building owned by Columbia University.) During the day she works at the Asian library, and her number there is UN 5-4000, Extension 2087.

  She often says that she hasn’t an ounce of poetic feeling in her, though she has more than she lays claim to. At any rate, I think you’ll enjoy seeing her.

  Your translations of “Laziness and Silence” and “Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter” are very beautiful! They sound as though they were written in Swedish!

  And I could see from Heligheter that this mole is an old friend of yours! John Haines now also has a poem with a winged mole in it! We should gather all these mole poems.

  So I will stop now, and hope that you will write me back right away, telling me—when you leave, how long you’ll be gone, and where you are going in the U.S.! There are poets scattered all over the U.S., like magic seed, an especially heavy grouping out in the West, where James Dickey is now, at San Fernando College in California, and Louis Simpson at Berkeley.

  Yours always,

  Robert

  50 Rue Jacob

  Paris 6º

  First draft only

  After the Attack

  The sick boy,

  Locked in a vision

  with tongue stiff as a board.

  He sits with his back toward a painting of a wheatfield.

  The bandage around his jaw reminds one of embalmers.

  His glassy eyes are thick as a diver’s. Nothing has any answer

  and is grave like a telephone ringing in the night.

  But the painting there. It is a landscape that makes one feel peaceful even though the wheat is a golden storm.

  Blue, fiery blue sky and driving clouds. Underneath in the yellow waves

  some white shirts are sailing: threshers—they cast no shadows.

  At the far end o
f the field a man seems to be looking this way.

  A broad hat leaves his face in shadow.

  He has evidently noticed the dark shape in the room here, maybe to help.

  Invisibly the painting begins to stretch and open behind the man who is sick

  and sunk in himself. It throws sparks and makes noise. Every wheathead throws off light as if to wake him up!

  The other man—in the wheat—makes a sign.

  He has come nearer.

  No one notices it.

  3-23-65

  Dear Robert,

  How pleased I was to hear from you! We’ll meet in June, then; Bettna is only an hour and a half by car from Roxtuna. It’s a beautiful first draft! Just a few details: “glassy eyes”—the boy is wearing glasses, it’s the same as briller in Norwegian; in other words EYEGLASSES

  “He has evidently noticed” etc. I would prefer “He seems to look at the dark shape” or something similar—you give an interpretation where my line gives a description only. In the next line “INVISIBLY” might make for a contradiction later, when the thing in the picture actually starts moving in a visible way. The seed of this contradiction is already present in the Swedish text. I am now inclined to change “imperceptibly” [“omärkligt”] to “slowly” [“långsamt”] or something of the sort. Or take it out completely?—In the last line “NO ONE NOTICES IT” is hard for me to pronounce NO-TI-TICI-CIT-CISS-ITS CIT. Can we make it shorter, like a lock clicking shut? And can we strike “it”? I’m very eager to read your translation at the poetical seances to be held at Columbia University (April 9), Univ. of Philadelphia [sic] (April 12), Univ. of Wisconsin (April 14), and Univ. of Kansas (April 20–23). I’ll probably have flown off to N.Y. in a few days, so you won’t have time to reply here. But please do so to my Philadelphia address, which looks like this:

  T. Transtromer

  c/o Eric Sellin

  4106 Locust Street

  Philadelphia 4, Pa

  U.S.A.

  I’ll be staying at Sellin’s house around April 2–4, and it would be good to have a letter there. If I work up enough courage I’ll probably telephone Christina Paulston in New York. Will be in touch soon. In hurry and friendship

  Tomas T.

  P.S. THE SIXTIES JUST CAME. THANKS!

  31 March, ’65

  Dear Tomas,

  Thank you for the letters and the translations from Ord och Bild & the fine new poem! I am enclosing here translations of 7 of your poems. The translations vary in quality, alas, and are at various stages of being finished—but I wanted to get them to you anyway while you were there, and with Eric. If you find any errors, you and Eric just change them on the spot. I’ll give them all another draft before they are published anyway, so these are more or less provisional translations.

  I feel very bad that I am not in Minnesota, & can’t greet you, and take you out to my poor old farm! But I’ve written Jim Wright & he’s going to try to arrange a reading in which you & he would read together! That would be good! Anyway, even if you can’t, he’ll write you & after you’re through at Wisconsin, you must jump on a train—it’s only 250 miles—and go up to Minneapolis. Jim will take you over to see Allen Tate—the #1 enemy of The Sixties in the U.S.—he thinks we’re as bad as Mao Tse-Tung—but he likes Jim, and Tate is sort of interesting as an

  [Editor’s note: Rest of letter missing]

  8 July, ’65

  Dear Tomas,

  Here we are, in the old Heimat! old Bleie, whose stones have been stained by Bleie-feet for ten thousand years or so, is still here, supporting apples and cows and some taciturn Norwegians. We are in a magnificent camping place at Lofthus, with the Sørfjord under us, and those wonderful mountains with snow across the fjord. Every day or so I start plunging up the mountain, get halfway up, and then sit down in a sheep-shed for the rest of the morning.

  I just wrote Jim Wright and told him about seeing you, and your family, and your taking me to a Moose Museum! It was a wonderful visit to your house. I enjoyed meeting Monica very much. Please give her my best wishes and thanks.

  This letter got broken off, and I am finishing it in England. The trip to Norway remained moving, and now we are back in Thaxted. I’m going into London tomorrow, and hope to go out to Devon and see Ted Hughes. Then I want to go up in Wordsworth’s country, and walk for a few days.

  There’s a rather interesting article by Rexroth in the June Harper’s Magazine called The New Poetry—trying to find out what was going on among those under 35, he wrote about a dozen older poets and asked them what they thought. He has some good gags in it too, his certain peculiar pungent sarcasm.

  I found in my notebook a little poem I wrote at 4 o’clock in the morning while waiting for the ferry to take us from Germany to Denmark. I’ll put it down, as Tao Yuan Ming says, “just for a laugh.”

  Waiting for a Ferry in Northern Europe

  Early dawn, the wind blows around the doors of the car.

  A fat Danish bird takes short leaps on the asphalt.

  The sun makes boxes of light of the cars parked far off.

  And the trucks, leaving the customs sheds with their covered loads.

  One of the things I loved best in Sweden was that calm and grotesque St. George in the Stockholm Cathedral. You know it—the dragon’s spines and claws leap out in all directions inside the church—in some places he has evidently embedded actual reindeer horns. What I like so much is that it is not Italian. The real horseshoes on the hooves—that is instinctual and grotesque, like Dürer & Munch. That’s where health lies, I think.

  Write us soon. We’ll be here until Aug 4th, then to the U.S.A.!

  With thanks again for picking me up & taking me to your house—

  Affectionately

  Robert

  Roxtuna, October 30, 1965

  Dear Robert,

  the other day I finally had that roll of film we took last summer developed. I must say the portrait of you came out well—you’ll have it as soon as get another print made. The sight of the Minnesota man’s red face exalted with genius made a torrent of questions grow within us like a drumroll: WHAT HAS BECOME OF YOU? (And what has become of America—that’s something else I’d like to know.)

  Below you will find the first version of “The Condition of the Working Classes.” It has a certain verve in Swedish, but it’s very possible that I’ve misunderstood the words in the latter half of the poem. Correct it if I did. “Trapped” in line 1 is obviously a problem. As it stands now it is very dynamic: you really see how the poor bricks are falling into the trap. A quieter and more static version can also be imagined: “Bricks lie trapped in thousands of pale homes.”

  Did you know that two of your poems (“Sunday in Glastonbury” and that poem that ends with the faucet in Guatemala) appeared in translation in the the last issue of Clarté? Clarté is the reddest magazine in Sweden, even though the pro-Chinese group has been thrown out of the saddle for the time being. The translator was Lasse Söderberg, an old friend of mine. All I can say is: Welcome to the Söderberg-Tranströmer entanglement! Lasse Söderberg is two meters tall, very fair-haired and quiet, formerly a fanatical surrealist (he has LITERALLY sat at the feet of Breton). We knew each other ten years ago when we were both living in Stockholm. [------] We used to get together occasionally and talk about Life. Afterwards Lasse went to Spain and France and Algeria, married a French woman, and I went to Roxtuna. Since then we’ve only seen each other once, just to say hello. The reason I’m talking about the Söderberg-Tranströmer entanglement is that Artur Lundqvist writes article after article in which he maintains that I (that I in point of fact) have had an inhibiting effect on Lasse’s poetical development. He began as a “wild” poet, and with the years has become increasingly sober. I have sometimes almost felt a sort of guilt complex vis-à-vis Lasse, who has never really won the critics over. (He is a very good
poet.) What kind of strange portent can it be that he has begun translating you?

  My professional life is in the process of changing. I’ve taken a leave of absence from criminal psychology and am now working half-time for PA-rådet1 in Västerås. (A town you must have driven through if you traveled between Stockholm and Oslo.) We’ll be moving there in a month. What’s good about this is that I get to work half-time and can devote more time to literature. Nowadays I’m doing psychological evaluations of people who are handicapped (physically, psychologically, or morally) with special emphasis on their ability to work. Some are also perfectly healthy people who have wound up in the wrong place. As a memorial to my time of considerably more stress and heavy responsibility at Roxtuna, here is the following poem:

  Under Pressure

  Powerful engines from the blue sky.

  We live on a construction site where everything shivers,

  where the ocean depths can suddenly open.

  A hum in seashells and telephones.

  You can see beauty if you look quickly to the side.

  The heavy grainfields run together in one yellow river.

  The restless shadows in my head want to go out there.

  They want to crawl in the grain and turn into something gold.

  Night finally. At midnight I go to bed.

  The dinghy sets out from the ship.

  On the water you are alone.

  The dark hull of society keeps on going.

  [Robert Bly translation]

  Write, man! My address till December 1 is still Roxtuna Linköping. Monica sends love.

  your friend Tomas T.

  1 Dec., ’65

  Dear Tomas,

  I’m sitting in a little house in New Concord, Ohio, the house where Jim Wright’s parents live. Also born in this town was—of all people—John Glenn. Jim is upstairs, writing a poem about Sinclair Lewis. I wanted to tell you why I’ve been so close-mouthed. I’ve just finished my new book of poems! I’ve been working on it incommunicado, and just finished it on Monday. On Wednesday I left for the anti-government demonstrations in Washington. (There was a convention there too, to organize the anti-Vietnam-war groups into a national group.) So on Saturday, we all went out and paraded around the White House. It was interesting. There were 20–30,000 people, an amazing number of them 50–60 years old, also a lot of entire families pushing baby carriages. The mood was not angry, but the people seemed confident, particularly over the number of people that had come from all parts of the country. We sent two busloads, nearly a hundred people, from Minneapolis.