by Robert Bly
Love from us all
to you and Monica and
Emma and Paula
Robert
27 July, ’71
Dear Tomas,
You’re right—this is the first good translation the Mormon feminist has made. I’ve made a few minor suggestions—don’t tell her they come from me! I’ll be the invisible advisor, communicating to you as Madame Blavatsky’s advisors used to, from “somewhere in the hidden Himalayas.” They are said to have been living for four hundred years “in caves on the slopes of Tibet,” etc.
I like your translations of “Spiritual Death” and “The Sleeping Woman”! And I’m pleased that you liked them! With the word “loggolve”—threshing floor—the reader should pick up the feeling of the threshing floors in the Old Testament, such as the one Ruth slept on or a threshing floor where Tammuz or Adonis dances would be held in Mesopotamia. The poem has a modern feeling in English, except for that line, which suggests Mesopotamia, and the last line, which suggests a Middle Ages witch in a fairy tale woods...
(And I think it’s true psychologically, that if a man dies, spiritually, his wife will then—almost as if by natural process—become a witch.) (I thought I’d praise my own poem!)
The word “acquarious” in “The Sleeping Woman” is almost a pun, since it simple means the water is watery, but its liquid syllables do help the water to flow along...“Akvarieaktigt” may have an oversurplus of consonants—I can’t tell. It might be possible to use a word connected with the astrological sign Aquarius, since that was also drifting through my water-longing head.
I’m going to try your Snowmelt poem—the Times Literary Supplement writes me that it wants some poems of yours for an issue this September—but you’ll have to help me with the last line. Is the bird sailing past death or the dead or the grave?
Each will produce a different mood in English. Also, is the bird flapping, or floating on extended wings? Is he an eagle, a crow, a mythical Persian bird, or just a bird? “Fugel” has such a lovely open sound in Swedish. I see why you all use it so often. But it doesn’t help with color!
A friend in N.Y. sent me this clipping from the N.Y. Times of last Monday. I certainly dislike the idea of adding an “e” to all Swedes’ names! It’s like adding water to milk. [My name is mentioned, and Lars is evidently meaning to insult me, but I couldn’t tell for sure. (Did you see the Time magazine article on American poetry in mid-July? Look at it! It’s wonderful.)] I see you’ve been laying the groundwork for a new golden age with metaphors sharp as needles. This is dangerous work! Always wear gloves.
Your friend,
Robert
Västerås 4-8-71
Dear Robert,
good to hear from you again, but the news about your brother and his family made me very sad. The catastrophes with cars are the modern equivalent to smallpox, almost every family has some victim. About the same day as you lost your brother, a woman was killed in a crash in Yugoslavia, a woman I had been very close to in 1954–55. (She was killed the 7th or 8th of July.)
xxxx
About “loggolvet.” It is a Swedish word with a lot of old peasant life aroma. It is not biblical, just old, simple, rural. I looked in the Book of Ruth to see what the Swedish Bible has for the place where Ruth was lying. It gave “tröskplatsen,” a hopeless word without biblical quality.
xxxx
Lars Gustafsson’s presentation of Swedish poetry looks exactly like a chapter from one of these books about Sweden, written by mildly interested and informed Anglo-Saxons who have some fixed idea. Interesting to see how writing in a foreign language can change the outlook. As for you, it was probably meant to be the highest possible prize—you are compared to Enzensberger, Lars’s hero. I must go to the library and ask for the Time issue. I will write when I have seen it.
All good things for the Blys and their numerous children.
Tomas
August 15 [1971]
Västerås
Dear Robert,
a black day. I just left my TV after having seen our discus-thrower Ricky Bruch make a fool of himself and all Swedes in the olympic stadium of Helsinki, where the european athletic competitions are performed. This fool, Bruch, a human broiler, stuffed with hormone pills and talking like Cassius Clay, did not throw his damned discus longer than 59 meters—in small unimportant competitions he usually throws it 66–68 meters. He is nr 2 in the world in his art (only Jay Silvester is better) but as soon as it comes to important, international games he loses his nerves completely and the whole nation cries.
[------]
In the competition for fools I think I will give the palm of victory to the author of the Time article about U.S. poetry. I found it at last in the library. I suppose this presentation falls into the category of “middle class thinking” and it is always wonderful to see almost perfect expressions of such things. Time probably thinks that it has done a good service to poetry by giving “publicity.” Anyhow, I feel very safe, knowing that I am patronized by an authorized polemical roarer, when I come over to Your country in October.
Talking of roaring: I think the liberties You took in translating “Snow Melting Time” will help the poem survive in English. So I like your solution. The Times Literary Supplement is an improbable place to appear in. Do You really say they wrote you and ASKED for a translation? Of course I agree to it.
Tomorrow George Young from N.H. will visit me, I just talked to him by the telephone. I heard at once from his voice that he is no fool. So I look forward to seeing him.
Love from us all. Write soon!
Your friend
Tomas
About the snow-melt poem...It is a small thing only, but the snow-melting of 1966 was big—it had been such a long and hard winter and all of a sudden it was summer, water overflowing.
Tumbling tumbling water, roar, old hypnosis...The Swedish word “störtande” has more water in it...it is a current, perhaps a cataract. You are on the bridge. Further away a churchyard for old, dead cars. The water is overflowing it too, glittering behind the empty shells of the cars (also, perhaps overflowing human beings, glittering behind their masks—e.g., the faces...). I am standing on the bridge, in a slight dizziness. Gripping the bridge parapet. The bridge is like a large bird of iron sailing past death. “Segla” in Swedish is a calm word, no flapping. The type of bird: albatross. But larger. And of Iron. Sailing past death.
Drawing on next page.
1 Sept, ’71
Dear Tomas,
For an anthology of Swedish poetry I’ve prepared, I’ve had to write a note on Aspenström. Would you read it and tell me if it’s utterly absurd...All I have of his is his 66 Dikter, published in Svanens Lyrikkclub in 1964. And what’s even worse, in the introduction there’s a sentence I can’t understand at all! I attempt to translate the exchange he sets down between Mayakovsky and Esenin. Mayakovsky says:
“For my part I think the stanza beginning ‘I walk alone out on the road’ is a campaign to get girls to go for walks with poets. A person walking alone is bored, you see! O, would that poetry were given such powers that it might urge people to join together in cooperatives!” I can’t grasp the meaning of the second sentence at all. The other two I took a guess at.
Your faithful blockhead,
Robert
3 Sept, ’71
Dear Tomas,
This is a letter about your Tour. Notice the colorfully marked sheet I have enclosed, indicating the schedule, subject to any modifications you have (within reason) (or without). I have told them all the fee will be $250, and if the Swedes pay the air fare, as they evidently are going to do, and if you don’t spend too much on whiskey and doughnuts, you should be able to go home with about $2000–$2500 after three weeks of labor.
Here is the way it looks:
1 Sat–Sun: October 16–17—special poetry weekend at Cornell College set up for you by Wm Matthe
ws, hopefully John Logan and Jim Wright will both be there also, a sort of minor festival.
2 Tuesday: October 19th—The Academy of American poets very much wants you to come and read there at the Guggenheim Museum on Tuesday night. Jim Wright will probably introduce you (unless he has a class that night—we haven’t been able to get hold of him) and will maybe read the translations. Two disadvantages: they can only afford $150, and you would have to come back to New York from Ithaca. That’s not hard, and you could come by train, either on Monday the 18th or Tuesday the 19th, but you would have to fly out to Cleveland the next morning, for your reading at Oberlin on Wednesday.
The Academy is about to print its fall program, and so this is the only place that needs an immediate answer from you on this day: Tuesday, Oct 19th. Could you send a cable to
Elizabeth Kray
Academy of Poets
1078 Madison Avenue, NY
and just say: “Yes I will be there,” or “No I can’t come on the 19th.”
It might be fun to have a reading in New York; you’d meet some of the New York poets etc. etc.
3 Wednesday: Oct 20th—I’ll join you at Oberlin for the reading there. That should be fun. It’s the best small college in the U.S.
Then we will come back together to the farm in Minnesota, and you will spend the weekend with us, and Micah’s baptism will be Sunday.
4 Monday: Oct 25th—We’ll drive together to St. John’s Univ in Collegeville, Minn, an excellent Catholic college, and read there. I’ll read translations for you.
5 Tuesday: Oct 26th—We drive to Gustavus Adolphus, another college in Minn where the Swedes hang out, but you’re being asked by the English department, and will not have to answer any questions about the Swedish economic system. On Wednesday we part company and you go to:
6 Thursday: Oct 28th—You have a reading in Boulder, Colorado, sponsored by the Scandinavian Dept. It’s the only one I accepted, but it was the only way to get you easily into the Rocky Mountains. Boulder is a lovely place, just at the east edge of the Rockies, as they rise straight up out of the plains.
Friday, Sat, Sun—You now have three free days, which you can spend any way you wish. It would be easy to rent a car in Boulder and drive alone to Pocatello, Idaho, if you’d like to. Or you could drive part way and catch a plane the rest of the way. This is marvellous west ern country between Boulder and Pocatello, and you’ll go straight up and over the best part of the Rockies, if the passes are still open.
7 Monday: —reading in Pocatello, Idaho. Very good feeling of what Idaho is like.
8 Wednesday,: Nov 3rd—I want you to see San Francisco, so am arranging a reading at San Francisco State, which is the poetry Hub of San Francisco. Lots of freaky poets around here, and the only beautiful city in the U.S.
9 Friday: —If you want to go to LA and Disneyland, a reading on the 5th at Univ of Cal at LA.
Then you could either fly directly home, or if you’d like to give one more reading in the South, I can arrange one in North Carolina very easily. Or maybe you’d like to hit the South the next time you come. Let me know on this last point. I didn’t want to commit you until I knew how much time you had.
So if you do accept the reading in New York—and I think it would be fun for you—that makes three readings a week, for three weeks. If you’d like me to add one more, either during the three weeks or after, nothing would be easier. I arranged these mainly so that you’d see the Western U.S. a bit. Tell me how the schedule sounds!
Love from us all!
Excitedly
Robert
Västerås 13-9-71
Dear Robert,
Your planning is beautiful. Especially I like the generous time with you and Carol and the 3 silent days between Boulder and Pocatello. But probably I will not have time for North Carolina this time. I hope to do it when I come to Pittsburgh next year.
But my visit to the traveller’s bureau here was a disappointment. I told them that I was going to give a few readings and they telephoned the U.S. embassy and they said that my readings are regarded as WORK in the U.S., so I have to ask for a “certificate of eligibility” from all the 9 places and after that I could hope to get a special sort of visa. I alarmed the Swedish Institute and they had never heard about this problem before—many Swedes give lectures without such certificates and a mild panic expanded. I just now wait for a telephone call from Mr Walldén...well here the telephone call arrived...Mr Walldén (my favorite bureaucrat1 at the Swedish Institute) is telexing Mrs Arvidsson in Washington (you might hear from her very soon, probably as early as the day before yesterday) and something called “Sverige-Amerika-stiftelsen” seems to be entrusted with permission to give a general “certificate of eligibility” and when that arrives I can go to the embassy and get my visa etc. Bureaucrats! Rats! As I am no drug addict or TB patient or member of the Communist Party I have some hope to be able to do these readings after all. Let us take it for granted. In the meantime, many thanks for your wonderful job and good planning.
Enthusiastically,
Tomas
P.S. I forgot the Aspenström problems. Your introduction is reasonable. But I doubt he has translated Hart Crane.
“Den ene har tråkigt ser ni” means word by word THE ONE (means “one of us,” means “I”) has a tedious time. Means “One of us is bored, you see.”
What is absurd is the story you told about Sonnevi’s Viet Nam poem. A sailor’s yarn. Palme was never inspired by this poem. The truth is that he did not know that the Vietnamese should take part in the demonstration together with him. When Palme arrived, the Hanoi ambassador was there, smiling, and it was too late for Palme to get out. Keep strictly to the truth when writing introductions especially when you have to do with such serious fellows as Sonnevi!
Your always faithful,
Tomas T.
20 Sept, ’71
Dear Tomas,
I don’t deliberately try to tell lies in introductions, you know! Some Swede told me that story of the electric effect of Sonnevi’s Viet Nam poem. But how did you see that one? I only sent you the Aspenström, as I recall. I hope you’ll return the Aspenström sheet if you still have it, since it’s the only copy I have at the moment (and it’s obviously a GREAT WORK). I don’t know a thing about W. A. but Leif says he translated Hart Crane. If I can’t believe the Swedes, then what will I do? Chasms of unbelief yawn.
There’s a rumor in Iowa City that you have agreed to come to Paul Engle’s International Writers Visiting Program for 4 months next year. Is that true? Goodness, such popularity! TLS for Sept 10th carries two poems of yours—I trust they sent you a copy.
We’re broke here and eating tomatoes.
Your friend, Robert
Västerås 25-9 [1971]
Dear Roberto,
here is the Aspenström introduction back again. I kept it, yes, I did. People have a fantastic ability to remember that they sent me some letter or manuscript, sometimes 3–4 years ago and suddenly, they ask for it back. Recently a literary forestry officer from South Sweden wrote me that the manuscript for an autobiographical novel, written in advanced William Faulkner prose with phonetic spelling of spoken language etc., had been stolen from him in France. He asked me immediately to return the 3 pages from it he sent me in 1968. Earlier this year a psychotic Västerås lady demanded I return a confused letter written with a lipstick and smuggled out of a mental hospital in 1967 etc. I keep everything! The problem is always that I don’t know WHERE I keep it. But I have a U.S. box where I keep all transatlantic correspondence and one IRON CURTAIN box where I keep the East European things. But the Swedish letters are dispersed, crawling like cockroaches everywhere in the house. Even my own poems sometimes get out of sight.
I have received a “certificate of eligibility,” a general one, covering all places where I will read, from the State Department, so I sent it for
ward to the U.S. embassy, asking for a visa.
I have never been asked to come to Iowa. And if invited I have to say no thanks as long as Monica is studying and my children are in school. I would welcome such an invitation 10 years from now. But it is nice to hear that I have readers in Iowa. I definitely have a better reputation abroad than in Sweden. I am inclined to suspect your translations are better than the original poems. That does not disturb me. What matters is that the texts give people something, if you or I am responsible for their experience is irrelevant.
Thank you for the 20 poems, they arrived the other day! I was happy to have that drawing (“man with a kerosene lamp standing upon a reindeer”) on the front page. I also like the brown color, unsentimental like hard bread. But too much praise on the cover! My wife thought it to be accurate but personally I think I am nr 7 or 11 on the ranking list of 20th century Swedish poets. Most literary officials in Sweden would think I am nr 24 or 29. Your own reputation is in danger! Let us forget all ranking lists. Everyone is a world champion in his own art!
Goodbye!
Your friend
Tomas
30 Sept, ’71
Dear Tomas,
I’ve finished my new book! O glumphious joy! I think I’ll call it Sleepers Joining Hands.
Beacon Press, who is printing the Swedish anthology, reports that I have only 2 poems of Aspenström’s in the anthology and they think that’s too little. Would it be an imposition—Yes it would!—to ask you to suggest six or seven poems from his 66 Poems (it’s the only book of his I have) that you think are solid? If his best poems aren’t in that book, tell me, and I’ll order them from Sweden.
Tomorrow I go up to the north woods to be alone a week!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Every word I say on the jacket of 20 Poems is the exact and literal truth—Monica knows that.
Signed, Coleridge