Letters (18 page)
Authors: Saul Bellow
We’ve been in Paris nearly a month, rather well settled in an apartment and I’ve already been at work for two weeks and now, if it weren’t for an occasional fusillade of French under the window or at the back of the house, I’d be able to imagine, without the least trouble, that I was in Minneapolis. Except that Minneapolis houses are much better heated. I don’t get out very often now and when I think of it resent this voluntary encapsulation and damn writing as an occupation.
I have a strong suspicion that we won’t be able to remain in France long. The country hasn’t begun to feel the effect of the recent strikes. But three million tons of coal were lost and everyone expects cuts in electric power and gas. In some parts of the city the electric
coupures
have already started and Paris pitch black is no place for us.
coupures
have already started and Paris pitch black is no place for us.
Through Paolo Milano I am in correspondence with people in Rome and we are thinking of heading there. I may go there alone to find a place within a week or two.
I’d be glad to hear that everything is going well with you. Will you send me a note so that I’ll know the lines of communication are up? I enjoyed the Auden reader very much though I was rather horrified at the pieces on Sophocles and Euripides. Everyone to his own form of daring—or outrage.
Best,
Viking had just published
The Portable Greek Reader,
edited and introduced by W. H. Auden.
The Portable Greek Reader,
edited and introduced by W. H. Auden.
To Oscar and Edith Tarcov
[Postmarked Paris, 1 December 1948; postcard of the Champs-Élysées]
Dear Oscar and Edith:
You know what it is for me to write a letter unless directly inspired from Sinai. But I must confess that I am wanted by Sinai for disobedience and various other infractions. I have put off writing till I got my bearings. Now that I have them, I’m going to Italy to lose them. Full explanations soon.
Love,
To Henry Volkening
December 17, 1948 Paris
Dear Henry:
Don’t be too concerned about “Dr. Pep”; it’s a production of impulse and may well be unclear to everyone. It appears to be a sermon on diet; it is really one on our failing connection to reality. Things are increasingly
done out of sight
in an increasingly false milieu and we are encouraged to forget our debt to the rest of the creation, to labor and suffering. This is done in order that we may be able to perform the complicated tasks of a civilization. The whole emphasis of our civilization, viewed on the ideological side, has been on love and gentleness. Now what is the relation between this and the blood shed out of sight? Why, you have revolutionaries who are going to shed blood once and for all, for the gentlest of reasons (Robespierre). You can’t have an omelet without breaking eggs, they say. That is, the secret underlying their gentleness is their ferocity. A humanized and cultivated environment, like an apparently gentle man, often similarly overlays ferocity. The pruning that makes Fontainebleau harmonious gives an idea to the revolutionary. Dr. Pep goes on to say that the true gentleness is to be found in the man whose sacrifice is personal. And that’s the main line of reasoning. As for the manner of writing, I do not find it hard to justify. It gives me great pleasure to jump over the difficulties of required form—required, that is, by the readers trained by editors to look for a sort of strict little dance in fiction. Consequently there is a sort of richness in writing which is supposed to be not for us: the honey in the lion’s mouth. It’s not so much considered daring to go into the lion’s mouth as it is thought bad form. One doesn’t go into anybody’s mouth.
done out of sight
in an increasingly false milieu and we are encouraged to forget our debt to the rest of the creation, to labor and suffering. This is done in order that we may be able to perform the complicated tasks of a civilization. The whole emphasis of our civilization, viewed on the ideological side, has been on love and gentleness. Now what is the relation between this and the blood shed out of sight? Why, you have revolutionaries who are going to shed blood once and for all, for the gentlest of reasons (Robespierre). You can’t have an omelet without breaking eggs, they say. That is, the secret underlying their gentleness is their ferocity. A humanized and cultivated environment, like an apparently gentle man, often similarly overlays ferocity. The pruning that makes Fontainebleau harmonious gives an idea to the revolutionary. Dr. Pep goes on to say that the true gentleness is to be found in the man whose sacrifice is personal. And that’s the main line of reasoning. As for the manner of writing, I do not find it hard to justify. It gives me great pleasure to jump over the difficulties of required form—required, that is, by the readers trained by editors to look for a sort of strict little dance in fiction. Consequently there is a sort of richness in writing which is supposed to be not for us: the honey in the lion’s mouth. It’s not so much considered daring to go into the lion’s mouth as it is thought bad form. One doesn’t go into anybody’s mouth.
I am surprised that you don’t mention the story called “Looking for Mr. Green” which I mailed to you some time before “Dr. Pep.” I was rather expecting you to blow your top over it—as A[lvin] Schwartz would say—and am beginning to think how to reproach the postal bureaucracy for its loss. It may still arrive. Luckily there are copies. I have one and one was sent to my friend Paolo Milano. I don’t believe the copy will be fit to send round—you may not think the contents fit, either. In that case, please have the mss. re-typed at my expense. This kind of delay makes me see purple. And on going through my things I learned that I had lost the mss. of a story, “The Rock Wall,” that I had counted on getting off to you next. I suspect it may have gone with a lot of stuff I burned before leaving Minneapolis.
So is it. Anyhow, I’m working, and eventually something ought to come in that will reward your patience.
We’re going to Nice to spend Christmas and in January I’m going on to Italy for a month. Next April we’ll move there together but at present I want to get off and think through a novel, or novels, for there are several in my mind. I came across a hundred pages of one I began three years ago. Still eminently printable but not the step forward I should like to make.
If the mss. of “Mr. Green” hasn’t arrived, please phone Milano.
Best wishes and Merry Xmas,
To J. F. Powers
December 18, 1948 Paris
Dear Jim:
Congratulations on the baby. It’s an excellent thing to have daughters, once one has accepted fatherhood in principle, and to be spared the Oedipal struggle. Sons don’t light your cigar and bring your slippers. As for the pious beggars at Notre Dame, I don’t know if they’d be willing to intercede for you in a thing like this. For that matter, I haven’t even seen pious beggars near the church. All that neighborhood is full of peddlers of twenty-French-poses and you can’t get into the cathedral without being solicited by half a dozen sinners under the feet of the apostles. It’s interesting psychologically and I suppose there’s a providential purpose around, too, as usual.
We haven’t had any snow, but Paris has been terribly gray and somber and I’d give a great deal to see sunshine. Theoretically, I oughtn’t to mind the weather; I should be working. But there’s some kind of doom, apparently, about the Guggenheim. Rosenfeld and Lionel Trilling and several others in New York told me that I’d better not try to buck it. I’ve written two stories here, but not a word of the novel so far. I haven’t even been able to think of it and I’m planning to go to Italy for a change of luck.
I’ve seen excellent reviews of
Prince of Darkness
in the
Statesman
and the
Spectator
and several good ads for it. [John] Lehmann is doing very well for you. I’ll look out for Italian notices when I go to Rome and send them to you. Swedish is the only language my book has been translated into. I haven’t seen a copy of the translation and I have an idea I’d be shocked by the look of it. I’m hoping to meet Carlo Levi through a friend, Nick Chiaromonte. It must have been I who recommended
Christ Stopped at Eboli
; I was urging everyone to read it in my missionary zeal. Probably trying to earn my professorial pay by disseminating good books. [ . . . ]
Prince of Darkness
in the
Statesman
and the
Spectator
and several good ads for it. [John] Lehmann is doing very well for you. I’ll look out for Italian notices when I go to Rome and send them to you. Swedish is the only language my book has been translated into. I haven’t seen a copy of the translation and I have an idea I’d be shocked by the look of it. I’m hoping to meet Carlo Levi through a friend, Nick Chiaromonte. It must have been I who recommended
Christ Stopped at Eboli
; I was urging everyone to read it in my missionary zeal. Probably trying to earn my professorial pay by disseminating good books. [ . . . ]
You ought to look up Red Warren. He’s an awfully good guy. [ . . . ]
Don’t stop writing.
Yrs,
James Farl Powers (1917-1999), regarded by Bellow as one of the most gifted American writers, was the author of
Prince of Darkness and Other Stories
(1947). In 1962 he would win a National Book Award for his novel
Morte d’Urban.
Prince of Darkness and Other Stories
(1947). In 1962 he would win a National Book Award for his novel
Morte d’Urban.
To Henry Volkening
[n.d.] Freiburger Hof, Freiburg
Dear Henry:
Please forgive me for having made you such a poor return for your fine letters. I haven’t been too busy to write, and I have had plenty of time for it. I have two very long, unfinished letters to you stuffed in among my junk. The reason I didn’t send them was that I couldn’t finish them—they would have each been ten million words long [ . . . ]. Your last letter came with a batch of mail from Paris last night; it contained the news of the
New York Times
item, etc. The only way I’ll ever be able to tell you about these last four months, Henry, is to talk to (not
with
) you—and I long to do this, although I do not know how long it will be before I have that happiness. You must prepare yourself for the ordeal in whatever far-off future: clasp a bottle of your bootlegger’s finest brew in your right hand and endure until the tidal wave shall have spent its force.
New York Times
item, etc. The only way I’ll ever be able to tell you about these last four months, Henry, is to talk to (not
with
) you—and I long to do this, although I do not know how long it will be before I have that happiness. You must prepare yourself for the ordeal in whatever far-off future: clasp a bottle of your bootlegger’s finest brew in your right hand and endure until the tidal wave shall have spent its force.
I am at length in the Black Forest. I arrived here a few days ago by a kind of intuition—the inside of me was like a Black Forest and I think the name kept having its unconscious effect on me. It is a very beautiful place—a landscape of rich dark melancholy, a place with a Gothic soul, and I am glad that I have come here. These people with all that is bestial, savage, super-natural, and also all that is rich, profound, kindly and simple, move me more deeply than I can tell you: France at the present time has completely ceased to give me anything. That is no doubt my fault, but their books, their art, their cities, their people, their conversation—nothing but their food at the present time means anything to me. The Americans in Paris would probably sneer at this—I mean these Americans who know all about it and are perfectly sure what French literature and French civilization stand for, although they read no French books, speak little of the language, and are never alone with French people.
I cannot tell you much at the present about these last four months. I will tell you that I have had some of the worst moments of my life during them, and also some of the best. All told, it has been a pretty hard time, but I am going to be all right now. I don’t know if you have ever stayed by yourself for so long a time (few people have and I do not recommend it) but if you are at all a thoughtful person, you are bound to come out of it with some of your basic ore—you’ll sweat it out of your brain and heart and spirit. The thing I have done is one of the cruelest forms of surgery in the world, but I knew that for me it was right. I can give you some idea of the way I have cut myself off from people I knew when I tell you that only once in the past six weeks have I seen anyone I knew—that was Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald the master of the human heart and I came upon him unavoidably in Geneva, a week or two ago. I can tell you briefly what my movements have been: I went to Paris from New York and, outside of a short trip to Rouen and a few places near Paris, stayed there for almost two months. I think this was the worst time of all. I was in a kind of stupor and unfit to see anyone, but I ran into people I knew from time to time and went to dinner or the theatre with them. My publisher came over from England and was very kind. He is a very fine fellow—he took me out and I met some of the celebrities—Mr. Michael Arlen, and some of the Left Bank People. This lasted little over a day, I was no good with people, and I did not go back to see them. I began to work out of desperation in that noisy, sultry, uncomfortable city of Paris and I got a good deal done. Finally I got out of it and went to Switzerland. I found a very quiet comfortable hotel in Montreux—I had a good room with a balcony overlooking the lake—and in the weeks that followed I got a great deal accomplished. I knew no one there at all—the place was filled with itinerant English and American spinsters buying post cards of the Lake of Geneva—but one night I ran into the aforesaid Mr. Fitzgerald, your old-time college pal and fellow Princetonian. I had written Mr. F. a note in Paris—because Perkins is very fond of him and told me for all his faults he’s a fine fellow—and Mr. F. had had me to his sumptuous ap’t. near the Bois for lunch and three or four gallons of wine, cognac, whiskey, etc. I finally departed from his company at ten that night in the Ritz Bar where he was entirely surrounded by Princeton boys, all nineteen years old, all drunk, and all half-raw. He was carrying on a spirited conversation with them about why Joe Zinzendorff did not get taken into the Triple-Gazzaza Club. I heard one of the lads say, “Joe’s a good boy, Scotty, but you know he’s a fellow that ain’t got much background.” [ . . . ]
I had not seen Mr. F. since that evening until I ran into him at the Casino at Montreux. That was the beginning of the end of my stay at that beautiful spot. I must explain to you that Mr. F. had discovered the day I saw him in Paris that I knew a very notorious young lady, now resident in Paris getting her second divorce, and by her first marriage connected to one of those famous American families who cheated drunken Indians out of their furs seventy yrs. ago and are thus at the top of the estab. aristocracy now. Mr. F. immediately broke a sweat on finding I knew the lady and damned near broke his neck getting around there. He insisted that I come (“Every writer,” this gr’t philosopher said, “is a social climber”) and when I told him very positively I would not go to see the lady, this poet of the passions at once began to see all the elements of a romance—the cruel and dissolute society beauty playing with the tortured heart of the sensitive young writer, etc. He eagerly demanded my reasons for staying away. I told him the lady had cabled to America for my address, had written me a half dozen notes and sent her servants to my hotel when I first came to Paris, and that having been told of her kind heart I gratefully accepted her hospitality, went to her apt. for lunch, returned once or twice, and found that I was being paraded before a crowd of worthless people, palmed off as someone who was madly in love with her, and exhibited with a young French soda jerker with greased hair who was on her payroll and, she boasted to me, slept with her every night (“I like his bod-dy,” she hoarsely whispered, “I must have some bod-dy whose bod-dy I like to sleep with,” etc.). The end finally came when she began to call me at my hotel in the morning saying she’d had four pipes of opium the night before and was “all shot to pieces” and what in God’s name would she do, she had not seen Raymond or Roland or Louis or whatever his name was for four hrs., he had disappeared, she was sure something had happened to him, that I must do something at once, that I was such a comfort she was coming to the hotel at once, I must hold her hand, etc. It was too much. I didn’t care whether Louis had been absent three or thirty hrs. or whether she had smoked four or forty pipes, since nothing ever happens to these people anyhow—they make a show of recklessness, but they take excellent care that they don’t get hurt in the end—and for a man trying very hard to save his own life I did not think it wise to try to live for these other people and let them feed upon me.
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