Airmail (38 page)

[------]

can’t do it in English, because the pun on Sanning and sound-barrier only exists in Swedish! What can I do? Make up a new title?
At the Edges of Truth
?—How about
The Railroad Crossing of Truth
?—or
The Customs Barriers of Truth
? See what I mean?

Do write—your friend

Robert

Love to Monica!

5 Feb, 79

Dear Tomas,

How good to get a letter! You certainly did right to remove that sentence of Monica’s...my enemies would be sure I had added it in proof anyway. My reputation for modesty is not extreme, since occasionally I rewrite Goethe, and this is—I don’t know why—considered immodest by some.

I was most alarmed when you began to plunge into the subject of your health; but relieved to find it is only high blood pressure. That is not serious. And I now understand the Danton poem...if I might start a new school of
Medical Imagery Examination
I would say that Danton’s being on stilts is a sure diagnosis by the unconscious of high blood pressure. But no one listens to me...the poem says you have to become more like Robespierre, take long baths, spend hours on your toilette, etc. My poems say that I spent too much time in the snow, and I must move out of my teepee.

I think I
will
try to use the word “customs” in the title of your book. I’ll try to think of a casual expression for those custom benches and desks and check out counters that one finds in the European airports...Did I ask you to send me a copy of whatever translation you’ve been using of the Schubert poem? It will save me many questions of you, but on the other hand...I can figure it out if you’re willing to correct my stanzas without humiliating me too much. I’m sensitive, being Norwegian...By the way, I met that dear man, Lou Camp when I read in Pennsylvania recently...(At Wilkes-Barre, when I was being driven back to my bed, I saw a movie theater marquee, with the words

FLOOD INNOCENT

on it. I thought it was a movie about a flood, but it turned out that the famous representative Flood had helped so many in Wilkes-Barre with his numerous crooked schemes that the theater owner put the phrase up there as a sort of primitive magic...the verdict is not yet in from the jury.) Lou Camp’s wife has left him, Bobbie...I was astounded at that, but it seems that she really wanted a career, and felt that Lou’s presence was a drawback in that area. He’s not very happy at all with the situation. He said something like “Now she has a career, and I am suffering!” He is still at Bucks County Community College.

I am finishing an anthology for the Sierra Club, of “nature poems.” I decided to make it a polemical anthology, dividing the poets who believe there is no consciousness outside the human brain from the poets who sense a consciousness out in the trees and countryside. Work on it is very exciting. I’ve put in Harry Martinson’s “Havsvinden.” I am going to put in a poem of yours, for sure, but I haven’t decided which one yet. Do you have any thoughts on this? Perhaps “A Section of Woods”...or an earlier poem?

The situation with the family seems to be all right. I enjoy deeply the two weeks that I spend each month with the children in my new house in Madison. And Carol and I are quite friendly, in literary matters, and in attempts to care for the children, and that is very helpful. She has finished a new story, and has established her crossword puzzle business. It all seems so strange...I can’t really take it all in yet. I vary between depression and elation. The moods, and even the events, are by no means completely under the control of my will.

I send you both my affection and love.

Robert

April 2, 79

Dear Tomas,

Thanks for the news! It sounds as if Monica is coming
out of retirement.
Ellen Goodman is publishing a book of interviews with various American women who have been changing their lives, and one woman said that when she got married, it was like agreeing to
retire.
“I went into retirement right away”—How odd! So they get younger as they leave retirement—how strange!! I think Monica must be doing very well.

I’m enclosing my translation of your marvelous Schubert poem—please pick its poor nappy head for fleas, muskrats, porcupines, whatever creatures are living there unjustly. Is the end right?

I plan to send it to the
New Yorker
just to see what they will do.

We are all well here, quivering a little over the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant—but otherwise cheerful.

I’m thinking of coming over to Scandinavia during the first two weeks of August. Do you think the Swedes would want me to read anywhere? Was it Svenska Radio who was looking for me last spring?

Saul is sitting here with me, on the lake shore, at Kabekona, and sends his best!!

Love from your friendly

“animal helper” as in the

fairy stories—

Robert

Västerås April 14 -79

Dear Roberto,

Thanks for a good letter, and a translation which is magnificent in tone (but with minor howlers...I will return later to them). Monica is back, after working for almost 3 weeks in Skåne with the Viet Nam refugees, or rather not directly with them but with establishing a medicare center for them in Perstorp, where most of the families will be housed. I visited her once. Perstorp was a gloomy place and could be much helped with a Chinese part of town. Now she is back in retirement for the next weeks, and around May 1 we will go to Corfu for a week. And Emma has left us. She is living together with a young man called Kenneth Karlsson! She looks happy, so I hope he is a good fellow, but rather shy—he gets very nervous when he catches sight of me or Monica.

I am happy to hear that you will come to Scandinavia in August. It is not exactly the season for cultural activities, but the Radio is always open. I will warn them in advance this time, so you can be invited to talk endlessly to the Swedish people, and also get paid for it! John Gardner was here recently and they had a 2 hour “conversation” with him. I remember a part that went like this:

Interviewer: And who is, in your opinion, the most important prose writer in America just now?

Gardner: Well, I know it sounds a little arrogant, but actually I think it is me.

etc. It is also possible that a cabaret in Malmö, called “Fredagsbarnen” (or is it “Mandagsbarnen”?) is active. They have readings and music etc. I have been a guest there once (in 1974). This cultural cabaret is handled by Lasse Söderberg and Jacques Werup, and I suppose Lasse would be happy to have you read there, if you come to Malmö, and the cabaret is not closed. Write to him! I will figure out who is the best person to warn at the radio.

Love

    Tomas

[Editor’s note: Continuation of April 14th letter]

Let me praise you first. The sound, the music the strength in your translation made me happy...

SCHUBERTIANA, comments.

Part I.

There are 2 places where I put a question mark. The first is “holding out a begging cup,” which might be too drastic, Oriental, old fashioned, medieval. Maybe the begging of department store windows is more of a modern salesman teasing type. (I don’t know how it sounds...) I mean, I don’t want the reader to see a leprous hermit sitting there in the window, holding out his cup. “Whirlwind” is a little too strong too. Why not “swarm”?

The other thing is “catacombs in motion,” which for me sounds almost like “slow motion.” What struck me in New York was the violent rushing of the subway cars. Now a catacomb is static, calm, lifeless. A catacomb rushing forward is a paradox, but a ghostly and dangerous paradox. If “in motion” gives that impression it is OK. But the risk is that the motionlessness of the catacombs takes over the word “motion,” so it becomes “slow motion.” Why not “rushing catacombs”?

Part II

“Treeless” is unnecessary, maybe dangerous. If you mention a tree, even in connection with “-less” you see a tree in front of you, and I don’t want to have those trees in my brain!

“Hundred-footed notes”...I say “tusenfotingar” which is a small animal, in my dictionary called “centipede” or “millipede.”

Do you see the similarity??? I want to have the animal kept in your translation. If you are allergic to centipedes you might use your version. But you have to give a reason.

For part V you say “Nor their music,” but I suppose “Nor” is a misprint for “NOT.”

Part III:
perfect
.

Part IV:

(Most of it I have to take on trust.) But “the Western Union message” is too Middle West! “Olyckstelegram” is probably untranslatable. It means a telegram with bad news, maybe fatal news. Can you say “calamitous telegram”? Probably not. Charters has “telegram about the accident,” which is too long. Well, you have to think more about it.

(The talk about the ax blow from within is probably a presentiment of my high blood pressure...)

I am also against the “string musicians.” I know that you cannot use “the bows,” but maybe you could say “string instruments,” or “bowinstruments.” I don’t want to have
the musicians
talking to me, I want to have the music.

Part V:

The part with our hands moving weights is a little disturbing. First, I don’t think you should repeat “It looks,” because it sounds as if it belonged to what looked “ridiculous” (previous line). No, the hands moving weights are not ridiculous. (What is ridiculous is the position of 2 men on the same stool, two drivers for the same carriage.) So start with the hands. They are moving weights etc. not in order to make the arm of the balance stand in a position of 50% happiness and 50% suffering. NO, we are trying to change it a little to the happiness side (probably without success). As if we moved the counter-weights, in an effort to alter the frightful equilibrium of the balance arm, where happiness and suffering weigh exactly the same.

Annie did not say “awfully heroic.” She said “This music is heroic” (I am, as you know, almost always documentary) and she said it neutrally, or with estimation.

A question mark for “the higher / depths.” It
might
be good. Difficult for me to know. But you should know what it means in Swedish

uppför = uphill

djupen = the depths

a paradox here too, or rather an unexpected turn. up / the depths...

25 April, 79

Dear Tomas,

Thank you for your letter, and the comments! Goodness, how strange, that Emma has leapt out of the nest! It seems to me they are both children...do you mean that my daughters will fly the coop too? Oh dear, that’s not right.

There is so much talk here now about the special “TRANSTRÖMERNUMBER” of
Ironwood.
I’m jealous of course. “No one ever does that for me!” I whimpered that to myself when it came, but I have recovered now, and enjoy greatly the American poets’ puzzling as to why you don’t fit into the neat categories of American poet-making. You carry some sort of European authority as well, and they believe what you do or say...I feel a Goethe-complex approaching.

I’ve sent “Schubertiana” to the
New Yorker,
and if they accept it, we’ll both get a little money! I think you’re right on “begging cup” and I’ll change that.

“Catacombs in motion” is declared by all hearers as a lucky phrase, full of energy and very ominous. It is the repetition of the long “o” that gives it its mystery, I think. “Catac
o
mbs in m
o
tion.”

I tried “centipede” and it is terrible! In Swedish you actually see the
feet,
in “Tusenfotingar” and I have to have a way in English for the reader to see feet also. If I say
centipede,
he sees a cellar, dirty, with broken linoleum, old orange peels, backed up sewer, etc.

“Treeless” I’m not sure about. I’ll brood on it.

“Western Union” I
will
change!

Your note on the weights is helpful—I believe Sam Charters has it wrong too—I just checked his—I understood you to say exactly the opposite, that suffering and happiness are equally valuable (weigh the same)! I’ll work on that passage.

Who is this Annie, the authority on the heroic? I thought she found it too heroic! There I am reading my interpretation of women’s consciousness into women.

“upward toward

the depths”      ?

Love,

    Robert

29 April, 79

Dear Tomas,

How strange it is! On Friday two unusual things happened, both surrounding you. About two years ago I met a young man at M.I.U. (Maharishi International University at Fairfield, Iowa) who drew well in pencil, and I asked him to do a few drawings for the next book of your translations. On Friday he turned up, with 14 MAGNIFICENT DRAWINGS, inspired by your new poems, copies of which I had sent him...they are full of energy, powerful horses, intelligent sheep, a cow floating in the air with a luminous udder (a sort of introverted, Asian cow)—I think you’ll like them very much. I’ll ask him to do three more—I liked 12 of the 14—then we’ll have 15 poems and 15 drawings for
Truth-Borders.
About twenty minutes later, the door opened and Augustin and Brita Mannerheim came in! They stayed overnight, and I took them along to an extravaganza the 4th, 5th, & 6th grades put on at the local school, with Noah as a miner, all the kids singing “American music.” Then the next day I found out that he, like me, is determined to write in classical length meters—another sound-fanatic! I liked them both—and they spoke of you two so warmly—cheered my heart—