Prose (77 page)

“Industrialization” is inevitably the future for all these backward countries, no doubt. Since it is a choice of evils, apparently, for Brazil (I had hoped they'd find another, neutral way out, but I don't think they're strong enough to)—I'd much prefer the American variety to the Russian—which is all Russia amounts to any more, isn't it?

Carlos has been invited to England—he was so rude to the French (& very witty, too) that England immediately invited him over. Now if he'd only study British Trade Unions—but he probably won't!

 

Rio, April 10th, 1965

Dear Anne:

I suddenly have realized that more than a month has gone by—almost six weeks—since I wrote you and that I haven't heard from you. I wonder if my letter could have got lost?—or perhaps yours back did?… The “revolution” did improve the mails at first, but lately we have been losing things again—one I know of, coming from England a few weeks back—maybe your letter was in the same batch (I think they disappear in batches, and occasionally re-appear in batches, weeks later). I am packing up to spend a week or ten days in Petrópolis this morning and started putting your BOOK in my bag, when I remembered that I hadn't heard from you at all, and I thought how awful it would be if you hadn't received my first letter about it … Heavens—so much has been happening here lately, I hadn't realized just how long it had been. I do hope you haven't been worried or thought—oh dear—I didn't LIKE the book!

This is just a note—I'll write from the country. I did write and acknowledge the book and said I'd be sending you a long letter soon—well, the soon is now six weeks—but I'll get it off from Petrópolis. Just now all I'll say is (and if you got my letter forgive me for more or less repeating myself)—I know how hard you had to struggle, so I think perhaps you'll be surprised when I say my first impression was one of remarkable
freshness
and
spontaneity.
Compared to the other Twayne books I've seen, it sounds fresh, young, sensitive,—not a bit like those tired academics parading all their tired little theories and clichés.—It also sounded as if (or I
think
it did) you had really enjoyed some of my work—and I hope you did, and are not forever incapacitated from liking it again, after all your work. I liked the quotations (I'll write more about Wittgenstein to you someday) and delighted you dedicated it to Mark. It you have already received a letter saying all these same things, forgive me—and if you haven't, forgive the Post Office—and forgive me for letting so much time go by before it dawned on me I hadn't heard from you.

My “long letter”—is just a sheet or two of small corrections, all in the biographical part—nothing to do with the other parts. I must have written you awfully hurried and confused letters, like this one. The corrections are all just facts,
*
nothing to do with your interpretations (very nice) or opinions, etc.—I thought I'd better get them straight, since yours is the first book to publish them, and probably the last—dates, names, etc.—So please don't worry. And as I said before—congratulations on a really difficult piece of work well done. There was so little to say about me—and you did find enough, and said it awfully well—more later … Now I hope you haven't been sick, or your family hasn't, and that's why I haven't heard—and where is your book of poems? I am eager to see that.

Much love,

        
Elizabeth

 

Did the permission get cleared up? I wrote HM [
Houghton Mifflin
], and the agent—long ago now. The agent was also furious with HM—“absurd” he said.

 

Here for a few days only—

Ouro Prêto, Minas Gerais

May 20th, 1965

Dear Anne:

I hope you can forgive my long silence, and I do hope I haven't held up the book or given you a lot of trouble about it … I really don't know why I found such difficulty writing about it, except that I don't seem to like to talk about myself any more. I am afraid you will think these many little corrections both finicky and egotistical. But you are the first person who has ever written any of this down, and you may well be the only one to, and so I'd really like to get the facts right, this once. I'm sure you can understand that feeling? They aren't important to anyone but me, really.—I must have written to you hastily and incoherently and now I am putting you to a lot of work, and I am really sorry.

Perhaps I'll mail off just this first page today and re-write the other corrections—all Chapter 1
*
—and mail them from Rio. I see I started to do this for you in
March
 … I have never stalled so before. I really am dreadfully sorry.

You know, I didn't receive your letter written from the hospital—and I am sure now that you didn't get at least one of mine. I have lost a lot of letters lately—Write only to the Petrópolis address (oh—I think you already do that)—because I suspect I lose even more of those sent to Rio. Now I see that a month ago you said you'd write after you got properly moved, and I do hope
that
didn't go astray. I hope your new house is working out nicely—how very exciting, and send me a snapshot of it! Lota and I were supposed to go to Italy on May 2nd—and had to change our plans because of her job. I had thought I might get back to England just about the time I did last year. Now we are planning to go to Italy in late September or the first of October—but I must say it seems a bit doubtful to me, she is so busy with this last stretch of park-building.

I am sorry to hear about the miscarriage—and I've always been told by my friends that they have an awfully depressing after-stage. I wonder when your child & husband take off on their summers, and if you are really all alone in Cambridge? Where is Mark going? And what are you writing? Yes—please don't get a dog until I know when I am coming back!—unless you are just too lonely, or need a watchdog badly—Surely I could stay at some inn or other—only they're apt to have dogs, too, in England. I am trying to persuade Lota—to come to England with me—telling her London is the best place to shop in the world, because that's what she likes to do best—but so far I haven't had much luck.

I have been working away seriously at Wittgenstein, some every morning, after coffee, in bed,—and it still comes and goes, but I have found some wonderful paragraphs. I think the quotation you use at the beginning is splendid.

I've read your book through three times now, I think.—And, I think I told you—and hope it finally reached you—that my first impression was one of real freshness, spontaneity—and feeling how wonderful it is to have even one reader as good as you. Do you suppose there are any others—or even a few half as perceptive? The other Twayne books are academic-sounding—“competent”, all done in the latest approved clichés—yours is very different, thank heavens, I think it must have been horrible to do—my life is so uneventful and I have done so very little, really—but you managed it, somehow. Lota read it, and said right away “This sounds as if she really liked your poetry.” And I hope you did at the time, and are not forever incapacitated from doing in the future. [ … ]on Monday. Please do forgive me, once more—I feel very guilty about this slowness. I hope you're all well and will please write me again very soon—

Love,

        
Elizabeth

 

INTRODUCTION

P iii, 5 lines from the bottom. Shouldn't
or
be left out?

P v: My grammatical mistake, pure carelessness. PLEASE change to “interpret exactly as he sees fit.” Horrors.

 

CHRONOLOGY

1934 went like this: Met MM. Mother died. Graduated. And leave out Mary—we had been friends for three years, but she graduated in 1933, and other friends were more important to me. I'm afraid I sound a bit too friendless in this part and in chapter one—I really wasn't!

 

1939,—again, the emphasis seems a bit wrong. I had friends in N Y and in Key West. Loren MacIver, the painter, and her husband, Lloyd Frankenberg, stayed with me in K W, and through Loren I met the Deweys. Leave out Mrs. Hemingway here—we were closer friends in the later '40s.

 

1951—Academy Award earlier—a year before Bryn Mawr, I think, or 1 in the spring, other in the fall.

 

1952. Lota's name is Maria Carlota Costelat de Macedo Soares, no accent marks. But you don't need all that, just Lota de Macedo Soares. You could say “stopped over to visit friends in Brazil” (I had others beside Lota—I met several Brazilians in N Y during the war) “Had a violent allergic reaction to cashew fruit and had to give up trip to the Straits of Magellan.” That is what actually happened. I hate “ill” and think it sounds too mysterious, or neurasthenic. (See Chap 1, p 16, for the same thing. Couldn't you say there that I had asthma and bronchitis? Except for asthma, a hereditary tendency, I am really
very
healthy, and I think it is better to come out and say what ails one rather than give the impression one is a hypochondriac, or perhaps a dope-fiend …)

 

1952—“short stay” in N Y, rather than a “visit”. I still feel like a New Yorker. I kept my garret in N Y all the time I was in Florida, too—so I could get back whenever I wanted to. I would now if I could afford it—

 

1961—yr. I went to the Amazon 1st (I'm going again next month). But I have traveled some almost every year I've been there.

 

1962—Chapelbrook Fellowship

 

1964—Book on architecture comes 1st; I worked on it in 1956. I wish you'd skip the translations. They amount to next to nothing, no real work, and no real interest. Or just say I have translated some prose & some poetry, from the Portuguese. I can't be considered a cultural go-between,
nor do I want to be.
The fact that I live in Brazil seems almost entirely a matter of chance …
perhaps not, but that's the way it seems to
me
.

 

QUESTIONS OF TRAVEL is coming out in October, with Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Houghton Mifflin is bringing out a re-print (paper back) of the 1st 2 books, about now. Chatto and Windus is also bringing out another collection this year or next.

 

I am working on a book of prose pieces about Brazil,—places, mostly, with a bit on baroque churches, popular music, one or two life-stories,—maybe. This will be done in about a year or 18 months. At present I am using the title BLACK BEANS AND DIAMONDS:

 

Petrópolis, this time—but Rio is the best

address these days—

November 14th, 1965

Dearest Anne:

You have been hiding your light under a bushel—at least as far as I knew. I am very much impressed with your book and think some of it is wonderful, and all good, and that you have enormous talent. Although I'd like to have seen some of these before, I also think you're wise to spring the whole book on people like that because it does make much more of an effect. and also shows character,
patience,
etc.—& patience particularly seems to be a necessary ingredient in writing poetry …

I hope you haven't been expecting to hear from me long before—I did stay in Minas for over two months to buy a completely unnecessary house, but a beauty—but this is a secret for a while, please. I'll tell you all about it later. Lota kept forwarding batches of letters she thought were important, but she didn't send books or magazines, etc., and then at the end she kept a lot of letters because I meant to leave, couldn't get a plane for a week because of the weather, etc. Your books (I got 2) had been unwrapped, so I don't know when they were mailed to me. So I'm sorry if I have been indifferent or impolite—

I hadn't any idea you could write such good poetry and it is such a nice surprise—however, I would have thought you'd write careful & beautiful poems, if you did write them—I just never dreamed of the number or the really high quality. It has really cheered me up a great deal when I rather needed a little cheering, too. I like very much: To My Daughter in a Red Coat, (the last three lines are lovely); Fairy Tale; The Traveller (almost best of all, I think—more later); Nightmare in North Carolina; and the title poem—and lots of others, too, but those are my favorites so far. Why haven't I seen them, I wonder—well—I get Poetry but don't always read it carefully I'm afraid—and I used to get Paris Review but finally let it stop—and the others you acknowledge I don't see—that's why.

The Fullbright Prof. of American Lit. in Rio this year was so much taken with “The Travellers” he wants to put it in an anthology he and Donald Justice (??—I think—someone fairly well-known) are doing. His name is Mark Strand—you'll probably be hearing from him. He borrowed my 2nd copy to study and might like more
poems.
Also—while I'm on this promotion paragraph—Ashley Brown, one of the founders, and an advising editor still, on SHENANDOAH, thinks he would like to see some chapters of your book on me and perhaps—if Twayne agrees—one could be used in that magazine. It's Ashley Brown, 921 Gregg St., Columbia, South Carolina, 29201—if you want to write him. I have just sent him your address, too, so probably you'll hear from him, if you'd rather wait. He was the Fullbright Prof. here last year and we saw a lot of him—very intelligent—I may have mentioned him—I went to Bahia and Ouro Prêto, etc. with him—an excellent traveler. That would be a good place to send some poems, too, I think—send them c/o him
Shenandoah
& mention me
—but then it is better, I suppose, to tackle the more famous ones first—Partisan, N Y Review of Books, Kenyon, or Hudson, etc.—or the New Yorker. (As you know perfectly well.)