Steinbeck (94 page)

(“And another thing, darling bug. Do you know that if we want to speak privately we have a language that even the experts in that Stalin Gothic University can't possibly work out because it is a personal language full of references you can't know. It's been good knowing you, dear reader. And I do think I know you. You are stupid and the job you are doing is stupid and it won't work. Why don't you get wise to yourself? Meanwhile it has been charming talking to you. And I wish you a thousand years! Spasiba, Bolshoi, and screw you. Yours very sincerely, J.S.”)

Elizabeth, I have wanted to get that off for a long time. Steffens came home after the October Revolution of 1917 and his headline was “I have seen the future and it works.” Well, I've examined it three times and I can say it doesn't. In our democracy we give up a lot of efficiency for the safety of our principles. But here they keep working at failure. On a pig farm I asked what they were doing about importing breeding stock—nothing. The Virgin Lands fiasco is a dirty word. We learned the hard way in Arkansas and Oklahoma. We could and would have told them how to hold down the dust. Everything is blamed on a bad year—nothing on bad management. All through the south—Georgia and Armenia—I saw no evidence of contour plowing. And we would have told them. The land is eroding away.

Well, at last I got a letter written to you.

Love to all there,
Jn

Warsaw
November 24, 1963

Dear Elizabeth:

The shock of the news was terrible. We asked if we could get through to you by phone and were told there isn't a chance. Every facility is loaded. Mail takes 10 to 14 days to jump the curtain so I am going to put this in the pouch which goes on Tuesday. Tomorrow—Monday—we are flying to Vienna out of the curtain and the first thing we will do will be to put a call through to you. You can't imagine the shock and frustration. We can't get any news. We wanted to go home but then we thought that it would be chicken. The greatest respect we could pay would be to finish the job we were given. Yesterday was dreadful. I had to meet and talk to about 200 university students and later to have a huge press conference. It was made easier by the consideration of the Poles. They offered condolences and did not press us. Also, we were able to cancel all social things.

Coming out from behind the curtain is going to be a shock. Poland is better than Russia but if we had come here first we would have found it intolerable.

I have been fighting off fatigue for days. I didn't think I could get through yesterday—but we did. It's amazing what you can do if you have to. I even coined a word yesterday for what we are doing. I described us as culture-mongers. But it turns out this is impossible to translate into Polish. No matter—it's still good. And I'll use it again and again.

We are lonesome and homesick. Yesterday a woman came up to Elaine and said, “I have to talk to an American, I am an American.” They fell into each other's arms and wept. It can get pretty lonely. I knew it but you can't tell anyone—it isn't possible.

Maybe we'll get caught up sometime. Again love,

John

Warsaw
November 24, 1963

Dear Mrs. Kennedy:

Our sorrow is for you but for us—for us—

We are in Warsaw as culture mongers at your husband's request which to us was an order. This is Sunday after black Friday. I wish you could see our Embassy here. In the great hall is a photograph and beside it a bust made by a young Pole who asked to bring it in. Since early morning yesterday there has been a long line of people—all kinds but mostly poor people. They move slowly past the picture, place flowers (chrysanthemums are a dollar apiece), and they write their names and feelings in a book. Numbers of volumes have been filled and today the line is longer than ever. It went on all night last night, silent and slow. I have never seen anything like this respect and this reverence. And if we weep, seeing it, it is all right because they are weeping. That's all —Our hearts are with you and we love you—all of us.

John and
Elaine Steinbeck

Warsaw
November 24, 1963

Dear Mr. President:

May I offer my profound respect and loyalty to you in the hard days ahead. Our shock and sorrow are very great but we know the office is in strong, trained and competent hands. Our hearts are with you.

At the request of President Kennedy my wife and I have been moving about behind the Iron Curtain, talking with writers and with students. Being non-diplomatic, we have been able to observe many things not ordinarily available. And if these experiences can be of value to you, they are freely offered. Some of them are highly unorthodox.

I have never met you but I have a curious tie with you. When my wife was in college in Austin, one of her class-mates was a boy named John Connally who said, “Go on into the theatre in New York but as for me, I'm going into politics. There is a man named Lyndon Johnson and I'm going along with him. He's going places.” I wonder whether he would remember. Her name was Elaine Andersen—later Mrs. Zachary Scott, now Mrs. John Steinbeck.

We think it best to go on with the plan laid down although our hearts are heavy, but we hasten to offer anything we have to our President.

Yours very sincerely,
John Steinbeck

New York
January 15, 1964

Dear Friends:

When we left you and flew away to the north, it was my noble and misguided intention to write a separate and personal letter to every man and woman who had made our visit a special memory. I feel no shame in admitting that I can't do that. It would take the rest of my life and even then, I would leave many out, and how would I write to those whose hands I touched, whose eyes I looked into, whose health I drank and whose names I do not know? Failing in my resolve, it is with some shyness that I address this letter to all the people of Tbilisi, to the singers, the writers, the flute players, the people who served us and gave us pleasure, who listened to us and talked to us—yes—and argued with us. That was good, too.

This letter is addressed to the pretty girls swinging their skirts along the street, and to the old gentleman in his garden of the mind, to the men squeezing the heart-blood from the grapes, and to the cellar men who dug deep in the casks to dredge up for us the maturing wine. I address the good dinner companions who sang country songs in four-part harmony, and raising their glasses toasted us with such compliments that we wished we could find the heart to believe we were as good and beautiful as they said we were.

And so, I address this letter to the city itself, to the high cliffs and girdles of pines, to the chattering river which gnawed a gateway between two worlds, to the clean sharp distances dancing over foothills and up to the mountains that edge the earth surely. And this letter is addressed to the quiet and permanent wedding in Tbilisi of the ancient and the new. The people in the street look out of old, old eyes on a fresh world which they, themselves, have made. Is it any wonder then that the greatest crop in Georgia is poetry?

I know the history and the pre-history of that gate between two worlds and how it drew the wolves from everywhere, looking with steel eyes for greener lands or set to slam the gate and hold the pass.

It seems, and is to be fervently wished, that by a favor of time and processes, the wolves are caged and the gates are opening all over the world. This is my prayerful desire, and if I could choose a mission for my own, that would be it—to help cage wolves and open doors.

I have probably left out many things in this attempt of a letter—but then, I never wrote a letter to a city before.

Clinging in our memory as tight as a burr on a sheep's belly are light and gaiety and kindness, and strength to protect them and these against a background of the sun-brown city and the talking river of the Gateway of the World. Keep it open, I pray you.

Yours,
John Steinbeck

New York
January 15, 1964

Dear Friends:

I am addressing this letter through the Writers' Union to all of my old and new friends in Ukrania. The tough old guard whom I knew as soldiers when Kiev lay ruined in its own streets will know in what high regard I hold them. But I want to address my thanks also to the young, strong ones who grew up as the city grew back to greatness. I want to thank them for coming to greet my wife and me and for making us welcome.

It pleased me greatly, but did not make me vain, to discover that I was remembered in Kiev. That gave me a good feeling like that of coming home.

What I want to say to my friends is that although we differed and argued and bickered over small things, in the great things, we agreed.

Lastly, I ask you to believe that when I disagreed, I did it there with you and faced your answers. For I do despise a guest who flatters his host and goes away to attack him.

What I have to remember and to tell my people of is the kindness and the courtesy and the hospitality we were offered. These alone constituted a great experience.

Yours,
John Steinbeck

New York
March 26, 1964

Dear Casey:

I am astonished that your letter of December 27th has taken so very long to reach me. When you put it in the troika, you neglected to add enough children to throw to the wolves, so that your letter could come through quickly.

It was a good time, Casey, and we are grateful to you for all of your help. You say that you had to explain why I couldn't see more people, when it is my opinion that I saw every living Pole at least three times.

Oddly enough, the separate container of photographs and press clippings arrived before your letter did. And I did like very much the article by Bohdan Tomaszewski. It had the advantage also of being true, whereas the man who wrote the article which said that I had small and arthritic hands must have been somewhere else.

Anyway, Casey, happy hunting.

My love to Wanda and Elaine sends her best.

Yours,
John

New York
February 25, 1964

Dear Mrs. Kennedy:

I have your letter, which most astonishes me that we could make so many contacts of understanding in so many directions and so quickly. But such things do happen, wherefor I do wonder at those people who deny the existence of magick or try to minimize it through formulas.

I would like to do the writing we spoke of but as always, in undertaking something which moves me deeply, I am terrified of it. If I am not satisfied with its truth and beauty it will see no light. Meanwhile, as it was with those brave and humble Greeks, I shall make sacrifice to those powers which cultivate the heart and mind and punish the mean, the small, the boastful and the selfish.

You bridled, I think, when I used the word Myth. It is a warped word now carrying a connotation of untruth. Actually the Mythos as I see it and feel it is the doubly true, and more than that, it is drawn out of exact experience only when it is greatly needed.

Since I was nine years old, when my beautiful Aunt Molly gave me a copy of the Morte d‘Arthur in Middle English, I have been working and studying this recurring cycle. The 15th century and our own have so much in common—Loss of authority, loss of gods, loss of heroes, and loss of lovely pride. When such a hopeless muddled need occurs, it does seem to me that the hungry hearts of men distill their best and truest essence, and that essence becomes a man, and that man a hero so that all men can be reassured that such things are possible. The fact that all of these words—hero, myth, pride, even victory, have been muddied and sicklied by the confusion and pessimism of the times only describes the times. The words and the concepts are permanent, only they must be brought out and verified by the Hero. And this thesis is demonstrable over the ages—Buddha, Jove, Jesus, Apollo, Baldur, Arthur—these were men one time who answered a call and so became the sprits'ls of direction and hope. There was and is an Arthur as surely as there was and is a need for him. And meanwhile, all the legends say, he sleeps—waiting for the call.