B007RT1UH4 EBOK (35 page)

(Item) About the time you have this letter (D V) (an abbreviation I have also wondered about, having had a friend named David Vail . . .) —we may have talked by trans-Atlantic Telephone. On the other hand, we may not. The point of this is that I am going to try to put a call through to you at the Latham, but if I do not reach you, and things turn up as they did in a similar intention from Panama, I only want you to know, if you should have frantic news from the desk that you have missed a call from Mars, that it is not dark-winged news, but intended quite the other way, what with spring being a greeting in the form of natural prodigies, and Easter the myth incarnate, or re-incarnated, in most religions, Resurrections being apparently an old stock-in-trade of the most ‘pagan’ (indeed!) legitimisations of (this) life.

(Item) The enclosure is cut from one of my most pleasurable discoveries, a fearfully Tory newspaper called the (Continental)
Daily Mail
(the Paris edition of the London paper). You will probably be glad to know that I have found a reasonable substitute for that NewYork purveyor of current beauty, the
Daily News
; for the
Daily Mail
(a very respectable paper) tells me about such wonders as the man who swallowed 19 (open, I gather) safety-pins in a (successful) effort [to] remove himself from this valley of temptation . . . —But re the enclosure: the writer doesn’t seem awfully bright or talented or much shakes at all; but what he says of Our City has scratched a nostalgic itch in the dermis of my memory: and I wondered is it really like this? I hope so for you.

(Item) With hands shaking in anticipation, I received the book by Robert Graves. It has proved to be 4 times as wonderful, and 40times as difficult, as I had expected. But with the marvelous opportunity I have enjoyed in other lands, what with my lack of the reading I need, has proved as I hoped-against-hope to be exactly referent to the web of questions in my mind at present—as the Toynbee did when I was happily marooned on Caribbean shores. If I put down here on paper all the things I want to I would not end the letter, because that would amount to making the notes on these ideas which I am trying to make for my own nefarious purposes: so suffice only a hilarious thanks, and a sort of hysterical re-assurance that my thoughts and the slowly transmogrifying products of my imagination, whether consumately pagan products or not, are being articulated and validified.

And so we finally reach Sevilla, where I am now, a dump-heap of history “which combines the peculiarities of a harbour town with the exuberant fertility of a southern landscape, and joins a present, full of rich, sprightly and harmonious life, to an abundance of artistic monuments indicative of a brilliant past” (Baedeker). Where also one may have a glass of wine and small dish of fried octopus hide for 5¢ and, for dining out in more modest establishments, a plate of fried blood and potatoes for 15¢.

Right now we are Celebrating a series of occurences which took place some 1949 years ago, and which, as I remember the daffodilic spring of Berlin Ct., are taken for granted with quiet reverence in those cold protestant hearts; but here we must re-enact it. And so the handsome ladies and their greasy escorts step from block-long automobiles, mingle with their countrymen (halt & blind, faces scarred with pox, eyes closed by syphilis), and celebrate the beauty of eternal love, another better life, and the all-embracing bounty of Holy Church—while He Who does not miss a sparrow’s fall apparently misses a few adept sleights-of-hand among his sub-vicars locally ordained. The great images carried through the streets on these evenings are quite as prodigious as one could ask—a Virgin adorned with every richness of brocade that artifice can manage, illumined by hundreds of candles, compassionate tears on her face and fists-full of jewels, a bosom loaded with precious gems, many donated by True Believers who suddenly troubled themselves over the camel-&-the-needle parable and unloaded a few of their vain fripperies (. . . All I’ll keep are these 17 diamond pendants and that emerald-&-diamond brooch, and I better keep this emerald-&-diamond bracelet, & the earings, after all they’re a set . . .) and Our Lady is carried down the avenue—you can see the feet of her bearers underneath the brocaded velvet hangings, straw-soled cloth shoes of bearers who get remission for Sins—those who can’t pay for candles . . . —down the Avenue, with her compassionate tears, holding out ropes of pearls to the syphillis-blinded lottery-ticket seller, who holds his child up on his shoulders—though the kid can’t see much: his 4-year-old eyes are crusted and starting to close with the heritage of the sins of his father. Life is very long.

Certainly you did much better to go see
The Long Voyage Home
than worry over such things as Is H. really Dead? I have had similar arguements here, though ridiculous, with fasces-bound ‘friends’—I can’t see it matters if he is or isn’t dead, history is done with him.

The going-to-France-fever is down, I have less & less need or notion (though the idea of spending a month or two with Jake, getting things exchanged & re-aligned as it were, is good)—but recently I have started to get much more of what I came for here, in the way of thought- and imagination-provoking observations and circumstance. A letter from Barney this morning; and a fine thing to have; if this does not sound pretentious (which it is, to repeat, but:) “(Spain) sounds ideally suited to your mind and the kind of work you want to do. Being the wandering Jew all over again won’t make it any better. Hang on for a year at least . . . that from what I have seen of your work I know that you have a facility with words, quantity and ingenuity, and a preposterous imagination which moreover you enjoy using, and Good Lord! in a world gone rabid, every man making faces and fists at one another, what else can be so important to you to make you move from the less disturbed Spain to the more savage (if enlightened) France. To bother yourself again with the American mecca . . . Stay where you are, don’t be tempted and lured by the violence in others . . .” &so forth. But a very good and re-assuring letter, and I do now intend to stay with a better-rewarding feeling of permanence, ie of getting what I need, which is just starting to take form in my mind with clarity.

What else? I think of nothing immediate (except the idea of mail-delivery in M[assapequa]. is horrifying: I should be inclined to burn Sunshine Shanty to the ground before it becomes situated in Zenith . . . The mailbox is a nice notion—but someone ought to drown John B Gambling. Let me know if you get this letter.

with love,

W.

Also another enclosure, your son in a Moorish town—just to prove that it is me sending these idiotic letters.

monsters and fancy lights: again, from “East Coker.”

Mr. Haygood: William Converse Haygood (1910–85), a novelist and later editor of the
Wisconsin Magazine of History
from 1957 to 1975
.

beggar is on horseback: from the proverb, “Set a beggar on horseback and he’ll ride to the devil,” meaning someone unused to luxury will abuse it if given the opportunity.

D V: Deo volente (Latin, “God willing”).

Resurrections being apparently an old stock-in-trade: in
R,
Wyatt speaks of the days following Jesus’s crucifixion when “resurrections were a stock in trade” (384).

enclosure [...]
Daily Mail
: unidentified.

He Who does not miss a sparrow’s fall: Matt. 10:29.

camel-&-the-needle parable: Mark 19:23–27.

The Long Voyage Home
: a 1940 film directed by John Ford about passengers on a ship transporting dynamite across the Atlantic during World War II. Or: the play by Eugene O’Neill on which the movie was based.

the wandering Jew: a legendary figure who taunted Jesus during the crucifixion and consequently cursed to wander the earth until his return.

John B Gambling: American radio personality (1897–1974), host of a New York City radio show called
Rambling with Gambling.

To Edith Gaddis

[
This follows two letters from Madrid dated 29 April and 2 May trying to entangle the mess of mailed cashier’s checks and cancellations. It is postmarked Elizabeth, NJ.
]

Madrid

3 May, 1949

(and I quote),

I’m tired of love; I’m still more tired of rhyme;

But money gives me pleasure all the time.

I am also, despite this moment of confusion which may be suddenly arisen in your mind, still in Spain; but herewith take advantage of a friend who is flying to NY in a few days, where I trust he will post this letter, in which I have a few things I hazard to have in the hands of Spanish censors—not that I believe our mail is censored, but still . . .

By now, I trust, the whole cheque confusion is cleared up, and you not receiving mail behind bars (prison bars I mean) [...] I am sorry it takes such a mess to clear things up: I had tried to make it clear in other letters, this necessity for cashiers cheques, but always with the care of trying not to say too much, in the event the letter was stopped and read.

From now until I believe the middle of June I shall be at the Sevilla address, though if you mail to Madrid it will, D V, reach me. Then in June I hope to go to France. Jake and Barney and I are working out such plans, by letters, and there is some possibility that I may go to England for a little time, as Barney is there and familiar with all aspects of their life and difficulties, and has plans for something involving a walking tour to see various parts of Cornwall and ancient Druid ceremonial grounds &c, things which are interesting me immensely recently in light of Robert Graves book, which has proven immensely valuable, and also things which interest Barney greatly and on which he is much better informed than myself, he spending more time in the British Museum, and not among Spanish gypsies [...].

And also, despite the flip verse salutation of this letter, I may say how sincerely grateful I am to you for sending this string of cheques which are making possible for me an education not found in the Harvard Yard, nor among Greenwich Village intelligensia, or as a snide young editorial accountant on the
New Yorker
. It is just within the last two months that the whole thing has begun to take shape for me, that I have discovered what I came for, and if I can be so selfish to say, it is worth it. Especially since your recent ‘letters’ (may I send you a large box of writing paper?) indicate that your life is not a dark hall-bedroom affair—quite the other way, indeed! (that is, if you enjoy the company of war admirals, cocktail parties; dono nobis pacem . . .) [...]

I cannot think of any more secrecies to impart. Indeed, the whole business I suppose is pretty idiotic I guess: who in the world cares about our tiny phenageling . . . you are not the Queen of Roumania, nor I as yet a prophet of any great import

(I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter.

(I am no prophet, but here’s no great mattter . . .)

And so tonight I am going to a theatre, to see an old play of Pirandello’s of which I am very fond, and I think know well enough to be able to follow a gibberish Spanish version. Tomorrow I think to Cordoba for a day or two, and thence back to Sevilla. —suddenly here is someone flying to NY this afternoon; I hope to get this off immediately, you may have it before week’s end. And so, from now, the Sevilla address.

best wishes, and love,

W.