The Leonard Bernstein Letters (43 page)

Dear Lenny,

Forgive all of the overheatedness in my past letters, but know it is only because I know you don't want me to be sillily overboard that I ask your forgiveness. You made me very very happy in those few days, and I have had to try to know what it was about your example and good heart that made me wish I could get right against you.

Here is a snap of me taken on the wharf of Hamilton, Bermuda that I hope you will look at when you forget what I look like. I think it quite good.

What do you think of the
Anxiety
idea? There is so much musical-subtlety in it, and those various metres brought about by the different roads the couples
take and their differing means of transportation, to say nothing of the moods, and the separateness that becomes oneness under alcohol and/or libidinal urges. You mentioned it being good ballet material, yes, but I think, first, it should be composed as music by itself and therefore protect it from being too obvious program music, and then if some clever choreographer can put the musical composition to work, with what added quality good music may give to the themes and material, well and good.
¹¹¹
I would rather have “it” in the concert hall, where it can be less “handled” than in the ballet school where many talents brush it up. It's too good a thing for many hands.

I am beginning to suffer more for lack of occupation, but until the VA makes some kind of a decision regarding their award of psycho treatment, I don't think I can obligate my time just yet. Do I ring self-excused and lazy? Hummm. If the VA vetoes treatment, I am determined to work it out on my own but taking temporary work during my school days, and immediately before school begins.

The
Tribune
had a high compliment of your first night.
¹¹²
I wish I could have seen and heard the performance. I read it at a friend's house – and will get you a copy if you weren't able to grab it in Pittsfield.

Speaking of my friend, she is Anne Gibson Clark – and she is toying with the idea of going home to Grand Rapids to pick up her convertible, and then taking me to Tanglewood one week-end to hear some more music. What you do think of that?

Kiss Helen for me and tell her I will write her the letter I want to, in answer to her friendly card, very soon. She couldn't have been kinder to me and I thank her every time I think of her – which is every day.

Lots of love,

Twigling

Dear Twig, fighting to the last,

This should be five or six letters by now. There are so many things to say, and the super-varied contents of your three letters call for all kinds of discussion. But
I'm not in my “analyst” mood right now, having an uncomfortable back condition these days, and having just finished a long and difficult lecture. So let me just not be “Pappy” now, and send you my love and thanks for all the three books (which I keep trying to find a minute to crack) and to tell you how often I think of you.

The concerts here have been tops; and mine have given me the utmost satisfaction. The reactions have been marvelous, and Kouss was ecstatic. I wish you could have been here: – can't you get up for my next one on Aug 7th?

I don't quite understand the rise and fall of Bruce Knight. What
really
happened? And have you met Miss Berkeley?

I have to dash off for a diathermy on my poor aching back. Write more and often, and better still, come (though I can't promise you space here for a while) and I love your photograph.

Bless you, and don't let your resistance interfere with going through with the analysis.

All the affection you need –

L

The enclosed sheds much light!
¹¹³

Lenny,

Let me be very brief. I feel in your letter that some part in you expects my support for the cancellation of Palestine! That you dare not to see it, but that you would want to do something completely radical – for your Resurrection!

The only thing you can do: try to feel whether that is what
you
want. Not what I want!

Please call me up after Labor day (or even before) best between 9–12 a.m. [on] 4751 because I would want to arrange for our first session in New York. Will you? It has technical reasons.

I don't quite understand why you were pleased not to feel the necessity to thank me for my time? No obligation for conventional feelings? That's okay? But how about some genuine, warm feeling of gratefulness? Could you imagine?

In N.Y. I refused to take a brother in law of a patient of mine who wanted to come to St[amford] and have daily sessions by saying: not even if he would pay $25 a session.

I am mentioning it deliberately to show you that it is not only you who has to give up and make sacrifices – but that I am willing as well to do so, if necessary. I even proposed to see you once more, if you would have wished. I understand perfectly that you did not since you were so busy making so important decisions.

We'll talk about it more in N.Y.

Have a nice time – a productive time first of all!

Yours,

Marketa

For the sake of order: I am charging (since last year) $10 a session. We had one in N.Y. and 3 in Stamford.

You had no dream? How come after all these important events?

M

Lenny,

I got your dream letter. You know that it is quite impossible to give a written interpretation to a dream – and more so a dream without interpretation.

Why am I living in Brooklyn?

Jimmy's Restaurant in Greenwich V[illage]

Why another cab to go to Brooklyn?

What's about 289?

It's getting dark at four o'clock in the afternoon?

Switches putting on lights
upstairs
and not
downstairs
? What's the difference between up and downstairs in this beautiful, big, expensive house?

What about the two girls blocking the exit from behind your desk?

Write me if you feel like – besides the dreams! F[or] i[nstance] why cannot you relax and just simply
not
compose? Remember,
you had
the idea that adjustment to homosexuality could facilitate heterosexuality! Couldn't adjustment to relaxation constitute a capacity of creative work? Of course not
pretending
to relax only.

Marketa

I could see you Monday at 12 (noon) or at 7 p.m. Tuesday at 11 a.m. OK?

Dear Mr. Bernstein,

Two proposals have been made to me, one by a leading playwright and a reputable producer, the other by the most successful operetta composer we have, hooked up with a highly successful librettist, to put
Serenade
on the stage;
¹¹⁵
but I am bound to report that in spite of a high personal regard for all of these various gentlemen, all I could detect in their ideas was the most obvious theatrical claptrap, and accordingly I did my best to discourage them.
Serenade
, unfortunately, as seems to be the case with most of my stories, has problems that don't yield to a socko waltz tune, and I am not sure they yield at all. You, though, might be able to get somewhere with it. I mean, I have followed your work & think it might suit your gifts.

As for my doing your libretto, I can only say I never did one, and have a suspicion that at my age I shouldn't try to learn.
¹¹⁶
The rights, for your information, are in the clear, that is the dramatic rights; I own them, and while the publisher cuts in for 25% of anything paid on account of performances, I make the deal, and naturally would be reasonable. My suggestion would be to get in the market for a poet, or poetess, and I would think that the
New Yorker
, which is in touch with every poet there is, may be of some help, if you were to write them, or better still go in there. Katherine White, I understand, is still with them, and could no doubt think of somebody. After that you are in the lap of chance, but no worse with a
New Yorker
nominee than with me.

To elucidate the rights thing, which on re-reading doesn't seem wholly clear. A contract leasing you the right to produce an opera based on the book would be one thing, and would be made by me, either with you or with your producer. Royalties paid me would be split with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., my publisher. Your libretto & score would be another contract, made by producers, publishers, etc., with you and your librettist, lyricist, etc. If I did the book, I would be involved in it, but as I hesitate, that complication most likely won't arise.

I should naturally be delighted if you undertake the job, and wish you all luck with it. It has a
theme
, as the picture people found out, as horrendous as the Motif of Sulphur Yellow Truth in Mencken's concert program; but no doubt you know all about that, and let us hope, what to do with it, or how to get rid of it.
¹¹⁷
Many thanks for your felicitations. The lady,
¹¹⁸
as you may have heard, has yodeled quite a bit of opera herself.

Sincerely,

J. M. Cain

Dear Mr. Cain,

Thank you very much for your kind letter of October 1 and for your kind comments about me and my gifts. I am happy to learn that the rights are clear, but to be frank, I am not reconciled to the fact that you would not be able to write the libretto from your work. However, I will follow your suggestion and look about for a collaborator though at this writing I have some ideas myself as to the book and lyrics.

Unfortunately, I will not be able to give the matter my entire time immediately although the first act is fully formed in my mind both dramatically and musically. I will be occupied with my conducting here until at least the end of the year and then I have foreign commitments to conduct, which will consume the first months of the coming year. However, then I shall have free time and nothing will delight me more than to concentrate on the work.

At the moment I have no producer and therefore I am proceeding on my own insofar as the work is concerned and what I would like to have from you is the right to dramatize the book for musical purposes until September, 1948, which I believe will give me ample time to finish what I have in mind.

I understand that in the event of our adopting a writer of the book and a lyric writer, we will have to arrange for royalties to be divided, among all of us.

My sincerest thanks for your kindness and encouragement to proceed in the matter and if you will be good enough to send me a little note regarding the rights, I shall be grateful. It is difficult at long range to discuss these matters from a practical standpoint or try to get together on the book and lyrics and on more technical business, but I believe we understand each other thoroughly and I assure you I shall give the matter my sincerest cooperation.

Sincerely yours,

Leonard Bernstein

Dear Mr. Cain,

I liked your letter very much, not only because of your encouraging words, but also because it was a real Cain special.

I am not completely convinced that you're not my librettist; but, of course, that has to be your decision. May I hope you will keep thinking about this possibility?

What I would like from you right now is an option on the rights to dramatize the book which would extend to December 31, 1948. I think this would give me enough time to make real inroads into the work. So much of this coming year is to be taken up by conducting engagements, here and abroad, that I feel a good year is necessary. I can let you know fairly soon about the producer arrangements.

If you'll be good enough to send me a note regarding these rights, I shall be very grateful. I am sure then that we can get together via attorney or what-have-you on the more technical business.

Don't you ever come east? I do wish we could have a chance to talk about it. For instance, do you belong to the school that believes in the complete deletion
of the theme, as you call it, for operatic purposes, or do you agree with me that it could be handled intelligently and without offense?

Many thanks, and best wishes.

Sincerely,

Leonard Bernstein

Dear Mr. Bernstein,

A thousand pardons for not answering your note sooner, and forwarding the reservation requested, but I have been down under the ice winding up a novel, and I know of nothing that claims so much of one's time, and leaves so little juice for anything, except possibly, but not in no way probably, the tying of one's shoes.

The enclosed letter will do it, I think.
¹¹⁹
I haven't consulted lawyers or agents, as they commonly scream for a quid pro quo, as I don't think we are to that stage yet, or that it is even much of a stage, financially speaking, with regard to anything operatic. However, I have had a good many things of the same kind before, and think this will do it, if it covers what you are concerned about.

About the libretto: I try to picture myself pulling this off, but have no faintest notion how to go about it, either to block it out by scenes, or what kind of writing to put in it, or anything. I still think you need a poet, and still think Katherine White of the
New Yorker
should steer you towards a suitable one. She knows every poet in the world, together with how much he drinks before dinner, whether he does it before breakfast, whether he can write iambic hexameters or free verse, and all relevant things. I used to know her quite pleasantly and think she would like to cooperate on that account, as well as being terrifically impressed by you. No, I have no objection to the damned theme, but think as a practical matter it is the most unsuitable to stage use, though it has been tried now and then with no great objection by the police. I merely think it is unpleasant. But if it were used symbolically, a sort of inverted Faust idea, with addiction to
man
standing for cerebral, cold, and sterile things, and
woman
pulsing with all those hot, life-giving elements, it might do. Personally, I still say you'd do a hell of a sight better to put the time in on Aaron Burr
¹²⁰
or someone like that. There's a good book out on him, by the way, by Holmes Alexander.

Will be in New York, in any event, around 28th or 30th of this month, or shortly thereafter, & will ring you then. Until then, all luck with it, and I confess the greatest curiosity as to what in the name of God you have in mind.

Yours,

J. M. Cain