The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Volume 1: 1898-1922 (122 page)

TS
Bonn

9 July 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Sehr geehrter Herr!

Ich gestatte mich, Ihnen zu schreiben, in der Hoffnung dass Sie mitarbeiten werden, an einer neuen Rundschau in London worauf ich Redakteur bin. Diese Rundschau wird erst im Monat Oktober erscheinen, und danach vierteljährlich.

Ich wunsche, in dieser Rundschau das Werk der bedeutendsten Schriftsteller des Auslands neben dem Werk der besten englischen Schriftsteller[ n] vorzustellen. Der Charakter der Rundschau wird literarisch und international sein. Aus Frankreich und Spanien hat mein Bestreben schon guten Erfolg – z.B. Gomez de la Serna und A. Marichalar [
Ich bin englischer Korrespondent der ‘Nouvelle Revue Française
’. added in ink in margin] – aber ich hege hauptsächlich die Hoffnung, engere Beziehungen zwischen der englischen and der deutschen Literatur der Gegenwart zu verknüpfen. Mein Freund Hermann Hesse hat einige Beiträge gegeben; aber ich begehre vorzüglich auch Ihr [cancelled: es following Ihr] Werk auch in England bekannt zu machen.

Darf ich sagen, dass ich schreibe, nicht nur wegen Ihrer Zelebrität, sondern weil ich Ihr ‘Literarische Wegbereiter des neuen Frankreichs’
²
hoch schätze.

Die Übersetzung wäre hier besorgt von jemand der deutsche sehr gut kann, viel besser als ich!

Ich bewundere auch Ihren Aufsatz über Proust.
³
Von Proust auch hoffe ich im nächsten Jahr etwas herauszugeben.

Vorläufig können wir nur Pf. 10 für 5000 Wörter bezahlen, hoffentlich zu einem besseren Preis später. Vorläufig können wir nur Aufsätze um höchstens 5000 Wörter gebrauchen, vorzüglich kurzere.

Ich kann versichern, Sie würden unter unseren Leser[n] eine sympathische und gebildete Audienz betreffen.

Erlauben Sie mir zu hoffen an Ihre baldige und günstige Nachrichten; ich zeichne mich, mit vorzüglicher Hochachtung,

T.S. Eliot

Die Rundschau wird
THE CRITERION
heissen.
⁴

1–Ernst Robert Curtius (1886–1956), German scholar, literary critic and philologist; professor of German at Marburg University since 1920.

2–Curtius,
Die literarischen Wegbereiter des neuen Frankreich
[‘Literary Precursors of the New France’] (1919).

3–Curtius, ‘On the Style of Marcel Proust’, C. 2: 7 (Apr. 1924). 

1–
Translation
: Dear Sir, I am taking the liberty of writing to you, in the hope that you might take part in a new review in London of which I am editor. This journal will appear first in the month of October and then quarterly.

I want in this review to place the work of the most important writers from abroad beside that of the best English writers. The character of the review will be literary and international. In France and Spain my attempts have had happy results – for example Gomez de la Serna and A. Marichalar – but my principal hope is to bring about closer relationships between contemporary English and German literature. My friend Herman Hesse has given me an essay; I would also very much like to make your work known in England.

May I say that I am writing, not only on account of your fame, but because I particularly prize your
Literary Precursors of the New France.

The translation will be taken care of here by someone with good German, much better than mine!

I wonder about your essay on Proust. Next year I also hope to publish something of Proust’s.

For the moment, we are only able to pay a maximum of £10 per 5000 words, hopefully a better remuneration later. For the moment we can only use essays of up to 5000 words, preferably shorter.

I can assure you that you will find a sympathetic and educated audience.

Permit me to hope for a prompt and favourable response from you; I sign myself, with deepest respect, T. S. Eliot

The review will be called
The Criterion.
 

TS
Texas

10 July 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gardens

My dear Richard,

Thank you very much for your letter
¹
and the article you have sent. I much appreciate the loyalty of your support and of which the present prompt contribution is only one of many evidences. I shall write to you about this article again.

Thank you for recommending to me Flint, to whom I am writing. Do you know enough of the usual scale of payment to be able to suggest at what rate you think we should pay for translations, in view of the rate of £10 per 5000 words which we give for original contributions.

As for French, of course you know I would rather have translations from you than from anybody.

As for publication in America, we should raise no objection to subsequent publication there or indeed to simultaneous publication if the publication is simultaneous. The difficulty is in arranging simultaneous publication in a quarterly and in a weekly or monthly. We should like of course to build up an American circulation, but at present the rates of payment are so low that it would obviously be more than unreasonable to ask contributors not to use their contributions in America.

In haste,
Yours affectionately,
Tom

1–Not found.

TS
Virginia

10 July 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Rodker,

You will remember that some time ago I suggested that you should contribute to the new quarterly, a rubric on cinema and music halls. I have had to forego rubrics for the reason that the space at the present is so limited that I think that the Review will be much more effective if it consists of entirely signed articles. I therefore revert to another suggestion and ask if you will do a single article on the cinema which you thought would take about 3,000 words. I am trying to make up several numbers ahead as owing again to the limited space, it is rather difficult to fit in all the shapes and sizes of article. Therefore I should be very glad if you will do it for me as soon as you can and let me have it, so that I might use it for the first or second number.

I hope that you still want to write it, and look forward to reading it with great interest.
¹

Can you let me have it, do you think, by the 10th August?

Yours,
T. S. Eliot

Starts October 1st.

1–Rodker duly wrote a ‘Note on the Cinema’, but it was never to appear in
C
.

MS
BL

11 July [1922]

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

My dear Sydney

I have been waiting every day to hear from Proust, but have heard nothing. I am very disappointed. I must send in the copy for this first circular (there will be a fuller one in September) at once, so will you let me know if he has replied in either sense?

Yours always affectionately
Tom

TS
Beinecke

13 July 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

Dear Cobden-Sanderson,

I send you herewith the copy for the advance circular. The first thing is to get an estimate of the cost for one thousand, and I will get Lady Rothermere’s approval at once. I leave the formulation of the subscription form to you.

The type of the specimen page which you submitted is so excellent that I think it would be a pity not to adopt the same type, or larger or smaller sizes of it to suit, throughout.

That is one of the objections to the cover and also to the letter paper, which I return herewith. I have scribbled my objections on it. I think now that RED and black will look best, and the vertical type for the title as on the specimen page. Also, all of the lettering, except the title, should be much smaller, leaving much more white space.

Sincerely
T. S. Eliot

TS
Texas

13 July 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

My dear Flint,

I am starting in the autumn for Lady Rothermere, a new quarterly review toward which Richard Aldington is giving me a good deal of help. (It will not, I may say, be an illustrated or art quarterly, but will consist of rather long essays, chiefly literary and critical). I am intending to include
a larger proportion of foreign writers than is found in any of the reviews in existence, and in this respect Richard tells me that you can, if you will, be of the greatest use. It is very difficult, as you know, to find people who both know foreign languages well and have literary merit and knowledge of English. I want if possible, not to have to have translations done by ordinary hacks but by men of letters. As our rates of payment must at present be low – £10 per 5,000 words – so we can only offer at present the usual rate of 15/-per 1,000 words to translators. But I set great store on having translations done by the right people.

Will you undertake a certain amount, or as much as you can do, of this work? There will not after all be very much, as the paper is a quarterly; and I think that the material to be translated will be such as you would find interesting. I have at the moment two things which I want to be in the first number: an essay in Spanish by Ramón Gómez de la Serna,
¹
and an essay in German by Hermann Hesse.
²
Both of these are very good people indeed, and have the additional interest of being quite unknown in this country; and if you will undertake this piece of work I should like very much to send you the manuscripts at once.

I need hardly say that I hope you will sometimes be tempted to send in original contributions as well.

Yours truly,
T. S. Eliot

 1–Ramón Gómez de la Serna (1883–1963), avant-garde novelist, critic, dramatist and aphorist. ‘From “The New Museum”’, C. 1: 2 (Jan. 1923), was translated by Flint.

2–Hesse, ‘Recent German Poetry’.

TS
Texas

13 July 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

My dear Richard,

Thank you again for the information about translators’ rates. I have written to Flint.

I have undertaken to reprint the
Ulysses
section of Larbaud’s Joyce. The reprinting of anything that has already appeared in a review is of course against my principles, but I thought that in this case as the section in question is not very long, I might well make an exception.

Would you agree to translate it for me?

The first number will appear either the 1st or the 15th of October, so that you can arrange for publication in America any time after the middle
of that month. I do not want you to think that I do not value your article or that I am excessively captious about contributions! If I should seem so you will realise that it is because the success of this review, at least from the point of view of its contents, if not from that of circulation, means a very serious stake to me. You know that I have no persecution mania, but that I am quite aware how obnoxious I am to perhaps the larger part of the literary world of London and that there will be a great many jackals swarming about waiting for my bones. If this falls flat I shall not only have gained nothing but will have lost immensely in prestige and usefulness and shall have to retire to obscurity or Paris like Ezra. But you know all this as well as I do.

All that I have to criticize in your article is this; that I know you are holding yourself in from prudence in my interest, desiring not to write anything which can arouse hostility toward the review. For that reason I think, your article lacks the bite of, for instance, your article on Joyce,
¹
and also I think it suffers from not being sufficiently concrete. I am perfectly aware of your reasons for avoiding mention of names or quotations of examples.

Yours always affectionately,
Tom.

When will you be in London?

My circulars are now being prepared and I will certainly very gratefully send you some and every additional subscriber will be a blessing. Let me know when you are coming to London – I want to see you very much. 

1–RA, ‘The Influence of Mr. James Joyce’,
English Review
, Apr. 1921, 333–41. 

TS
BL

13 July 1922

9 Clarence Gate Gdns

My dear Sydney,

Thank you very much for your letter of the 12th, and for troubling to send it express. I am of course very disappointed that no reply has yet come, but I still have hope that Proust will yield to your persuasion if to anybody’s.
¹
Of course it would have been much better if I could have asked 
you to do this earlier. But I have not been in a position to discuss the review, and indeed have not been discussing it intimately with anyone. Also I had originally intended not to ask Proust until there was a tangible number of the review in existence to reassure him about the company in which he would find himself; it was in fact all that you told me about him after you came back from Paris, and knowing that you had come to know him so well, that made me venture to try to secure his support before the appearance of the first number.

With many thanks and best wishes to you both from both of us,

Yours affectionately,
Tom