Chapter XXII: Part THREE: West Indies-Europe (7)

I am so pleased that you continue to enjoy _The Bridge_. I admit having felt considerably jolted at the charge of sentimentality continually levelled at the “Indiana” fragment, particularly when such charges came from people who acknowledged a violent admiration for Hardy’s poetry. For many of his lyrics have seemed to me at least as “sentimental” as this “mawkish” performance of my own. But I approve of a certain amount of sentiment anyway. Right now it is more fashionable to speak otherwise, but the subject (or emotion) of “race” has always had as much of sentiment behind it--as it has had of prejudice, also. Since “race” is the principal motivation of “Indiana,” I can’t help thinking that, observed in the proper perspective, and judged in relation to the argument or theme of the Pocahontas section as a whole, the pioneer woman’s maternalism isn’t excessive.

Did I mention my pleasure in reading a very skillful poem of yours about various types of fur. It came out in _Poetry_, I think. Certainly Baudelaire would have been charmed by its adept blending of beautiful names with a world of tactile sensations. The geographical evocations implicit in the list of animals mentioned were delightful. I see a great many reasons for you to continue writing, especially since it brings you none of the pangs that accompany a more professional concern with the muses. I haven’t written a line for over nine months, and nine months is not so promising a period in the seven arts as it may be in the physical sciences.

I’ll try not to be so remiss in writing again. Would I be deemed insensitive in requesting a temporary loan to help carry me over till a check from _Fortune_ can be expected. Please be very frank. Money is “hard” everywhere these days, and if you can’t spare 25 or 50 dollars, or if you have any scruples against such transactions, I shall remain as affectionate and as spontaneous a partner to our friendship as ever. In fact I would prefer to shoulder double my present quandary before exposing you to any stringencies.

I have applied for a Guggenheim Scholarship (which would give me a year’s study and creative freedom abroad) and hope to God that I’ll gain approval. Announcements are made early in March. Meanwhile I’m praying that I can write well enough on industrial subjects to keep on with _Fortune_. My room here is surprisingly cheap--a weekly rate that barely exceeds rooming house costs--and with these articles I’ve had to be located where messages could be taken in my absence. The requirement of advance payment is none too comforting, however. --/--/

349: TO WILLIAM WRIGHT

_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _November 29th, 1930_

Dear Bill: Your imagination is evidently as magnanimous as your hand is.... By ascribing my almost chronic indigence to so Nietzschean a program as the attitude of “living life dangerously” infers, you make me blink a little. For my exposures to rawness and to risk have been far too inadvertent, I fear, to deserve any such honorable connotations;--and my disorderly adventures and peregrinations I regard with anything but complacency. However, it isn’t everyone who can lend help with such graceful tolerance of evident shortcomings; and your euphemisms make me doubly grateful.

The Teagle article is now awaiting approval. I hope to know more about my immediate fate early next week. If that doesn’t eventuate in a check and another assignment, then my best bet lies in the direction of book-selling in one of the many Doubleday-Doran shops in the metropolitan area. I know someone who may succeed in insinuating me there. In normal times, of course, I should have been located with an advertising agency months since. No, teaching isn’t a solution for me, Bill. I haven’t any academic education whatsoever. You may have forgotten that I left East High without even a diploma--in my junior year. Mirabile dictu!... Noblesse oblige!... Pax vobiscum!... Nunc dimittis est ... so who am I, therefore, to rule a class!

I’m hoping that I won’t need to cash your second check, a contingency which I’ll do my best to avoid. You’ll hear from me again very soon. Meanwhile I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your kindness.

350: TO ISIDOR SCHNEIDER

_Brooklyn, N.Y._ _December 2nd, 1930_

Dear Isidor: --/--/ As for the “Hymn Against Violence,” I’m all for it! It is beautifully sustained, amazingly compact; its imagery is often as startling as Rimbaud’s:

“--then overhear
reiteration’s tremor drum
upon your brain the changeless diaries of fear.”
and “Harder curds
the cloud. Waking in us no ease,
night comes of terror darkened infinite, of dying herds.”

A strange and sombre metre. Biblical as it is, and owing something perhaps to Hopkins’ exclamatory use of violent internal stresses, it is still highly original and by all odds the best poem of yours that I have yet seen. It’s a poem that I imagine Eliot would be very glad to have for _The Criterion_. But you probably got much better remuneration from _The Menorah_; besides, Eliot is apt to deliberate a year or so before informing one of his decision. --/--/

351: TO SAMUEL LOVEMAN

[_Chagrin Falls, Ohio_] _December 29th, 1930_

Dear Sam: To make partial amends for my neglect of you, I am, as you see, giving you the full, blazing benefit of the official stationery! Of course, had I been consulted, I should never have permitted so harmless a slogan as “The place to _bring_ your guest.” The fourth word would still have begun with “b,” but there would have been more action implied in the order of the other letters substituted, or I’m no befriender of monks and monkery.

However, that might belie the nights hereabouts. As I have just written to B---- A----, _la vie sportif_ continues its reckless pace hereabouts without any too great abundance of absinthe, gobs, apple-vendors or breadlines. It’s too bad that all this drouth and quietude should have produced, so far at least, nothing better than a maidenly complexion and a bulging waist line. Gone is that glittering eye of Sands St. midnights, erstwhile so compelling; and the ancient mariner is facing the new year with all the approved trepidations of the middle west business man, approved panic model of 1931. So much for resignation. It brings me at least a little more sleep than I was getting in New York.

For about ten days I was busy at my father’s store on Euclid, near Higbee’s [Cleveland]. Driving in from the Falls here, wrapping Xmas parcelpost bundles, and driving back at night, I lived in a veritable whirl of excitement. Now that the Xmas “rush” is a memory only, I am casting about for some connection or other with what remains of the direct mail advertising business here. So far it doesn’t look promising. But unless I manage to turn a few honest pennies I mayn’t get back to your skyline for many months. Of course I knew that when I came out here, but I had borrowed all I felt justified in borrowing and the situation in NY looked, and still looks, hopeless. As you had no doubt observed, it had gotten considerably under my skin. --/--/