THREEBack Home and Abroad
1946–1952
THREEA STRIKING SNAPSHOT OF HECHT IN 1947, NOW INCLUDED IN the Wikipedia entry for him, seems to capture the peripatetic spirit of the young poet in the years immediately following the war and leading up to the publication of his first volume of poetry, A Summoning of Stones, in 1954. Hecht is dressed in the casual fashion of the day: open-collar shirt, sports jacket, jeans rolled up. Hands in pockets, he rests comfortably on a trunk or footlocker, facing us but staring off into the distance, as if thinking about what? Where he has come from? Or where his next stop will be?
At the time, Hecht was briefly a student and instructor in the Iowa University Writer’s Workshop. The photograph, taken by Charles, or “Chuck,” Cameron Macauley, who became a celebrated photographer and filmmaker during the second half of the twentieth century, was Robie Macauley’s younger brother. The photo hints at the literary circle that Hecht was drawn into immediately after the war. His army friend Robie Macauley, more than three years his senior and an aspiring fiction writer, had graduated from Kenyon in 1942 and urged Hecht to study there. At Kenyon, Hecht seriously pursued the study and writing of poetry, primarily under the tutelage of John Crowe Ransom (two poems of his would appear in the 1947 autumn issue of The Kenyon Review). He also took courses in Seventeenth-Century English Poetry, Studio Art, and Moral Philosophy. This association, in turn, would lead to his meeting Allen Tate, William Empson, and young but already established poets like Robert Lowell.
Hecht’s letters from this postwar period tell the story of a young man very much on the move—literally, and indeed exhaustingly so at one point for Hecht, and, in retrospect, complicated to piece together. After the year at Kenyon, Hecht spent the summer of 1947 on Cape Cod, with Robie Macauley, among others—“it’s morning; I’m tight already. Beer & sunshine. All in excellent spirits,” begins one postcard. Then on to Iowa for 1947–1948, in the company of Macauley and Peter and Eleanor Ross Taylor, where he would meet Flannery O’Connor and Paul Engle. Hecht’s time at Iowa was also marked by his having to withdraw temporarily from school in early November. He suffered what he later described as a version of postwar traumatic stress, but he returned after Christmas to finish out the year. For the summer of 1948, he was again at Kenyon, this time affiliated with the newly founded Kenyon School of English. In the fall, he returned to New York City, where he studied informally with Allen Tate and also taught Tate’s poetry workshop at New York University. In the academic year of 1949, Hecht enrolled in Columbia University’s master’s program in English, where he met Mark Van Doren, among other notable literary figures. (While at Columbia, he would also meet aspiring younger poets and later lifelong friends Richard Howard and John Hollander.) Hecht spent the summer of 1949 in Europe, mainly Paris, before he returned to New York to complete the degree. He then again set sail for Europe in July 1950 for what would turn out to be a two-year stay, mainly in Italy, his time abroad extended when, to his complete surprise, he was awarded the Prix de Rome at the American Academy in Rome, becoming the first Fellow in Literature. Hecht did not return home until the end of August 1952, when he assumed an instructorship at his alma mater, Bard College. In early 1954, A Summoning of Stones was published, dedicated to his brother Roger.
From one angle, the letters from this period tell a familiar postwar story of the itinerant American student/artist supported at home by the G.I. Bill and buoyed abroad by a robust dollar (and in Hecht’s case by occasional financial help from parents and grandparents). Lowell and Richard Wilbur, both living in Europe, figure into Hecht’s letters, and the traffic of familiar faces flowing through Paris, including former classmates, family friends, army acquaintances—or appearing along the remoter shores of Ischia, off Naples—makes it seem, as it must have appeared to Hecht, that he had never quite left the United States. While living in Ischia, Hecht met W. H. Auden, their paths crossing on a number of social occasions. One memorable meeting, as reported separately to both his parents and Allen Tate, gave rise to the most extended discussion of Hecht’s poetry to appear in the letters from this period. Other persons in the Ischian community include Elsa and Ray Rosenthal and Anne and Irving Weiss.
From a biographical perspective, these letters describe Hecht’s increasingly intellectual and emotional independence from his parents. Hecht could speak with marked frankness about the self-discipline required to improve upon his present achievements by seeking to surpass others he especially esteemed, as he notes in a letter to his parents about Robie Macauley and his family. A key phrase here is the reference to his assuming “constant and rather painful apprenticeships” (September 10, 1947). Hecht could also sharply address, or redress, his parents on old family subjects—his mother’s meddling in his personal life, for instance—the most sensitive involving Roger’s upbringing. The two boys were, in most regards, opposites, and yet during this period brotherly affection and a common interest in literature bound them together, as the letters reveal. Tony clearly looked out for his younger, less able sibling, indeed, wanted what he thought best for Roger: greater independence, particularly from his parents. Roger, with Tony’s encouragement, wished to be more like Tony, a writer; however, in reality this only meant exchanging one form of dependence for another. Their relationship is touching and was never to be closer than during these years.
The letters from abroad, several of short-story length, reveal something else: the emergence of Hecht’s narrative and descriptive powers. The war letters are largely written from depressed circumstances, both visual and psychological. But the travel letters, especially those from France and Italy, clearly delight in reporting adventurous tales and exotic sights from afar—and of chance encounters with newsworthy people along the way, such as Marlon Brando, Orson Welles, and Ernest Hemingway’s son Jack. We glimpse here, too, Hecht’s increasing fascination with observing the world—Paris and Venice in particular—as well as his growing appreciation for art and music. The latter interest is especially apparent in his collaborations with the distinguished composers Lukas Foss and Leo Smit, both of whom Hecht met at the American Academy in Rome. These twin interests in the arts, moreover, form important features of his verse that will continue throughout his career: from the early Audenesque “At the Frick” in A Summoning of Stones, which also features several musically inspired poems, to the later deeply meditated “Matisse: Blue Interior with Two Girls—1947,” published in Flight Among the Tombs (1996), and the vocally exuberant “An Orphic Calling,” which appeared in The Darkness and the Light (2001).
From these years of Hecht’s apprenticeship, I have selected letters that not only illuminate his mental and physical itinerary but also bear directly on the composition of Hecht’s first and still least known volume of poems. “Seascape with Figures,” for example, is quite explicitly based on events recounted in his letter of June 25, 1949. “Samuel Sewall” seems prompted, in part, by a wig-wearing charade in Paris described in a letter of August 22, 1950. A completed version of the poem is included in a letter to Roger dated November 18, 1950. And “Alceste in the Wilderness,” on its way to publication in Poetry, is perhaps more than amply glossed, as Hecht realized, in a letter to the editor, Karl Shapiro. A sub-story involving this first collection of verse is the long time it took to complete. As it turned out, the final version excluded a number of poems that had appeared in journals as well as a few unpublished poems tucked into letters home. There is also no poem in the volume that corresponds to the “long” poem that Hecht was trying to finish at the end of his stay at the American Academy. It is possible that the reference is to an early version of “Rites and Ceremonies.” Many years later, details of the slow process of assembling this first volume, in which “each new poem was, as it were, the death of an earlier one,” come to the fore in a letter of encouragement written to the poet B. H. Fairchild (June 7, 1993).
1946
October 13 [1946] Gambier, Ohio
[To his parents]
Dear kids,
[…] Received your letter and wire, and also a letter from Roger, which I answered immediately. He asked me for a contribution to the Bard Review, so I sent him the following limerick:
Observations on The Futility of Incessant
and Devoted Labor.
A saint by the name of Jerome
Translated the Biblical Tome
From Hebrew and Greek,
Which no one could speak,
To the obsolete language of Rome.
[…]
Love
Tony
John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974), influential poet and critic, was founder of The Kenyon Review. Hecht wrote appreciations of his teacher in The American Scholar 49 (1980) and The Wilson Quarterly 18 (1994). C. M. Coffin was the author of a number of studies related to John Donne, including John Donne and the New Philosophy (1937), the study referred to by Hecht below. Philip Blair Rice (1904–1956) taught philosophy at Kenyon and was associate editor of The Kenyon Review. His major publication was On the Knowledge of Good and Evil (1955). Rice also wrote a foreword to George Santayana’s The Sense of Beauty (1955). Hecht published an elegy on Santayana in The Hard Hours.
Saturday [October 26, 1946] Gambier OH
[To his parents]
Dear kids,
Things are going along beautifully. I am now wearing my navy blue (formerly olive drab) shirt and trousers with a chartreuse tie. Very striking indeed. […]
I have had a class in each of my subjects, the last one was just this morning, and they all look fairly promising. In my first class with Mr. Ransom, he brought up some material that had been submitted to the Review, and read it aloud to the class (about ten students). Then we analyzed it and tore it apart, put it back together, etc. The whole thing was highly entertaining; Ransom has a magnificent sense of humor. I have had several long conversations with him in private, and he has continued to be extremely cordial to me.
For my course, which is actually a conference, in 17th Cent. poetry, I prepared a few notes on the poetry of John Donne, and spoke for an hour and a half, almost sans interruption. My teacher, Dr. Charles Coffin, has himself written a book on the background of Donne’s philosophy and was apparently quite impressed with my peroration, told me that he enjoyed the class immensely, and that he had learned a lot from my remarks.
My art class, which does not threaten to be nearly as stimulating as these others, will nevertheless be pleasant and enjoyable. We will spend six hours a week in the studio painting (I have done a preliminary sketch for a still-life) and will write a certain number of papers (which I shall try to get out of, if possible).
I am also sitting in on a philosophy class (not for credit) on the theory of value, taught by Phil Rice, and I expect that it will be very exciting.
I have made a great number of friends among the students here, and together with the ones I had met before, like Chuck Macauley, I feel fairly well established. I suspect that my prose style still betrays a certain feeling of unrest, and anxiety—however, I have not had to take any Pheno-barbitol since the first night I was here—and as a matter of fact, a few things are still hanging in the air. But on the whole, things are working out as well as they possibly could.
The cognac is gone. It was really fine stuff, and I made the mistake of offering it to one person who did not fully appreciate its merit, but drank it for the effect. Nevertheless, there was enough for me to enjoy and to offer to various discriminating friends. The Scotch Blend will probably go tomorrow, since it’s Macauley’s birthday. […]
Love
Tony
[December 10, 1946], Gambier OH
[To his parents]
Dear Mom and Dad—
I didn’t know anything about Dad’s illness till the morning of the day I phoned. Your letters were held up about ten days by the coal strike. In fact, they were the first letters I’d gotten from you in several weeks. I’ve been very upset about it, especially since you must have thought that I wasn’t even interested enough to write. I hope that Dad will be up and out of bed when I get home for Christmas.
There is hardly any news from out here. Classes are going along in a fairly monotonous way, and I have decided to ask Ransom point-blank this evening whether he’s going to use my poem in the Review. I don’t think he’ll say “yes,” and I’m sort of annoyed at the idea of him having kept it this long without coming to any decision. I gave it to him when I first arrived at Kenyon, and he’s been holding me off ever since then.
Got a letter from Robie [Macauley], explaining about his plans to go to Switzerland this summer & wondering if I wanted to go with him. He said that you would both come over and visit us at Zurich. We could have a big party at the Dolder Hotel. I haven’t answered his letter yet, but it sounds like a good idea.
On the other hand, do you remember my telling you about a graduate school in writing and criticism that Phil Rice wanted to start? He once asked Robie and me to write letters about it, during the furlough we had between Europe and Japan. Well, it seems that the school will actually begin this summer—here at Kenyon. [The Kenyon School of English actually got under way in the following summer of 1948.] Aside from its being located here, and making use of the college buildings, it will have nothing to do with Kenyon. The Rockefeller Foundation is sponsoring the whole thing. Ransom will be head of it, Lionel Trilling and F.O. Matthiessen of Harvard will be here. This is all still strictly confidential, since the Rockefeller people have not yet actually signed on the dotted line—so don’t mention it to Roger, or the first thing you know it will be all over Bard and everywhere. Ransom told me not to tell anybody about it, and at the same time suggested that he’d like Robie and me to be here, possibly even as instructors. So my plans for the summer will hinge on that, and on what Robie decides about it. […]
Love
Tony
1947
Tuesday [September 10, 1947]
Pine Springs Ranch, Hudsonville, Michigan
[To his parents]
Well,
Your letters (two of them) arrived this morning, for which my thanks. I was a little disappointed that you congratulated me for “spilling my guts,” as though I had properly performed some bodily function. Please do not think that writing letters serves me as a watered-down kind of confession or therapy; I don’t think of it as an opportunity to discourse on my woes in the hope of receiving in return the appropriate sympathy and praise. I write to you to let you know what’s going on, and because the business of writing helps me to objectify and remove myself from the very stuff I’m writing about. I guess, if you like, this is a kind of therapy, but I prefer not to think of it in this way. […]
For a good long time I have had the unfortunate habit of selecting someone whose achievements and intelligence (not personality, please note) I admire, and of trying to persuade myself that I am his equal. These experiences have always been painful, but in every case I have managed to come through to my own satisfaction. Whether this is merely a slow process of rationalization I have no idea, but I have convinced myself that I have advanced beyond Al Sapinsley or Ben Snyder, for instance, both of whom at one time made my life rather unpleasant through my insistence on such a comparison. Please understand that this has not been a process of emulation; I do not desire to be like them but better than them, and it has only been through constant and rather painful apprenticeships that I have been able to come forward with any degree of satisfaction. The people I have selected to fulfill this function have not been chosen solely upon my own admiration for their abilities, but because they have also received the admiration and approval of other people whose opinions I respect. This applies to Robie, for instance. No matter what I should like to think of him I cannot discount the fact that Ransom thinks well of him, that he was offered a full-time teaching job at $3000 while I was offered an assistantship at $360, that he was offered the same amount by the U. of Tennessee, where he was invited to teach any courses he wanted to teach, etc. etc. The fact that he is four or five years older than I am does not signify. So much for this. In a week we’ll leave for Iowa, and perhaps things will change for the better. In the meantime, I manage to lose myself completely in reading to be done for my course.
Send Roger my regards.
Love
Tony
1949
Among the rich cast of identifiable characters in the next few letters are two of Hecht’s army friends: Al Millet, from ASTP, in 1949 attending Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield, Michigan, and Paul Henissart, from CIC, author of Wolves in the City: The Death of French Algeria (1970) and several spy novels. The “sculptor friend” alluded to in the first letter was probably Ivan Majdrakoff, the dedicatee of “Seascape with Figures.” His wife was the artist Julia Pearl, the person addressed in “To Julia.” Paul Scott Mowrer and Edgar Ansell Mowrer were prominent, midcentury news correspondents, each receiving a Pulitzer prize for reporting.
June 25, 1949 Paris, France
[To his parents]
Dear ones:
I’m sorry to be so late about writing, but things have been absolutely hectic since our arrival, and today, out of fatigue and a desire to let you know what’s been going on, I have turned down an invitation to attend the marriage of Ernest Hemingway’s son, Jack (by his first marriage—Ernest’s, that is—to Hadley Richardson), to some girl from San Francisco [Byra L. “Puck” Whittlesey]. Went to a cocktail party for them the other night, given by Paul Scott Mowrer, father of Edgar Ansell Mowrer, and Jack’s stepfather. Party started at 6:30 and went on till 11:30. […]
The trip was superb. We had no sooner gotten over the initial excitement of getting aboard, the frantic search for Al’s passport, and the perfunctory farewells (for which I feel very contrite), than Al discovered a sculptor friend of his from Cranbrook who was traveling over in the company of a very effeminate person named John Newberry, who, as it turned out, owns and directs the largest and most important art museum in Detroit. They immediately invited us forward to the first-class bar for cocktails that night, and the next night again, on which occasions Newberry produced a large jar of imported black caviar, melba toast, chopped egg whites and yolks, and sour cream, all of which set off the taste of an infinite number of martinis to fine advantage. […]
To return to my sheep. […] Ate like a hog. Picked up a great sunburn. Swam in the pool. Observed retreat every evening by firing off a series of martinis. We had two very rough days, which Al and I weathered with magnificent hauteur, while everyone was vomiting all around us. We were almost the only ones in the dining room for a while. […] Completely floored our waiter by the amount of food we ate; had two complete breakfasts (including creamed chicken, eggs and bacon) before leaving ship at France. Stayed up all night for arrival at Le Havre, and well worth it. Came tooting in at about 4 in the morning, and it was the most beautiful sight in the world. Lights on the water, sky red in the east, blending to ultra-marine just above, very clear, stars all over the goddammed place, and then, when it got a little lighter, all the Frenchmen came out in their blue denims and berets and bicycles. […]
There’s much more to tell, and at present I’m at a loss to describe my general state of intoxication with Paris. Walking along the Seine or the Boulevards at night is nothing but himmlich.1 […]
Love to all,
Tony
P.S. Have gotten two of your letters. You seem to have a very confused idea of American geography. Schweitzer is going to lecture at the Goethe bicentennial in Colorado, whereas Ransom and Ted will be teaching at the University of Utah. These are not the same place.
[July 10, 1949] St. Guenole, Brittany, France
[To his parents]
Well,
The most extraordinary series of events has taken place since I last wrote. I finished that letter in the morning, and then started to wander around the area of St. Germain des Près, looking for a place to eat. Al, of course, after much groaning and swearing, and pledging his eternal fealty to France, and Paris in particular, had taken off for Sweden the day before. Marian had gone off on a bicycle tour of the continent with some friends, and Paul was too far away to get hold of easily, so I was feeling a bit lonely for the first time since my arrival. However, Al had departed with the understanding that Paul and I would go down to the Côte d’Azur, and wire him from there, so that in the event he didn’t like Sweden, he’d come down and join us. Mulling these thoughts over, I wandered idly past a restaurant (it was about two o’clock—this is for Paula’s benefit) and looked in to see if there was any room to eat. It looked fairly crowded, and just as I was about to move on, I saw a figure rise from the cavernous darkness within, flailing its arms about in an attitude of semi-recognition.
It was Tony Petrina. He was just about finishing his meal, but there was a free place beside him and I sat down and ordered. We hashed over all our old Bard friends, etc. He has just finished a dramatic version of Richard Wright’s Black Boy, has translated it into play form, that is. He said his mother was coming to Italy in about a week or so, and he was driving down to meet her in a jeep, with his friend, whose name he mumbled, and I didn’t catch, and who was sitting across the table from us, silently auditing the conversation. This friend was a hulking sort of guy, with a Charles Atlas torso, of which he was obviously proud, and wore a tight-fitting cerise T-shirt with almost no sleeves to show himself off to best advantage. His hair was rather too long, and curled up in front of the ears, like Spanish side-burns. He sat sullenly, offering only an occasional grunt, or dull remark. Tony explained that he (the friend) was on his way down to play in an Italian movie. I asked him if he’d done any movie work before, and there followed a long and embarrassed silence, and then Tony explained somewhat confusedly that this was Marlon Brando, who had the lead in A Streetcar Named Desire.
The tension was quickly cleared up, and we got into a very pleasant conversation, when I noticed a girl named Cici Grace, to whom I had given a carton of cigarettes to smuggle into France for me, since she was bringing in only 4 cartons herself, and the limit is 5. I went over to ask her about the cigarettes, and as soon as I came back both Tony and Marlon asked me about her. She’s an extremely beautiful girl, who will be modeling for Vogue next month, when she comes back from Brittany with me. But I get ahead of myself. When Cici finished lunch she stopped by the table to speak to me, and Tony and Marlon both jumped to invite her to have coffee with us. She declared she had to go off to the bank, but returned in ten minutes since the bank was closed. She had coffee with us, and then Marlon suggested that she go over to the American Express Office with him if she wanted to cash her checks. Having no intention of being cut out, I said I’d go along, and Cici and I were the last two people admitted to the bus, leaving Tony and Marlon in the street, waving farewell. We cashed her checks, and then went to a nearby café for a drink, when who should come strolling down the street to join us but Marlon Brando.
However, after finishing our drinks, Cici said she wanted to see Sacré Coeur, and Marlon, having other appointments, was obliged to leave us, promising, nevertheless, that he and Tony would get in touch with me before they left for Italy. (They didn’t.) Cici and I went up to Sacré Coeur by bus, and while walking around from the back saw them shooting a scene from a French movie in front of a little chapel just behind the cathedral. Then we went through the cathedral, and sat for a while in the park in front of it, watching the children play and swim in the fountain. I got her back to the American Embassy where she has some friends who were planning to take her to Brittany the next day for ten days. I had already invited her to come down to the Côte d’Azur with me when she came back, and she had agreed.
The next day I moved out of the [Hotel] d’Isly and in with Paul and Jay Sheers to their new and lavish apartment, which has two bedrooms, an incredibly large living room and drinking room, a kitchen, two bathrooms (with baths) etc. I lived there until I left Paris, paying no rent, and eating in for the most part, at a great saving to myself. I spent that day getting settled in the apartment, and at about 6 p.m. Cici phoned and said the trip had been delayed by the arrival of Secretary Snyder of the Treasury, so would I like to take her out to supper. Jay, and his girl friend, Gin, and Paul had already gotten the ingredients for supper, including steaks, so they urged me to bring Cici up to the apartment for supper, which I did. From then on I saw her as often as possible—she did finally go away on a short trip, but couldn’t go to Brittany (they went to Chartres instead), for lack of time. In the meantime Paul and I inquired about prices in the south, and they were a bit too high for either of our budgets.
When she came back it was agreed we should go to Brittany together. She was quite satisfied with that arrangement, and so after a few days in Paris after her return, during which we wandered about the city, sat in the parks and made love, we went off to Brittany together by train—Paul and Gin were to follow a few days later by car. We had been directed how to get here, and two friends of Paul’s, Frank and Paula Amy, were here to greet us upon arrival and had already reserved rooms for us. The place is superb. A splendid beach, no tourists at all, rooms and meals for 700 fr[ancs] per day, and the meals, except breakfast, involve about six or seven courses. Fish, langoustines, shrimp, crabs, and meat, generally veal, at about every meal.
The night before we left [Paris] Cici phoned to say that she’d just been hired by Vogue, and they wanted her to start the next day, but I told her I’d already gotten the tickets, so she told Vogue that she’d be back in August. We have really fallen in love with each other, though not deeply. She’s 22, went to Smith, her full name is Gertrude Keating Grace Jr., her father is a surgeon and diagnostician, who works at times at St. John’s hospital in Brooklyn, she has three sisters, one older and married, two younger, the family lives in Greenlawn Long Island, which is near Huntington.
She’s very gentle and unaffected, and very feminine, dresses beautifully, and is an absolute paragon of beauty. […] Have gotten a terrific sunburn, the water is cool but pleasant for swimming, we bring a bottle of wine to the beach every afternoon. There’s no room for more in this letter.
Love to all,
Tony
August 6, 1949 Paris, France
[To his parents]
Et bien,
I am very much surprised that I haven’t heard from any of you for some long time now, since you have my Paris address, which is to remain permanent till the time of my departure. I admit, of course, that it’s been some time since I wrote myself, but, mirabile dictu, I have a legitimate excuse for once. I must begin, however, by going back to St. Guenole, and explaining that shortly after I last wrote you, the girls, Cici and Gin, decided to motor (Gin had her own car) leisurely back to Paris, hitting every watering spot where there was even so much as a sign of moisture. The girls are both inveterate tourists, both majored in art history at college, and both swoon at the sight of anything out of the 11th century, no matter what it is. Speculate ad lib. Frank and Paula Amy, and Paul and I remained. […] I read lots of Proust and got incredibly sunburned, and I’m already turning pale again. I should have explained a bit earlier, perhaps, that the reason Cici left early was not to get away from me—our parting was quite tender and heart-rending—but to get back to Paris and find out about this job modeling for Vogue. (Incidentally, she began today.) To confuse the narrative sequence a little bit more, when she arrived in Paris from St. Guenole, Vogue seemed quite uncertain about their plans, and were very hedgy about what they’d pay her, finally telling her to come back the following week, when they’d be more settled. So she and Gin drove off on another sightseeing tour, this time to Luxembourg. When she came back this time, they told her they definitely wanted to use her, but they wouldn’t be able to start photographing till a week later. Nothing daunted, the girls took off again like big-assed birds to do the chateau region of the Loire. By the time they had returned from the tour before this last, Paul and I were back in Paris ourselves, but properly to represent my role in this rat-race, I must return for a moment to St. Guenole. During the last week there, I felt rather weary and exhausted most of the time, but I attributed this to the effects of the sun. However, upon returning to Paris, the weariness persisted and was eventually joined by other discomforts[.…] One evening, just as the girls returned from stuffing themselves with culture, I realized that I had a fever of some kind, took some aspirins, and went to bed without supper. The next day, before leaving on another Kunstreise,2 the girls drove me to the American Hospital in Neuilly, where, for 1500 fr[ancs], a very pleasant American doctor told me that I had infectious mononucleosis, and should take sulfadiazine … remain in bed for three days, and eat lightly. All of which I have done, and am now cured. […]
The last I heard from you were the letters telling me I’d been accepted by Columbia. Has The Hudson Review come out with my stuff yet? Any word from Kenyon about those other poems? […]
Love
Tony
August 18 [1949] Venice, Italy
[To his parents]
Dear Household:
I shall spend no time at the beginning in explaining how I happen to be here in Venice instead of in the French Alps, where, according to my last letter to you, Paul and I were planning to spend some time before coming back to Paris. I’ll come back to that later. Right now it is necessary to say that Venice is beyond doubt one of the most enchanting cities in the world. From the window of our room we look out upon the basin of St. Mark’s, with the Doge’s Palace and the famous tower, together with the entrance to the Grand Canal off to the right. Across the basin, and directly in front of us, is the Justinian Palace. We have an impeccable view of the Venetian sunset.
Coming here was the most extraordinarily lucky choice we made the whole trip, and we made our decision on the basis of a tip from an Italian journalist in Turino. The day we arrived, we saw a vast and magnificent exhibit of the paintings of Giovanni Bellini in the Doge’s Palace. Danny [Ransohoff] would give both arms and his mother to see it; not only to see it, but to be here. He would be captivated by the idea of an American destroyer tied right up at the sidewalk just a few hundred yards from our hotel. The basin is very deep so that even heavy liners can come right into the midst of town. But most of the boats one sees are the traditional gondolas, and beautifully polished sailboats and motor boats. We have done very little sight seeing, in fact, none, save the Bellini exhibit and a visit to the famous Verrocchio equestrian statue, and the worst part of it all is that we must leave tomorrow, after having been here only a week. But owing to Paul’s limited financial resources, and the fact that I am supposed to meet Al in Paris in a few days, we leave tomorrow morning on the Orient-Simplon Express, which will get us into Paris, by way of Switzerland, on the following morning.
However, despite this rush the time has been well spent. We have eaten well: good Italian cheeses and wine, wonderful fruit, and pastry that far surpasses the French. And instead of sight-seeing as such, we have wandered about town, down little side streets and over lovely little bridges, as well as having taken several boat trips up and down the Grand Canal, or having sat at a café on its bank on a warm evening, drinking Tom Collins’ in full view of the Rialto. We have met an Italian aviator who is stationed here, and speaks excellent French, and with whom we have spent as much time as possible. Yesterday we had lunch with him at the airport just at the moment that Paul Hoffman arrived by plane to confer with [Italian] Premier [Alcide] De Gasperi.
The town is swarming with celebrities just now, since the International Motion Picture Film Festival is taking place here this month. We went to see one of the German entries the other night, Madchen Hinter Gittern (fairly good, but not extraordinary), and the next day, walking along the Lido, we saw the very attractive girl who played the lead, sitting at a café. Orson Welles is in town, though not for the festival, but to make a movie of Othello, and is to be seen about with a huge and well tonsured beard. But most extraordinary of all, yesterday, as Paul and I were on our way to buy our railroad tickets back to Paris, walking along towards the Piazza San Marco, who should go by in the opposite direction but Tony Petrina. We had a coffee with him, and it appears that he left Marlon Brando somewhere in France, went down to the Côte d’Azur and sold his jeep, and then came to Venice to meet his mother[.…]
I have really not told you enough about Venice to make clear how thoroughly delighted I am by it. Whenever I come to Europe again I am determined to come here. It is the only European city I have ever been in, besides Paris, that has a distinctive and totally individual character and atmosphere all of its own, and in some ways, though certainly not in all, it is more charming. Paris has a heavy, sometimes even lugubrious quality to it; the buildings are consistently grey, and all the principal landmarks are massive in their impressiveness—places like The Louvre, the Opera, even Notre Dame. Venice is full of color, and unlike Paris, is not especially beautiful at night, except the lights along St. Marks’ basin, and perhaps the Piazza. But the buildings are all in delicate pastel colors, deep grape reds, olive yellows, and even the least imposing of them has a charm and loveliness. And the large palaces, like the Doge’s, are light in feeling and color, being made for the most part of Greek and Italian marble, sometimes streaked, and sometimes of white porphyry. There is a greater variety of architectural style, including Byzantine (as in St. Marks’ Cathedral), Romanesque, Moorish, Gothic and Baroque. Paris inclines to be more grandiose, its most impressive sights being the great vistas of avenues and boulevards, the monumental arches, buildings and churches with parks before them, etc. There are no real vistas in Venice. Both the streets and canals are devious, and therefore, because one sees much less of it at a glance, it has a much more intimate feeling. I am sorry to have made all these comparisons to the detriment of Paris, lest it give you the impression that I don’t like it there. That is hardly the case, as you must have guessed from my earlier letters. Mais Venise est quelque chôse d’autre.3 The effect of the masts of the sailboats tied up to the quays in the evening with the sunset behind them is quite beyond anything [J. M. W.] Turner was able to arrive at. One more comparison with Paris is necessary. Paris for all its beauty, has some very regrettable sections, whereas Venice, even in its most remote and secretive parts, all of which, it seems to me, we must have walked through at one time or another, is never quite undistinguished. One evening, as we were walking home to supper by way of the Piazza, an orchestra at one of the chic cafes in that area was playing Eine kleine Nachtmusik. The effect was indescribable. Even in Paris one cannot stand in the most beautiful part of town with a view of the sea at sunset, and listen to Mozart. […]
Love
Tony
Hecht’s reference to the “test” family below is to August Von Wassermann, who discovered the early test for the detection of syphilis still in use today.
September 1 [1949] Paris, France
[To his parents]
Kinderlein:
When Paul [Henissart] and I returned to Paris, none of the people we knew and expected to see was here. Jay Sheers, his girl friend, Gin, and Cici and a few other people had gone off to Spain to see some bull-fights and a fiesta of some kind. […] Marian Spearman had not returned from her bicycle tour of 77 (count ‘em, 77) different countries. Etc., etc. So Paul and I spent most of our time together. One afternoon, […] we were sitting at Weber’s café and restaurant, thinking about Marcel Proust, who mentions the place in “Within a Budding Grove” [from Remembrance of Things Past]. We were both lost in thought when who should present herself but Gloria Wasserman of the test family […]. She was just driving by in a bus and happened to see me from the window. We had some beers together, […] went to the Gauguin show, and after supper went to a splendid Bach concert, which included the 4th Brandenburg concerto, the concerto for two violins and orchestra, the concerto for one violin and orchestra, the suite in B and a chorale and Fugue for orchestra in B minor.
The next day she came around to the d’Isly to get me, because she wanted to go shopping for prints, and I had expressed the intention of picking up a few as presents before I left Paris. So we went around to a little art shop that had been recommended to me, and started looking through portfolio after portfolio of etchings, lithographs, woodcuts, dry-points, and watercolors of a tremendous and catholic variety of artists. […] When we finished we were too exhausted to make objective judgments, so we decided to come back again in a few days.
The next day Gloria was busy, and nothing much transpired, except that I bumped into Marlon Brando on the street. I told him I had just seen Tony Petrina in Venice, and asked him what had become of his plans to go down there and do an Italian movie. He said that he had been receiving all sorts of tantalizing offers of jobs in the States, and since the Italian movie people were not able to pay him much, and were ill-organized, and didn’t know when they’d start shooting, he was planning to fly back to the States in a few days. The next day Gloria came around and we went back to the art shop. This time I was able to narrow things down to three prints—2 Rouaults and a Braque. The Braque was an original signed wood-cut in three colors, limited to 50 copies, of which I had the 40th. The Rouaults were black and white, unnumbered and unsigned. The main thing, however, was that the whole thing came to 50,000 francs, or about $140. […]
Love to all,
Tony
1950
Karl Shapiro (1913–2000), poet and essayist, was the editor of Poetry magazine from 1948 to 1950. The poem referred to below, “Alceste in the Wilderness,” appeared in the magazine’s September 1950 issue, and was later included in A Summoning of Stones.
June 19, 1950 New York NY
Dear Mr. Shapiro:
Thanks very much for your note. I’m taking advantage of the invitation to send the poem back with an “explanation”—which is not meant to be a justification of obscurity. If you think the poem doesn’t stand up without the help of this appendix, you might either use the following as a note or else disregard the whole thing. I will send along some other work when I get it done.
The poem is based on Molière’s The Misanthrope, wherein, you may recall, Alceste, the protagonist, cannot reconcile the forms and morals of society with his own notion of what is honest and real, and he goes into voluntary exile at the end of the play. He leaves behind him the girl he loves, Célimène (to whom the poem refers only through pronouns: her underthings, her laces—because her presence is recalled to him only vaguely by the agency of the pastel tones of the snuff-box, his only souvenir of life in society), and it is likely that Philinte, formerly his best friend, will become his most important rival for Célimène’s affections after Alceste leaves. So much for the characters. The point of the thing would be something like this: having renounced the “artificial” ways and convictions of society, Alceste finds himself nevertheless unable to assimilate reality simply by stepping into its midst; it is too full of unaccountable violences. “He could distill no essence out of this,” as opposed, for example, to Samson, who in a similar situation (when he saw the lion’s carcass full of bees and honey) came up with an observation about sweetness rising out of strength, which he put to his fiancée’s family in the form of a puzzle. The point here, I should think, would be that sweetness is due to come out of Samson’s strength when, at the end of his life, he works God’s Will. In my poem, the monkey is a symbol of lust, as the lion was of strength, and Alceste’s difficulty is that he does not understand how sweetness might issue from this, and is appalled to see them instantaneously linked. Though the heat and vague memories of Célimène arouse lust in him, he prefers to think that the monkey looks like Philinte, his present rival, rather than like the girl or himself, who would suit the occasion equally well. Unable as he is, then, to assimilate reality in its rough state, he is presented with the alternative of accepting it at the “aesthetic distance” of a pastoral version, such as the design of Daphnis represents on his snuff-box. A pastoral version of nature is of course a partial one, an “artificial” one, and is particularly favored in the courtly society which Alceste has just renounced. It is, if you please, what Eliot and Tate might call a “lower mythology,” very low, perhaps, but a mythology in that it serves to reconcile human beings to reality and nature. If it is artificial, it is no more so than the society that accepts it, and without its help, or the help of a “higher mythology” no essence is likely to be distilled. This is why Alceste goes back. There is a deliberate ambiguity in the line, “In the pale shade of France’s foremost daughter,” which is not too important, but I might as well throw it in while I’m at it. If shade is read as tint or color the line would refer to Célimène, who might well be France’s foremost daughter in the estimation of Alceste, and who is always recalled to him in terms of tints and colors (as in the second stanza about the snuff-box). But if shade is read as ghost, it cannot refer to Célimène, who is still alive as far as this fiction is concerned, but refers to the more objective notion of France’s foremost daughter, Joan of Arc. Not only is she France’s patron saint (if there can be a feminine patron saint) but she represents a purity and sweetness that Alceste misses in his present situation, and she is able to reconcile the violences of reality at the remove, this time, of a “higher mythology.” This is not likely to occur to Alceste, who, I take it, is not a religious man, but it might occur to the reader. The pun is really not very important, and I’m afraid I’ve labored it too much.
I’m embarrassed at having gone on at such length about my poem, for I suspect that a poem should not need this much exegesis on the poet’s part, at least. The main difficulty might be resolved, perhaps, by a note to the effect that Alceste, Philinte, and the nameless “she” are persons in the Molière comedy, and that Daphnis is merely a pastoral swain appearing in the design of Alceste’s snuff-box. But I cannot remember that any poem appearing in Poetry has ever needed notes before (except “The Waste Land”) and it may well be an important weakness in this one.
Let me thank you again for your interest in my work. I hope to send you more in the future, but I’d be glad to know what you think of the enclosed.
Yours,
Anthony Hecht
Polly and Oscar Williams were friends from Kenyon, the latter not to be confused with his namesake, the anthologist Oscar Williams, mentioned in the following letter, who was to include several Hecht poems in his New Pocket Anthology of American Poetry from Colonial Days to the Present (1955). Paul Radin was the younger brother of Max Radin, the author of the 1916 work The Jews among the Greeks and Romans, cited in Hecht’s letter below of November 1951.
August 22, 1950 Amsterdam, Holland
[To his parents]
Ha, there—
[…] I was able to lead a relatively tranquil life in Paris, and to see a lot of my old friends. One of them was Paul Radin and his wife, for whom Polly and Oscar and I prepared a rather spectacular welcome to Paris. We rode in the Metro from the Pantheon, which is near Oscar’s home, to the Gare St. Lazare, immaculately clothed, clean white shirts, bow ties, and all necessary finery, including gloves. However Oscar and I were both wearing wigs.
Oscar had one which looked sort of like Henry V’s hair, from the movie of the same name, and I had one with a bald pate, and blond hair around the edges down to my shoulders. Oscar carried a copy of Pravda [the official communist newspaper of the Soviet Union] and I carried the complete works of Molière. We created quite a stir in the subway and at the station. Mothers could not drag their children from the sight of us. When we got to the station we had to wait about twenty minutes for the train, and were a source of almost unendurable curiosity to the general plebs. Paul was delighted, however, and we saw him several times in Paris. […]
What news of Furioso and New Directions? Let me hear from you and I will write again in a few days.
Love to all,
Tony
Richard Wilbur (1921–), a longtime friend of Hecht’s, is a poet and translator. The poems in Poetry to which Wilbur refers are “Alceste in the Wilderness” and “To Phyllis.” The latter appears without title as the final section of “Songs for the Air or Several Attitudes about Breathing” in A Summoning of Stones.
November 15, 1950 Forio d’Ischia, Italy
Dear Dick:
Forgive the long delay in answering your kind note, which was forwarded to me here in Ischia, along with a copy of Poetry. It was good of you to write, and I am very happy that you should have liked the poems. I was rather pleased with them myself, but in their present context, coming, as they do, immediately after yours, they do not show to their best advantage. I would be sorry if this should seem merely the polite thing to say, since it comes in answer to your spontaneous compliments, but I confess to being exceptionally lazy, and have, up till now, been able to win out over the occasional temptation to write to someone when I am especially delighted with his work. Feeling somewhat guilty for not having taken the initiative myself, I can only disregard the fact that compliments returned are suspect, or poor form, or mildly contemptible, or whatever they are, and tell you quite sincerely how much I admired your poems in Poetry, particularly “Castles and Distances” and “Sensible Emptiness.” Both of these seem to me extraordinarily fine.
I have been in Europe since spring, mostly in Paris and Amsterdam, the latter being a very charming city, but having more dog turds on its streets and sidewalks than any other place I have ever been to. The city was redeemed largely by its people, who are very agreeable, its good cigars and gin. Have come down here to Ischia for the winter, hoping to work hard and get a book of poems finished by spring. Ischia, you may know, is a little island just outside the bay of Naples and north of Capri. During the summer a bizarre little “literary” group, including Auden and Truman Capote, has its headquarters here, but these have all fled to the limelight somewhere, which is just as well. It is sort of primitive but pleasant here; the weather is rather raw just now, but winter ends in February. Pomegranates, figs, dates, tremendous quantities of grapes (very good local wine), good cheeses, and tiny, brilliantly red tomatoes, the size of ping-pong balls. Lots of olive and palm trees, flowers, especially some strange vine with a violent purple blossom, are still in bloom. We make our own vodka by mixing equal amounts of straight alcohol and water, passing this through powdered charcoal several times to remove impurities, and adding a bit of sugar and lemon rind for flavor. Extremely potent stuff. Living is very cheap here, and there is really nothing to do but eat, work, sleep, and read. I plan to return to the States in spring, unless a war should crop up, and I hope to get a chance to see you again under less poisonous circumstances than that binge at Oscar Williams’. Please get in touch with me if you should come to New York,
With best wishes,
Tony Hecht
1951
January 18 or 19 or something [1951]
Forio d’Ischia, Italy
[To Roger Hecht]
Dear Roger:
You have a right to be surprised at the arrival of this letter so fast upon the heels of the last one, but don’t jump to the conclusion that I have decided to reform my character and write home every few days. Nothing of the sort. The fact is that I have begun a poem which looks as though it might turn out pretty well, but being without books here (or at least without the particular book I want), I have to ask you to copy the necessary information and ship it off to me in a letter as soon as possible. What I want is a little anecdote in Vasari’s “Life of Michelangelo.” It’s the one in which some subaltern or menial in the Vatican takes a strong objection to the nudity of all the figures in The Last Judgment, and Mike, in a fit of righteous indignation, immediately paints his portrait in among the damned in Hell. The poor blister goes to the Pope to complain, but the Pope, who is a witty old bastard, remarks (in Latin): “If Michelangelo put you in Hell, all the spiritual forces of the Church are not enough to get you out,” or words to that effect. Now what I would like to have is an accurate account of the incident, including the Pope’s incisive comment in the original. I’m sorry to give you all this trouble, but I hope it will be worth your labor and my patience—since it will be some time before I get your reply, and I don’t want to do any further work till I have all the material assembled. Here is what I’ve done so far; the first stanza [of “To Julia” is quoted].
Sort of Yeatsean, I suppose, but what the hell. The painting [“Young Woman with a Pink,” now attributed to Hans Memling and described in the stanza] is in the Bache Collection in the Met in the same room with the two Holbein portraits. The woman is dressed in dark red, and I’m not sure that she’s actually wimpled. In addition, I invented the landscape through the window, but then I suppose Memling did too. […]
Let me know all the latest poop, and please send that stuff from Vasari off as soon as possible.
Thine,
George Selwyn
In 1951, Hecht was selected by the American Academy of Arts and Letters to be the first Fellow in Literature at the American Academy in Rome. His twelve-month residence began in October 1951. Allen Tate (1899–1979), poet and critic, was the generous and influential mentor to a number of important poets, including Robert Lowell, Randall Jarrell, and John Berryman.
April 3, 1951 Forio d’Ischia, Italy
Dear Mr. Tate:
I have just gotten a letter from Roger, telling me that I’ve been awarded, by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a grant to stay in Rome for a year to write poetry and represent American writers at the American Academy in Rome. I am writing to offer you my happiest and most profound thanks for the part you played in my nomination and election, to tell you that I am deeply conscious of the confidence you have placed in me, and that I hope to deserve it. I have not yet received official notification from the committee, but I have sent Roger, as requested, a wire stating my joyful and grateful acceptance of the award.
I fear these are very poor thanks: I’m at a loss to know what to say. The first notice I had of this came in the form of two telegrams from home; one from my mother, composed of obscure and hysterical congratulations, and the other from Roger, which was fairly informative, but mystified me by stating that I had “won a poetry prize,” although I hadn’t entered any competition, and I was certain that my family wouldn’t undertake to enter my work in something of that sort without my authority. The wires arrived on the 31st of March, and a thoughtful friend suggested that the whole thing might be an ill-timed April Fool’s joke. This struck me as a remarkably brutal observation, which I dismissed, but not without a certain uneasiness. I was sure that my family would never play a joke of that sort, and I thought I could detect, amid the obscurity and hysteria of my mother’s wire, a genuinely maternal note. I gathered that she was very proud of me. All this was substantiated by Roger’s letter, which gave a very lucid account of the conditions of the award, and of his several conversations with you about it. It has made me inexpressibly happy, and I can only clumsily repeat how deep is my sense of satisfaction and gratitude.
Most sincerely,
Tony
April 26, 1951 Florence, Italy
[To his parents]
Dear old Omnes:—
This will be just a note—to keep in touch with you—and let you know why you haven’t heard from me recently. Up till about 4 days ago I still had not heard from the committee officially, though I had gotten a very kind letter of confirmation from Allen Tate. Then a telegram arrived from someone named [Laurance] Roberts, sent from Rome, and inviting me to come there to see him concerning the appointment to the Academy. I came up with some friends of mine from Ischia, and we spent about 3 days in Rome. Roberts, it turned out, knew very little more than I did about the whole business, since this is the first time the appointment has been made for poetry. He did tell me about living conditions, etc., and said that I did not have to stay at the Academy, though there were definite economic advantages in doing so.
The Academy is located in an unbelievably sumptuous palace in one of the most beautiful parts of Rome, called the Geniculam [Janiculum] (or that’s the way it sounds, anyway). It is on the same bank of the Tiber as St. Peter’s and located among beautiful parks that are said to be full of nightingales at night. […]
While in Rome we got in as much sight-seeing as we could bear—including St. Peter’s, the Roman Forum, the Colisseum, the Marcellus Theater, St. Clement’s (where there are some magnificent Masaccios, including the “Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden” [Hecht is probably fusing here recollections of the Masaccios from the Brancacci Chapel in Florence]) and an untold number of churches. Then we came to Florence the day before yesterday, and have been sight-seeing ever since we got here, with time out one evening to visit Robert Lowell and his wife, Elizabeth Hardwick. (I am going to see them again this evening. They are leaving Florence next week, where they have been living since October, for a short trip to Greece and Turkey, and then are going to Paris to meet Robie and Anne Macauley, who are coming over for 6 weeks this summer. Robie has been teaching at North Carolina.) In Florence, so far, we have seen the Uffizi and Pitti Palaces, the Palazzo Vecchio, a great number of churches, most of them magnificent, and from where I am sitting now, at a café on the south side of the Piazza of the Republic, I can see the top of the Giotto tower, done in white, pink, and dark blue-green marble. I am sitting at a marble-topped table, writing and drinking Martell cognac, and feeling quite pleased about things in general. My friends left yesterday to go to Venice for a few days, and they will pick me up on their way back.
I enclose a photo “con barba.” It’s not a very good one, so I shall send some others—I am having a lot taken to immortalize the Thing, because I think I shall cut it off when I get back to Ischia. (You may be interested to know that there was no surprise or object[ion] to it on the part of Roberts). Met Auden in Ischia, and was invited up for drinks with some friends. He seemed very nice—I was surprised. I will write a fuller, more detailed letter when I get back to the machine.
Love to all,
Tony
June 5, 1951 Forio d’Ischia, Italy
[To his parents]
Dear old Omnes:
Roger arrived safe and sound the day before yesterday. He was in wonderful spirits. While we were getting his bags through customs, all sorts of people he’d met during the trip over came up to say goodbye to him and wish him a pleasant stay in Italy. I was really delighted to see him again. He’d picked up a fine sunburn on the way over, and was very excited and happy about being here. We got finished at the dock at 8:30 a.m. and by 9:30 we were on our way to Ischia. We got to the house around noon, had lunch, sat around and talked for a while, and went swimming in the afternoon. For supper, I prepared my unparalleled spaghetti dish, (a friend, Elsa Rosenthal, came up to have dinner with us), and last night I made dolma. So you can see that I’m letting Roger have the works. Last night Elsa was supposed to take us up to Auden’s for cocktails, but the weather was bad and she didn’t want to come all the way into town, so perhaps we’ll go tonight or the next night. The weather has been sort of gloomy the last two days (though, happily, it was splendid the day Roger arrived) and we had a little rain yesterday and today, but it ought to clear up soon. […]
Love,
Asst. Pope
Although the two letters recounting Hecht’s meeting with Auden repeat some of the same information, there are enough differences to warrant including both. Raymond Rosenthal (1915–1995), essayist, literary critic, and translator, lived in Italy in the 1950s. “Thekie,” Thekla Clark, was a family friend and eventual author of the 1996 Wystan and Chester: A Personal Memoir of W. H. Auden, in which Hecht makes a cameo appearance.
October 4, 1951 American Academy Rome, Italy
Dear Parents:
Well, I’m here. Ray Rosenthal made the trip with me, as had been planned, and as Thekie told you. He wanted to come up anyway, for his own reasons: he’s writing an article on Roman archeology for The New Yorker. The whole trip was made without any difficulty; even the cat caused no particular trouble (she lives in my rooms, and I take her for a walk in the garden every day), although she was pretty scared by the trip, and by being carried in a box the whole way. We left Ischia at 5 in the morning, spent some time in Naples, where Ray had some chores to do, and took the train for Rome at 2 in the afternoon, arriving at the Academy at about 5:30. There was nobody here to greet us, Mr. Roberts, the director, and his staff having gone down to Naples the same day to greet the new Fellows arriving on the boat from America. They just got here last night and I have really not met anyone much yet.
I have two large rooms, a bedroom and study, that look out on a beautiful courtyard designed like a cloister, with a garden designed around four beautiful and immense cypress trees which stand at the four corners of a pool, fed by a lazy fountain, and sustaining an immense goldfish. The furnishings are practical, though not especially beautiful: there are two very comfortable beds, one of which is being used by Ray, and it will be removed after he leaves, two large armoires, a large bureau, table, bed-table, fine old-fashioned academic desk right out of an American university professor’s nightmare, three arm-chairs, two ordinary chairs, two lamps in the bedroom, a desk-lamp, and a large bookcase. The walls are completely bare, and are painted white, so that although the rooms are very bright most of the day, they have a certain chill and monastic cast to them. I hope to get some reproductions to put up in order to relieve the asceticism of the place a bit. […]
Let me tell you about my interview with Auden. It lasted two and a half hours, and he went over each one of my poems very carefully with me. It was a slightly tense business, as I had anticipated, because he was naturally concerned that I shouldn’t take offense at any critical comment he made, and at the same time he wanted to be as honest and scrupulous as he could be. I took no offense at anything, of course, but when I tried to defend certain things I had done, he behaved as if he thought I resented his criticism, and he would modify his position and qualify his comments into oblivion. He told me he liked the poems very much, though I don’t know what that really means, since I think he would have said that in any case, providing he didn’t actually dislike them. Some of his comments about details were very apt and helpful, but he has a totally different way of conceiving a poem from the way I have, and he feels that I’ve been too much influenced by Ransom and Tate not in style but in theory. He feels that details are an ornamental embellishment to verse and should never be allowed to distract the reader’s attention from the main line of discourse, whereas I believe that the details should be made to subsume, to contain, to embody, to incarnate the point and meaning of the poem. In a way, I think we’re working towards the same goal from opposite directions, but my way is better suited to me than his. He said of the “Aubade” for example (the one coming out in Kenyon) that there was too much detail, that the poem could have been written in the same number of stanzas, but with each stanza of four lines instead of ten. He liked best of all the poem I sent to Poetry called “La Condition Botanique.” And he told Ray and Elsa Rosenthal the next day, that he thought my poetry was better than most of the younger poets, specifically Wilbur’s and Shapiro’s—though, I don’t see how Shapiro gets into the “younger” category any more. You must not misunderstand me; the whole interview was carried on in the most cordial terms; it’s just that there was a difference of opinion on some points which we sensed more strongly than we declared. And now, upon reflection, I feel that there’s much in Auden’s point of view that’s valuable; which is what I mean when I say that we are working towards the same goal from opposite directions. And I think he may be right most of all in saying (as he said to the Rosenthals but not to me) that my verse was perhaps too formal—not in the metrical sense, but in being somewhat impersonal in tone, disengaged from the central emotions of the poems. This is mainly what he has against Ransom and Tate, and with many qualifications, he’s right. In any case, it has given me something to think about, and that’s a good thing. […]
Love,
Tony
P.S. Any word from Oscar Williams about any further anthologies?
October 16, 1951 American Academy Rome, Italy
[To Allen Tate]
Dear Mr. Tate:
[…] Perhaps you may remember a rather long poem of mine that Roger showed you last spring, which started out about a Memling painting. Well, Auden remarked that the stories of the Michelangelo incident (about painting his critic’s face into Hell), and the business about the Defenestration of Prague were both so familiar as to require only casual reference or allusion in order to recall the whole story, whereas I had devoted an eighteen line stanza to each one. The point here was a little different, though, because it had to do with what might properly be expected of a reader, and tied in with a point he raised concerning an item in another poem called “La Condition Botanique,” which should be out shortly in Poetry. There is a reference in this last poem to Simeon Pyrites as the patron saint of Fool’ s Paradise. Auden recognized the play on Stylites, of course, and knew, in addition, that pyrites was iron disulphide, but could not see what bearing that had on the poem, whereas he apparently didn’t know, what I might have expected, that pyrites is fool’s gold. What’s more, it seems less demanding on the reader to ask him to look up pyrites in the dictionary, where he will immediately come across the familiar nickname, than to ask him to read through the life of Michelangelo for the details of this little incident, which Vasari records, but others may not have bothered with; or to read through a history of the Holy Roman Empire for an account of the defenestration, which I don’t believe is even mentioned in the Encyclopedia. But more important than all this is the fact that it shouldn’t really make any difference how familiar the story is. The botanical poem, which was the lightest of the group I showed him, he liked the best. Of two poems that had appeared some while back in Kenyon, he said nothing about “Hallowe’en” and remarked about “Springtime,” a little translation from Charles of Orléans, that I should make sure I have the archaic spelling right, because it’s the sort of thing that scholars will jump on me for. After going over all the poems one by one, (except “Hallowe’en”), he repeated his comment about the danger of allowing detail to distract the reader’s attention from the poems argument or topic. By way of example, he quoted these lines of Yeats, from “A Prayer For My Daughter”:
“I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour …” and went on to ask, “Why an hour? Why not twenty minutes or forty-six?” I think I said something about the use of a conventional language, and the way it gives the feeling of a distinct, and eventually an individual voice. But he stuck to his point, and felt that “an hour” was just stuck in to fill out the line, or rhyme, or something. Anyway, when I objected, he dropped the point, and turned to something else. It was only very much later that I recalled his mentioning very favorably Wyatt’s “Rememberance” [“They flee from me”] and wondered how he would justify, “Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise / Twenty times better.” […]
I want again to send you my most sincere and grateful thanks for your part in my nomination and election to this Fellowship. I’m afraid that when I wrote you saying that my first reaction to the news that I had won was that the whole thing might be a joke, you perhaps thought I was not taking the prize as seriously as it deserved to be taken. Let me assure you that I meant to express only incredulity; I have never had such a complete and happy surprise in my life. And I feel very grateful.
With sincere good wishes,
Tony
November 1951 American Academy, Rome, Italy
Dear Parents:
[…] I am going back to Forio for Thanksgiving, having received a special invitation to partake of turkey, pumpkin pie, chestnut dressing, etc., with the Rosenthals, the Weisses, and other friends of mine down there. As for work, the songs (seven in all) that I have been writing with Leo Smit are all done, and most of the music has been written. I think they’re wonderful, and can’t wait to hear them performed. The scoring calls for four mixed voices, ten instrumentalists (winds and strings). I have finished the first part of the long poem, which will probably have three more parts (at least three more) when finished. I am working on it slowly since it’s an entirely new kind of thing for me, and if it comes off, should be quite fine. In the mean time I am also working on smaller poems, began one the other day, and have been doing a lot of reading: Philo, Josephus, Livy, Suetonius, some Roman archeology, Pound’s letters, Richard Wilbur’s second book of poems (very good), Max Radin (Paul’s brother) on the Jews among the Greeks and Romans, and some German poetry. (I think I may try some translations of some early things: Walther von der Vogelweide, or something like that. By the way, you could really do me a great favor, which I would appreciate very much. Would you copy out and send me a poem of Ronsard’s called “Contre Denise, Sorcière,” which you will find in my library in a little anthology of French poetry edited by André Gide, and published by Pantheon. I have wanted to try doing that one for some time, and they don’t have a copy of it here.)[…]4
Love,
Tony
1952
January 2, 1952 American Academy, Rome, Italy
[To Allen Tate]
Dear Mr. Tate:
[…] At last I think I have got enough for a book. It’s about time, I suppose, but I’m rather glad I’ve taken this long. The book will represent quite a variety of style and development, and if this is good for nothing else, it may keep me from being “typed” as a poet with a specialized talent, and who must be expected to fail if he tries anything outside his own little province. I think, or at least I hope that the book may come to an impressive total, and I feel quite satisfied with at least a few of the poems. […]
I will be back in the States in October, when I plan to get the mss. together, make all the final revisions, and show it to you, if I may, before sending it to a publisher. And this is something else I’d like to ask you about: we spoke about publishers once in New York, and I told you about the agreement I had with Macmillan to let them have first look at the poems. […] In any case, I know that there are several other houses that are interested (I had a letter from Knopf this summer, and Random House; New Directions and some others had gotten in touch with me previously), so there will be no trouble finding a publisher. […] I should like very much to know what you think of all this, and what suggestions you care to make. With best regards and good wishes for a very happy New Year.
Sincerely,
Tony
July 1, 1952 American Academy, Rome, Italy
Dear Parents:
Forgive my not writing for so long, but I’ve been working hard. Just finished a new, and fairly long (150 lines) poem. It’s not the Big one; that still has to be finished, and I want to add a couple of shorter ones before I leave here. So I’ll be pretty busy for the rest of the summer. The Greek trip is off, for economy reasons. A letter from Bard informs me that they would like me to offer (1) Ambiguity and Symbolism, (2) a writers’ workshop in prose and poetry, (3) an introductory course to literary forms, i.e., novel, drama, poem, short-story, etc., using whatever examples I like. So that gives me as much latitude as I could ask for. Got a letter from that Poetry Awards outfit, whose previous message you forwarded to me. As I think I wrote you before, I revised “Aubade” and changed its title [to “A Deep Breath at Dawn”] before sending it to them. They wrote back, explaining the complications that would arise if they permitted everyone to revise his work after it had been judged (all very understandable) but then went on to say, “Furthermore, if your poem were to be reconsidered, some of the Editors might score your new version lower than the original one and your poem might be displaced by some one of the excellent poems which were barely eliminated.” I have answered them as follows:
I have just received your letter concerning the revisions I have made in my poem. The practical difficulties you face in having to reconsider so many poems, with such a widely scattered editorial board, are quite clear to me. But there are some other matters I find puzzling.
In revising a poem, as well as in writing it, I do the best I can; and though any changes from the original may strike an audience, or a board of editors, as being all for the worse, I incline, insofar as I write them at all, to regard them as improvements. And I cannot be persuaded that a work, having undergone such improvements, should give place to any less perfect version of itself with which I am manifestly dissatisfied, no matter how charitably disposed towards its imperfections your editors may be.
I should be sorry to eliminate myself from the anthology you are publishing, and from the competition you are sponsoring; but if the problems of revaluating my revised poem against the excellence of its competitors should seem prohibitively complicated, I will have to content myself with the kindly interest you have taken in my work.
As for further plans, I sail from France on the 21 of Aug., and will try to finish my work here as soon as I can so that I can spend a little time in Paris before coming home. […]
Love
Tony
Lukas Foss (1922–2009) was a German-born, American composer. His many works include “Time Cycle” (songs with orchestra after texts by W. H. Auden, A. E. Housman, Franz Kafka, and Friedrich Nietzsche). A Columbia recording exists of the Louisville performance of Ein Märchen vom Tod (A Parable of Death). Leo Smit (1921–1999) was a prolific American composer and pianist. His early career included collaborating with the dancer Valerie Bettis. A “Choir of Starlings” was first performed on February 25, 1955, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Caedmon premiered with the Buffalo Philharmonic on December 10, 1972.
Sept. 12, [19]52 Annandale-on-Hudson, New York
[To Allen Tate]
Dear Allen—
I’ve been back in America a week, and have already taught my first class up here [Bard College]. I’m really not quite used to it yet; I feel a little foreign. […]
This is to thank you again for my year in Italy. I plan to write at greater length and elaboration later on about the Academy and the other people there. Among other things, I collaborated with a couple of the composers there: Lukas Foss and Leo Smit. For the first, I translated a very short story, really a parable, called “Ein Märchen vom Tod” by Rilke, with strophes from the poems interspersed here and there for the chorus to sing. The work has been commissioned by the Louisville symphony orchestra, who will perform it in March, with Vera Zorina [the famous actress and ballet dancer] as narrator—with chorus and orchestra. For Leo, I wrote a group of seven songs in the English madrigal tradition, which are scored for four mixed voices and ten instruments [“A Choir of Starlings”], and which may be done this year in New York as a ballet, by Valerie Bettis. And finally, most ambitious of all, I wrote the text of a cantata, based on the story of Caedmon—for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, music again by Leo.
Aside from all this, I’m within an ace of finishing the book—in fact, there is one unfinished poem to clear up, and I’ll be done. This poem, which will be the largest and most ambitious in the book—about 500 lines—I hope to finish up very soon, and after polishing up a few earlier things, I want to type up the whole business, and send it to you, for any comments or criticisms you might care to make—if I may. […]
Most sincerely,
Tony
