Vol. 36, No. 3 Autumn 2008
Editor: Norman T. Gates
520 Woodland Avenue
Haddonfield, NJ 08033-2626, USA
E-mail: ntgates@worldnet.att.netAssociate Editor: David Wilkinson
2B Bedford Road, St. Ives
Cornwall TR26 1SP U.K.
E-mail: books@book-gallery.co.uk
RA and H.D. Website: http://imagists.org/ Correspondent, website editor, and list manager:
Paul Hernandez Correspondents: Catherine Aldington, Michael Copp, Stephen Steele, Archie Henderson, Caroline Zilboorg
Correspondent and Bibliographer: Shelley Cox.
Biographer: Charles Doyle* * * * * * * * * *
Associate Editor David Wilkinson noted two items of interest by Alan A. Martin in Dispatches: Magazine of the Friends of the Imperial War Museum (Summer 2008).
1. Jean Moorcroft has enlarged her biography of the poet Isaac Rosenberg. “After years of meticulous research this volume consists of new and vital information and had received outstanding press reviews and praise on television and radio programmes.”
2. Cecil Woolf with Jean Moorcroft Wilson introduced the War Poets series of monographs in 2005 with The Selected Poems of Richard Aldington. A complete list of the series 20th Century Poets Experience of War is now available from Cecil Woolf Publishers, 1 Mornington Place, London, NW1 7RP or telephone 020 7387 2394.
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Correspondent Michael Copp found four RA references in Michael J.K. Walsh’s Hanging a Rebel: The Life of C.R.W. Nevinson, Lutterworth Press, 2008. One quotes the following RA reaction to Marinetti that was published in The New Freewoman: “Mr. Marinetti has been reading his new poems in London….London is vaguely alarmed and wondering whether it should laugh or not….It is amazing and amusing to a glum Anglo-Saxon to watch Mr. Marinetti’s prodigious gestures…a better man than the bourgeois men and women who grin at him when he reads….”(72)
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NCLS member John Morris asks whether anyone can identify the author and period of the anti-war
poem titled “Look Around,” whose first lines are: “Look around./Up in the air and on the ground./Is this the way you wanted our enemies to pay?”
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In Peter Gay’s Modernism: The Lure of Heresym, W.W. Norton & Co., 2008, we read: “Writiing in1921 Richard Aldington, a prominent English Imagist poet and editor, cautioned against the destructive effects [Ulysses] was bound to have on Joyce’s camp followers.
Aldington was a card-carrying modernist; in 1914 and 1915, he had overcome severe reservations to help to serialize Joyce’s previous novel in The Egoist, ‘True, Portrait of an Artist was sordid but it had fine passages; the contest between the “idealism” of Dedalus [the hero, modeled on young Joyce himself] and the outer world of crass stupidity and ugliness was very moving.’ The book, Aldington confessed, had aroused great expectations in him; ‘one felt that here was a man of extreme sensitiveness and talent.’ But Ulysses had disappointed his hopes. The new book, Aldington wrote, ‘is more bitter, more sordid, and more ferociously satirical than anything Mr. Joyce has yet written.’ He thought it ‘a tremendous libel on humanity,’ clever no doubt and witty, but basically too depressing. ‘There is laughter in Portrait of an Artist, but it is a harsh sneering kind,’ far indeed from the healthy humor of Rabelais. The same was true of its successor. To be sure, Ulysses deserved wide attention, ‘From the point of art,’ Aldington granted ‘there is some justification for Mr. Joyce; he has succeeded in writing a most remarkable book.’ Yet, he persisted, ‘from the point of view of human life I am sure he is wrong.’
Efficiently surveying Joyce’s menu of stylistic devices, Aldington found them dazzling and seductive, however bad example the novel would set. ‘Mr. Joyce has pushed the intimate detailed analysis of character further than any writer I know.’ In short, the novel is ‘an astonishing psychological document.’ Indeed, ‘in nearly every case he achieves his “effect.” He has done daring but quite wonderful things with words. He can be sober, ironic, disgusting, platitudinous, sarcastic just as he wishes.’ By introducing a moral dimension into his verdict on a literary work, Aldington was quite unintentionally raising a persistent issue that at least some modernists, like Oscar Wilde, had already tried to exorcise from literary criticism. But so pure a modernist commentator as Virginia Woolf agreed with Aldington in part.” (197-9)
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We regret to advise that Jean Moorcroft Wilson has decided that it is not feasible for her to continue her efforts to write a biography of RA. Ms. Wilson has suggested an author of several current monographs for Cecil Woolf’s War Poets Series, Vivien Whelpton, to carry on the work begun some years ago. Ms. Whelpton is presently seeking the necessary permissions and discussing her project with possible publishers.
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Melissa Hubbard has joined Morris Library of Southern Illinois University as Rare Book Librarian. A native of Columbia, South Carolina, she completed her master’s degree in library science at the University of North Carolina. Specializing in twentieth-century studies, she also earned an MA in English at the University College London. Through the efforts of Harry T. Moore and others, SIU’s Morris Library holds probably the
finest collection of RA’s books, letters, and manuscripts.
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Mike Copp, who attended and presented a paper at the 5th IRAS Conference, has the following comments for us. “The 5th International Richard Aldington Conference took place early in July as usual in Les Saintes-Maries-de-la Mer. A range of stimulating papers was given, and the whole three days proved to be most enjoyable socially. The members attending, were, however, severely reduced compared to 2004 and 2006. A crucial factor affecting the number of those attending was the exchange rate, which, understandably, deterred the Americans in particular. That said, I find it puzzling that out of all those who receive this newsletter there were only two from the UK present to deliver a paper, myself and Andrew Frayn. Why? On behalf of those attending I would like to thank Dan Kempton, Stoney, and Eric Forbeaux for all their efforts in bring the event off successfully.”
My second grouse concerns the poor take-up in buying the two most recent publications of the papers from the 3rd and 4th Conferences, that is, New Places and Locations and Dislocations. I understand that very few copies of either have been sold. I would have thought that everyone who receives this publication would be eager to possess these two valuable books. If you do not already have them I would urge you to get in touch with Dan Kempton or Stoney (H.R. Stonebach) at New Platz immediately—they are not expensive. There are now five excellent collections of essays/papers on RA (the earlier three may prove more difficult to track down, i.e. Papers from the Reading Conference, Essays in Honour of the Centenary of his Birth, and Writers in Provence.)
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Charlotte Douglas writes: “In Death of a Hero RA humorously identifies Vorticism with Suprematism, the abstract style of the Russian painter Kazimir Malevich. Suprematism is the topic of some thirty pages—‘the immense toils of Suprematist painting,” ‘an article on me and Suprematism,’ ‘my Suprematist book,’ etc. Can anyone suggest where RA encountered Suprematism? Malevich has been part of a Berlin exhibition in 1927, which also went to Amsterdam. Also it was mentioned in the journal De Stijl. But these are about the only appearances of Suprematism in Western Europe by 1929. Is it possible that he knew of Malevich’s friend El Lissitzky, who was in the West at the time? Thanks for any help.” Charlotte Douglas, Douglas@nyu.edu
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The second issue of “H.D.’s Web” is on-line at http://www.imagists.org/hd/hdsweb/index.html
The address of the NCLSN on-line is given under “Other Strands in the Web.”
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This issue of “H.D’s Web” provides a link to Catherine Aldington’s “Poet on the Couch: H.D. with Freud.”
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Michael Copp writes: “The summer exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London, ‘Wyndham Lewis: Portraits’ contained, as one might have expected, a number of portraits of colleagues, acquaintances, or contemporaries of RA. Apart from 8 self-portraits of Lewis himself, there were: 5 portraits of Ezra Pound, 3 of James Joyce, 4 of T.S. Eliot, 4 of Edith Sitwell, 3 of Iris Barry, 1 of Edward Wadsworth, 1 of Virginia Woolf, I of Nancy Cunard, 1 of Rebecca West, 1 of Stephen Spender, and 3 of Naomi Mitchison. Among the remaining works displayed were 5 portraits of Lewis’s wife Froanna. What a pity we lack a Lewis drawing or oil of RA!”
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Congratulations to Heather and Paul Hernandez, co-editors of the Imagists website http://imagists.org/ where you can now find not only biographical and bibliographical information on H.D. and RA, but also on-line newsletters on both of these Imagist authors.
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Associate Editor David Wilkinson will be visiting the United States with his son in September/October. As a part of his visit, he will be coming with NCLS member Simon Hewett to meet with your editor here in Haddonfield, New Jersey. Although we are in constant touch editing the Newsletter, this will be the first time David and I have met in person since the NCLS Conference in France July 5-8, 1992 celebrating the 100th anniversary of RA’s birth. (For details about this Conference see Vol. 20, No. 2, p. 1 of the NCLSN, and other listings in the NCLSN “Index” under “Montpellier 1992 International Conference Celebrating RA’s Centenary.”)
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Correspondent Stephen Steele shares with us the following excerpts from letters written by RA to Valery Larbaud. These letters were referred to in NCLSN, 31.4.2.
10/6/24
“Have you seen Sacheverell Sitwell’s Southern Baroque Art? It is a most imaginative book, one of the best books of the kind that has ever appeared, I think. […] If I have a copy sent you will you read it with the idea of persuading some French publisher to issue a translation? […] I asked [Jacques] Rivière about it, but he ‘shied’ off, thinking it was an ordinary book. I am so interested in the book that I apply to you as a sort of literary ambassador.”
18/6/28
“I daresay you will know my name—Richard Aldington—you were once kind enough to mention my poems [Images of War] in the N.R.F. [janvier 1920], and I have more than once written of you in the Times Literary Supplement, though you probably did not know of it. […] I am very anxious for this novel [Your Cuckoo Sings by Kind by Valentine Dobree] to be translated into French. Do you think the N.R.F. would do it? I am impertinent enough to hope that you might like it well enough to translate it. […] I can, of course, see [Ramon] Fernandez and [Edmond] Jaloux about it, but would rather have your advice first.”
1/7/28
“I have left the book [by Valentine Dobree] with [Jean] Paulhan, who has promised to consult with [Ramon] Fernandez and [Gaston] Gallimard, and to do what he can. I very seldom read novels, except French novels, but I thought this one fresh and original. […] Don’t forget I read Barnabooth in 1913, and praised his collected poems in print fifteen years ago. The poems of your Spanish protégé, which the Times has just sent me, are alas! Not so good.”
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Correspondent Steele found the notice to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France’s copy of “Hark the Herald.” It indicates an “autographe” or manuscript poem in this copy Aldington signed to Nancy Cunard.
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NCLS member Andrew Frayn recently submitted his PhD thesis, Writing Disenchantment: The Development of First World War Prose, 1918-1930, to the University of Manchester, UK. While writing his thesis, Frayn became aware of a manuscript by RA, written in collaboration with the playwright Basil Dean, which he believes to be previously unknown. This is held in the Basil Dean Archive at the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, UK. Charles Doyle, in his Richard Aldington: A Biography, mentions the existence of a stage adaptation of Seven Against Reeves. The Basil Dean Archive also includes an accompanying series of correspondence spanning 1938-1947, of which Doyle implies an awareness (p.232).”
The accompanying correspondence indicates an initial interest and an attempt at composition before the start of the Second World War, and there is a contact between RA and Dean dated 28 June 1939. There was an attempt at reviving the project in 1947. Dean envisioned a rewrite that emphasized life as it is today with all of its frustrations (6 February 1947). RA, in reply, thought that the play’s escapist view of pre-war life would be more to the post-war public’s taste (16 February 1947), and correspondence appears to tail off with this disagreement. Frayn was unable to find any evidence that the play was ever performed.
There are 143 pages of typescript, plus 12 pages of an apparent epilogue that is sequenced by the letters a-l rather than numbers. There is an additional folder of 26 pages entitled “My Wife Won’t Let Me: A Comedy by Richard Aldington and Basis Dean.” This typescript version of the play draws extensively on the novel not only for situation, but also for dialogue, in many cases lifted wholesale from the novel. This initial typescript appears to be primarily by Aldington, and the folder of revisions is apparently Dean’s attempt to streamline the manuscript.
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Working her way through past issues of the Newsletter, NCLS member Vivien Whelpton came across (Vol. 31, No. 3) Michael Copp’s identification of the Browning quotation, “never glad confident morning again” in RA’s June 1st, 1918, letter to H.D. (Letter19, p.34 in Richard Aldington: An Autobiography in Letters and letter 10, p.52, in Caroline Zilboorg’s 2003 Richard Aldington and H D: Their Lives in Letters), but noticed that in neither text is the quotation, “Not verse now, only prose,” from Browning’s “By the Fireside,” identified. Caroline Zilboorg does attach to the phrase a note to the effect that H.D had destroyed her recent poetry and begun work on what was to become Bid Me to Live, but Whelpton thinks that the Browning source makes the phrase much more resonant than this. Although Browning is actually referring to a change in his reading habits that will come about as he ages, he does so in a poem that celebrates the ten year love affair with his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and in particular the moment when they “knew that a bar was broken between/Life and life…”. With his love of Browning, Whelpton adds, RA is surely thinking both of what his relationship with H.D. has been (there are so many correspondences with the Brownings here!) and of what he is losing. “Friends – lovers that might have been” – it is surely H.D.’s offer of “friendship” that triggers the Browning reference? It all makes this letter even more poignant.
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At the Ford Madox Ford Conference in Durham, England, NCLS member Andrew Frayn was discussing RA with fellow members of both societies Max Sanders and Jenny Plastow. The 2009 Ford Conference is taking place in Aix, on the theme of Ford and France. Saunders suggested that there might be the possibility of an Aldington and Ford panel in this area. Member Frayn is planning to submit an abstract and would like other NCLS members to contact him by e-mail (andrew.frayn@manchester.ac.uk) if they would be interested in forming such a panel. The call for papers can be seen at http://www.afea.fr/spip.php?article149#english
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Member Simon Hewett noted a review of Some Imagist Poets: 1916 by Arthur Waugh in Waugh’s Tradition and Change: Studies in Contemporary Literature (Chapman & Hall, 1919). Arthur Waugh was a publisher and a critic, and was father of Alex and Evelyn Waugh. Alex Waugh was himself a friend of RA. In the review, entitled “The Imagists,” which originally appeared in the Saturday Review, Waugh comments “The trouble seems to be that the Imagists have not yet arrived at a proper understanding of their own principles, and are trying to write verse libre without a sufficiently trained and sensitive ear. By far the most successful of them, Mr. Richard Aldington, achieves his best effect in a poem unfortunately much too long for quotation, the really beautiful and haunting “Eros and Psyche,” with which the Imagists’ Annual for 1916 opens. Here indeed is unrhymed and cadenced verse employed with a true sense of rhythm and beauty; here, also, are images and ideas in perfect consonance with the expression.”
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Read the obituary “Robert Giroux: Publishing Maverick Discovered and Edited Great Writers” at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/05/AR2008090503919.html
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