Jay to Bee - Janet Frame

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      With great self-discipline I was going to wait a few days before posting this but I have to know about the dedication.

      Therefore

       goodbye

      & all kinds of thoughts (fantastic) for you & a helping for

       N

       & P

       from J

      18. Yaddo January

      Dear B,

      Bliss to get your letter which I’ll answer slowly, in instalments so as not to explode your mailbox with my feeling-rays . . . it’s snowing big flakes where this morning it snowed pinhead snow, I ate my lunch here seven hours ago (it is now four o’clock) and like a horse I’m nibbling lumps of sugar.

      So the scene is set.

      Meals are out-a-site—huge steaks, turkey (wild), salads of olives and dates embedded with cream cheese and coconut, ginger souffle with whipped cream, coffee-iced cake with strawberries and ice cream . . . squash and green peppers in a swirl of tomato . . .

      No I did not know that the F. Bacon painting was called Dread Walking. To myself I had called it The Scapedog (I have it pinned on the wall here) as it seemed to be receiving more dread and terror than it could cope with; but if it is Dread then it must exude Dread upon its surroundings. I’ve thought now that the dread is the dread of being Dread [in margin: ‘not the thing but the effect of it?’], and that is why it is in such anguish. I find it very powerful.

      Thank you for the Rilke Poems. I don’t think his French poems are here but they may be in the local library, and they’re certainly in the local college (Skidmore) library which Yaddo guests sometimes use. I do want to read them. I’ve had a whole world of feeling overturned or unburied by reading in the story of Rilke in Paris—how R. was influenced by Valery’s ‘Le Cimetière Marin’, which he read and translated less than a year before he wrote the elegies and sonnets; he and the Muse, I mean. ‘Le Cimetière’ seems to have overwhelmed him.

      It is strange to look back to myself as a schoolgirl and remember the pale green book, Ils Ont Chantés, which I loved and read over and over, especially the poem by Valéry, ‘Le Cimetière Marin’. You may observe, even from Yellow Flowers, that I am hooked on cemeteries by the sea. Maybe I’m a necrophiliac: I collect cemeteries as I collect (through necessity) public ‘comfort stations’ which, I suppose, are only another variation of comfort. Rilke liked the poem because to him it was a ‘perfect poem’; I liked it because I liked it and it moved me—but the French are marvellous with sea cemeteries—dead sailors, fishermen. Ici repose.

      TUESDAY.

      Snowing it was and is not now. The tree-branches seem to have arranged themselves in all kinds of elaborate poses just to show off the shapes of snow lying along them; in one there’s a huge mound of snow like a snow-lion.

      I’m not happy here. I haven’t laughed—real laughter—for ages and ages. [in margin: since Santa Barbara] Everything is so formal and serious and everyone is so determined not to spill a clue of irrationality or disorder, and one is reminded all the time that one is a Writer, an Artist—When you are writing do you . . . is this a problem you come across when you’re writing . . . you as a writer would have something to say on this . . . (you’re telling me!)

      The Director and his wife (harmless and pleasant in themselves) have before-dinner cocktails with us and dine with us and have after-dinner conversation with us, and everyone chats happily except me. Oh my, it’s grim. [in margin: Hello to Paul] Working conditions in this big studio, however, are excellent. (Last evening beneath the formal after-dinner conversation Walter Aebacher (sp?) a—the?—sculptor told me he read of a Queen of England who built a scaffold so she could copulate with a horse.) I keep imagining what the portrait of Santa Barbara will be like. It is such a rich idea—how much richer to have a city named after a Saint than after a General, yet I suppose the portrait of a city named after a general would yield much that was unexpected and mysterious and terrible; and Saints, too, have their surprises. The Muse is in this somewhere, emerging from Hérodiade and Muzot and the live oaks and the oil derricks and the gaunt hills and the bird of paradise flower. How lucky you are to have a Muse to guard you and prevent you from destroying your own vision! I’ve never cared for the Muse myself—I think of her as a bitch—I think my muse is either an angel—a stray one—a choice of angels or perhaps Pluto, God of the Underworld who carried off Persephone and I’m Persephone transferred from flower-gathering to higher or lower things, mostly lower.

      I hope you got the Pocket Mirror I sent. I have a spare ADAPTABLE MAN (title only) and if you like I’ll give you my spare Adaptable Man—it’s a very bad novel but it has a dentist in it—I think I told you about this—based on a dentist I saw only once in my life and inspired by one sentence he spoke to me, ‘Rinse whilst I’m gone’. It also has a minister who is obsessed with St. Cuthbert (as I have been since I met him in Anglo Saxon prose). And not much else.

      I tried to get Snowman Snowman and The Reservoir (they’re together handsomely ‘boxed’) when I was at the Braziller office but George B couldn’t find one. I did not know that Alan Lelchuk was very fond of Snowman Snowman. It’s the only book of mine (apart from Faces and Y Flowers, I think) that he’s read. He did say, though, that he’d like a copy of these stories. He’s a ‘fucking arrogant’ young man (Philip Roth’s description of him, quoted by Alan) but I like him. He’s really all trembling sensitivity (or sexitivity, pretty much the same).

      I hope Ned has yielded his little cupful by now and is able to go out and about in the garden again.

      I called Elnora to say hello. She’s been asleep mostly but I think she will get her book finished when she goes to MacDowell.

      I love the little sketches in your letter. More.

      ‘Un cigne avance sur l’eau . . .’

      Our exclusive heart-ray model, transplanted at no extra cost (admittedly, the initial cost is high!) Can be converted instantly for killing (distance no object). A thousand uses, much in little, even your best friends are deceived by it, wear it on your sleeve, in bed, at parties. Do not, however, bend spindle fold or mutilate, use only as directed. Do not burn when empty. Shake before using. Keep in a warm place. Pierce before use. Tear only where indicated. Do not inhale.

      [in margin: It is dangerous to exceed the stated dose.]

       J

      19. Yaddo January

       Page One

      Dear B,

      Dear literate graphic numerate

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