26 June (1950): Saul Bellow to Oscar and Edith Tarcov

Writing to longtime friends Oscar and Edith Tarcov, Saul Bellow closes a report of his travels with an unexpected poem.

June 26, 1950

Dear Tarcovs—

Just now we’re in Positano, on the gulf of Salerno, in the midst of the mountains and hanging over the sea. The fishermen have no motors and plant their own lobster traps, the women make lace on bolsters, simply with pins and bobbins, and on holy days the Saints are taken for a walk by a procession. It would seem incredible for the gods to never see the sun, and they are shown it on Sunday.

And we’re coming home in Sept. I expect things will be much altered. I read the papers with revulsion, when I get them. The only papers here are the Italian and catastrophe’s an old story to them—they prefer gossip.

So we’ll be in Chicago for a week or two in Sept., and then to New York. I have evening work at NYU. Fear Isaac [Rosenberg] doesn’t like that. He sent me a sore, and rather nasty note about it, as though I had done something behind his back. What’s wrong with people at home, anyway, and what’s the snarling for? Isaac knows perfectly well that if my being at NYU would be doing him the least harm I’d turn down the job. I’ve told him so, and the truth of it doesn’t need any protestation. But he’d rather dislike me than converse about it and for my part I can’t continue to care many damns as the years accumulate on my head.

That’s Bazelon and Isaac, one or two others, and leaves me and thee. Rather old-fashioned. Similarities in our families account for it maybe. Though you may not like the comparison just now, with [Bellow’s brother] Morrie’s sins tumbling from the closet. I knew something about them, of course, but wasn’t abreast of them at all and hadn’t heard about the [paternity] suit till you wrote me of it. I’d like to know more. It moves me to think of my father in this, and of the kids. It’ll do the rest of the family good if they’re not beyond remedies.

This is turning out to be a sad letter, and that’s peculiar because I’ve been feeling the opposite of sad. Just went down to the harbor with Herschel, lecturing him on the geology of mountains. I tried to tell you and Isaac about the Illinois limestone.

It did us much good to get your letter with some evidence of happiness in it and word of the kids and of your writing. You seem more gallant about the last than I am. I’m beginning to think of bricklaying.

Best love,

Till July 20—Pensione Vittoria, Positano (Salerno), Italia.

Spring Ode

Thunder brings the end of winter,
Rinsing the yellow snow from the gutter;
Calico spots flare at the window;
I lie in my bathrobe, eating butter.
Grease on my cheeks—the fat of the season
Now dead and sealed, now dead and waxy.
Foxes yap on the tenement stairs;
Hope arrives in a Checker taxi.
His clever face is now surveying
The hallway with its sooty tatters,
The playing-card banners overhead,
The cymbals, scales and other matters.
My bathrobe sleeves are stiff with yolks,
Speckled with crumbs of my winter’s eating;
Bottles and eggshells on the floor
Lie between us at our meeting.
He falls into my arms, we kiss,
We cry like reunited brothers.
He tells me how he searched for me
Among the others.
My cheeks are fat, my eyes are wet,
His hand rests sadly on my shoulder;
We cannot help but see how much
Each has grown older.

—Bellow