Here, Elizabeth Bishop writes to her close friend and fellow poet Robert Lowell about his recent poems, Anton Webern’s compositions, and the “strange kind of modesty” she finds in all contemporary works that she admires. Bishop also describes her temporary living situation with her near-nephew Flávio, and her life in Petrópolis, Brazil, where she lived with her partner Lota de Macedo Soares.
Dearest Cal:
I began to worry a bit when I didn’t receive any answer to my two long letters to you before Christmas, then about two weeks ago I had a note from Belle Gardner mentioning in passing that you’d been sick, so I wrote Elizabeth. I had a very nice letter from her (which I’ll answer sometime)—and by then you were better and coming home the day she wrote, I think. I am so dreadfully sorry, as you can imagine—I do hope and pray you are feeling yourself again. (Not that I pray very much, but I mean by that just necessity of hoping…) It is a damned shame, you’d been working so marvelously—but you do have that wonderful group of poems on hand now to console you, and we can all be grateful for them. I’ve read them over and over again, finally had to stop because I was trying to write some of my own, read them again just now, and every time I find more things I’d like to mention in detail. They are awfully well worked out, real, and I like the rather gentle, really, tone…more a muted trumpet this time, or even a cello.
I’m thinking in musical terms because last week we finally got the ee-fee, as we call it here, installed. It still has to be adjusted a bit, a little more sponge rubber here, felt there, and some more ground wires—but to me it sounds absolutely superb and now I seem to have everything I want here, except for a few friends I’d like to see more often. I bought that Webern you had before I left, and I’m listening to parts every day. I think I’m so smart, because when you played me one piece I immediately thought it seemed like the musical equivalent of Klee. Now, according to the notes, Webern was actually a member of the Blue Rider group…I still can’t take very much of the songs. For one thing, those voices aren’t too good, even if accurate, but I am crazy about some of the short instrumental pieces. They seem exactly like what I’d always wanted, vaguely, to hear and never had, and really “contemporary.” That strange kind of modesty that I think one feels in almost everything contemporary one really likes—Kafka, say, or Marianne, or even Eliot, and Klee and Kokoschka and Schwitters…Modesty, care, space, a sort of helplessness but determination at the same time. Well, maybe I’m hearing too much. (—an admission of final ignorance!)
This past week has been pretty grim here but things are better now. Lota’s sister was suddenly taken very sick & had to have an emergency operation. Lota went to Rio right away, and I’ve been here alone with the sister’s fifteen year old son, Flávio—a very neurasthenic, gangling boy, with big horn rimmed glasses, who reads twenty hours a day and has asthma. He reminds me a little of myself at the same age except that I combined being asthmatic with also being athletic…Our mealtime conversations are pretty difficult, but we discuss books, and we have one thing in common—jazz. He brought most of his collection with him and he is gradually converting me to Thelonious Monk and other “way out” cool jazz specialists, while I’m converting him to Webern. Poor boy, I should think he’d be bored to death up here—it rained for five days straight—but he seems quite happy, and my maternal instinct notices that his cheeks are getting pink. We also try out each other’s asthma medicines…but now that his mother is out of danger we’re both breathing again! I’m trying to get him to take fencing lessons!
Do you ever go to a Boston nightclub called Storyville?—I noticed it mentioned in Flávio’s copies of Downbeat, etc., and he has some very cool records made there that I rather like. I think you might find it soothing and curious…
“Helena Morley” is doing awfully well, it seems—the reviews have been stupid, from my point of view, but wonderful from Bob Giroux’s, apparently. I’m really surprised. Have you read it yet and when you do do tell me what you think/ I sent a copy to Randall because I felt pretty sure it was the kind of thing he’d like—but I suppose he’ll never write unless I do first.
Yesterday we were beginning to run out of food and because I still can’t drive my MG I hiked down to the nearest bus line, about a mile and a half, and took a bus to Pertrópolis—and a taxi back again. The bus goes once an hour, a tiny bus, very loose-jointed, full of signs and a St. George with a red light, etc.—two bicycle bells worked by strings to signal with. It said “20 passengers” and at one point we had 45, and we creaked and crept up the hills. I thought we’d never make it. I marketed and sat in the local café to read the newspaper and felt much more cheerful for seeing my fellow-men even if they all looked unusually ugly yesterday. At the PO I had a letter from Agnes Mongan enclosing some clippings—mostly about “Helena” but one from last March from the London Times Literary Supplement (I take that, but I’d missed this). It was a review damning Peter Viereck and a few others and concluding by saying: “But if one is acquainted with the work of E.B. and R.L. there is no great cause to despair of American poetry.” I feel very grateful to this reviewer, whoever he may be…
Oh dear—I just noticed that Louis, who cleaned this place yesterday, has dumped all my accumulation of old papers, ashes, Lucky Strike packages, etc., directly under my window…Well, he doesn’t know any better, coitado. When I give him something especially good to eat he says, “This is infernal!” He also said that the mountains made him feel “impotent.” (I complained to our gorgeously beautiful but dumb maid, Gloria, that there was an old shoe lying beside the kitchen door, and she said with a sweet wondering smile, “Why, it’s just an old shoe!”)
Please, please let me hear from you when you feel like it Cal dear—and do take care of yourself and take it easy, etc…I hope you did receive my letters; I was so slow about writing them. Remember me to Elizabeth; kiss the baby for me.
With much love,
Elizabeth
From Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. Bishop, Elizabeth, et al. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.