Elizabeth Bishop - Prose

2. I don’t think my music studies are worth mentioning, really. I took clavichord lessons the first winter in Paris, and the next year I took some more with Kirkpatrick in New York — when I lived at the old Hotel Chelsea for a few months — but I never was any good at it, at all. I always dream of studying some more, also the piano again. The clavichord is here now, in its traveling case, because I’ve at last found someone in Rio who can tune it for me — but I was never a performer — I played piano in public a few times at college and lost my nerve forever. (Two very good old friends of Lota’s and mine are Fizdale & Gold, the two-piano team — if you’ve ever heard them? They are superb. We visit them whenever we can—) So — just say I love music!

3. On my first stay in Paris (and the 2nd one, after about ten months) I knew very few people. I could have, if it hadn’t been for this “shyness”—or whatever is the word now — whatever it is, it had made my life quite different from what perhaps it might have been — I had published a few poems. I remember Sylvia Beach invited me to a party — or parties — Spender was at one, Joyce at another — and I’d get to the door, lose my nerve and run away. (I never did speak to Spender until last year in Brazil.) I had letters to people in London, Life & Letters To-day, etc. and the same thing happened — I took a taxi to the door and didn’t dare go in. (I’m afraid you’ll begin to think I am a hopeless idiot, after this True Confession, but there it is.) Also — I’m a dreadful linguist. I understand French perfectly, (and now Portuguese) and some Spanish, and read them all — but I hate to talk a foreign language — particularly French. (Do have your little girl learn a language or two well — to speak it — it will improve her social life all her life …) In Paris I did meet a lot of famous people, I suppose, — even Picasso for a moment — and many more to look at, a good many painters, etc. — but that doesn’t mean I ever exchanged any words with them except “Enchantée.” G. Stein and Alice B — I was invited to tea, with a friend — and the friend went without me, finally. What an idiot! (Since then — just a year or so ago — I’ve corresponded with Alice B who wanted to come to Brazil, of all places — I discouraged her firmly.) What was going on in Paris then was mostly surrealism, that I remember — André Breton & his gallery; I met Ernst, Giacometti, etc — but — I just looked at them. I spent a lot of time taking walks, also at the Deux Magots and the Flore — quite different then than now—

I have learned to disguise my social terrors quite a lot, and also — always — if I really like someone well enough I don’t get them — Marianne, for example — the one “celebrity” I have ever deliberately tried to meet in my life. — andWe got along immediately. I was never afraid for a moment of Neruda, or Cummings, or, Cal — Jarrell, etc. — And then I have improved — over the years—

I met Loren in 1939, I think, in N.Y. — I’d seen a few of her paintings and liked them. We became friends immediately and she & her husband, Lloyd Frankenberg, stayed with me for two winters in Key West. John Dewey bought a painting she did that first winter. He bought it in N.Y. — but he used to go to KW winters then, too, — I had stared at him and his daughter as I ate the 50¢ fish dinner in a little restaurant, but never met them (the daughter who has since been a friend for 24 years — to whom the poem Cold Spring is dedicated). When Loren came back to KW we all went to call.

I met Neruda quite by accident in a hotel in Merida — I had no idea who he was when he invited me to go off to Chichen Itza with him and his wife.

Randall was in NY the winter of 1946, I think it was — he invited me to dinner to meet Cal.

Calder is reallyLota’s friend. He’s been in Brazil several times and I didn’t reallyknow him until here. I admire him very much — again with that odd in-between-generations feeling. As I said before — the simple fact that I did my traveling earlier than the poets who aren’t so much younger than I am, after all, seems to have put me in a different category — and often I’m afraid I have felt old and sophisticated, and certainly more knowledgable about art, etc. — While they were teaching and marrying, I was out observing the world. — (Mrs. Tate once reminisced about a night in Paris that I’d already heard another version of from Pauline Hemingway, etc. — Very odd.)

5. I’m afraid I agree with you only too well.

I don’t know whether this is due to Brazil, age or what. — However, I feel I could NOT have stayed on in N.Y. And I have been personally very happy here, except for this recurring sense of anxiety and loss. However, one always hopes and hopes. — Now I am hoping a trip will do wonders — and this year so far I have written a lot, for me. Good or bad I can’t say. — (Cal likes the poem in the New York Review, I think, quite a bit—)

I should mention one teacher at Walnut Hill, probably — she later taught at Wellesley. Miss Prentiss — she was an excellent teacher of English for that age (hopelessly romantic!) — and we went read some Shakespeare with her, She helped me even more, probably, by lending me all her books I took a fancy to and admiring my early verse — too much, no doubt.

[There was also an excellent Latin teacher, Miss? The best teacher there, really ]

Miss Farwell, the assistant principal, was also very kind to me and had the excellent idea of taking me to some sort of psychiatrist in Boston, — Unfortunately, I clammed up and wouldn’t talk at all. But she had the right idea — too bad it didn’t work.

We were taken to Symphony Concerts, of course — also concerts at Wellesley — where, withthrough my piano teacher (how awful I’ve forgotten her name) I shook hands with Myra Hess (my teacher’s old teacher — later scorned by Kirkpatrick) and Prokofiev. — P’s wife sang somefrom “The Love of Three Oranges”,* and that and his way of playing I remember as giving me a whole new idea of music. — Possibly the idea of “irony” in music was a revelation, because at that time I liked his piano pieces best (now they’re not very interesting to me) of my simple repertoire—

I also saw one of the first Calder shows, at Pittsfield, around 1931—his very first mobiles, that had cranks, or little electric motors. We spoke of this show the last time he was here — last year — and it was funny how many of the pieces I could still remember, so it must have made a big impression—

Although I think I have a prize “unhappy childhood”, almost good enough for the text-books — please don’t think I dote on it. — Almost everyone has had, anyway — and since then I have been extremely lucky in many ways. I never had any difficulty getting published — I have had all those helpful awards — I often think I have been praised beyond my due—

Under 3 you speak rather disparagingly of Partisan Review in the late 30’s and 40’s … well, at the time I was writing the poems I like best I was very ignorant politically and I sometimes wish I could recover the dreamy state of consciousness I levd inlived in then — it was better for my work, and I do the world no more good now by knowing a great deal more. I was “left” justbecause my friends were, mostly — although of course we all felt the effects of the depression profoundly, and ever since noticing the split in my own family and going through my Shelley period, around 16, I had thought of myself as a “socialist.” (I was also a vegetarian until after college, I think! — and I revert to it every once in a while. I don’t advocate it or even believe in it — but they drive the cattle to market here, and after each encounter with one of the cattle trains — you park the car and let the poor beasts pour around you — I give up meat again for a week or so.)