Elizabeth Bishop - Prose

It would seem to me that if a novel is to stand alone all philosophies, theories, etc., pertaining to the author should somehow work themselves out in the actions and the designs within the story. I do not like the habit of asking, “Now where does Mr. So&so tell us what he is trying to do?”—if Mr. So&so has said anything about his intentions after the preface, I think he has been too frank.

V

In a recent little book called Acting, by Richard Bolislavsky, rhythm is defined as “the orderly, measurable changes of all the different elements comprised in a work of art — provided that all those changes progressively stimulate the attention of the spectator and lead invariably to the final aim of the artist.” This definition, plain enough when applied, say, to the music of Mozart may seem rather obscure when applied to the loose form of the novel. But just possibly everything I have been saying could be set down under the heading of rhythm. The “ideal order,” the relation of present to past in the novel, naturally arises from “the orderly, measurable changes of all the different elements comprised.” And my belief in the peculiar cross-hatchings of events and people also amounts to a feeling for rhythm. A superstition or coincidence, even, is “rhythmical” in that it achieves a motion between two things and a balancing of them. And what is “experience-time” but a more careful, exact method of looking at the materials to be used, and perhaps a means of marshalling them more rhythmically.

Possibly now I have staked claims, so to speak, on a novel-site, and laid out certain measurements which seem to me too important to be overlooked. A general idea of the novel constructed according to these measurements would appear to be something like this: First, a very few primary ideas or facts would suffice, and they could be told immediately. The interest would not lie in watching a “march” through a segment of time, but rather the complete absorption of each item, and the constant re-organization, the constantly maintained order of the whole mass. The process perhaps resembles more than anything the way in which a drop of mercury, a drop to begin with, joins smaller ones to it and grows larger, yet keeps its original form and quality. Coupled with this, would be the maintaining of the “front” of the novel, a stricter feeling that it is a detached form of art, not a conveyor of ideas except in its own structure. By this method, helped possibly by cross-references, re-iterations, and a device built on the idea of experience-time, perhaps the novel could show at work that “perfection of generalities” in its highest sense, a clearer sense of things and people.

1934

The following list indicates first publications and the location of unpublished Bishop manuscripts:

ABBREVIATIONS AND REFERENCES USED IN THE NOTES

CPr: Elizabeth Bishop, Collected Prose, edited with and introduction by Robert Giroux, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984

Vassar: Vassar College Libraries for Special Collections

The Blue Pencil is the student literary magazine at the Walnut Hill School

Con Spirito was a Vassar undergraduate magazine founded and edited by Elizabeth Bishop, Eunice and Eleanor Clark, and Mary McCarthy; the publications were anonymous

STORIES AND MEMOIRS

Facsimile: IN THE VILLAGE & OTHER STORIES table of contents (n.d.; Vassar)

“The Baptism” ( Life and Letters To-day, Spring 1937)

“The Sea and Its Shore” ( Life and Letters To-day, Winter 1937)

“In Prison” ( Partisan Review, March 1938)

“Gregorio Valdes, 1879–1939” ( Partisan Review, Summer 1939)

“Mercedes Hospital” (1941; CPr )

“The Farmer’s Children” ( Harper’s Bazaar, February 1948)

“The Housekeeper” ( The New Yorker, September 11, 1948, under the name Sarah Foster)

“Gwendolyn” ( The New Yorker, June 27, 1953)

“In the Village” ( The New Yorker, December 19, 1953)

“Primer Class” (c. 1960; CPr )

“The Country Mouse” (1961; CPr )

“The U.S.A. School of Writing” (1966; CPr )

“A Trip to Vigia” (1967; CPr )

“Efforts of Affection: A Memoir of Marianne Moore” (c. 1969; CPr )

“To the Botequim & Back” (1970; CPr )

“Memories of Uncle Neddy” ( Southern Review, Fall 1977)

BRAZIL

Facsimile: Brazil table of contents (Vassar)

(Time Incorporated, 1962; typescript: Vassar; Bishop’s annotated copy: Houghton Library, Harvard)

ESSAYS, REVIEWS, AND TRIBUTES

Facsimile: IF YOU WANT TO WRITE WELL ALWAYS AVOID THESE WORDS (Vassar, 1975)

“As We Like It: Miss Moore and the Delight of Imitation” ( Quarterly Review of Literature, Spring 1948)

Review of Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks ( United States Quarterly Book Review, March 1950)

Review of XAIPE: 71 Poems by E. E. Cummings ( United States Quarterly Book Review, June 1950)

“Love from Emily” ( The New Republic, August 27, 1951)

Review of The Riddle of Emily Dickinson (c. 1951; Vassar)

“What the Young Man Said to the Psalmist” ( Poetry, January 1952)

“The Manipulation of Mirrors” ( The New Republic, November 19, 1956)

Introduction to The Diary of “Helena Morley” (Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957)

“A New Capital, Aldous Huxley, and Some Indians” (Vassar, 1958; Yale Review, July 2006)

“I Was But Just Awake” ( Poetry, October 1958)

Robert Lowell’s Life Studies (jacket copy, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1959)

“Writing poetry is an unnatural act…” (late 1950s — early 1960s?; Vassar; Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box, ed. Alice Quinn, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006)

“Some Notes on Robert Lowell” (originally published as “Algumas Notas Sobre Robert Lowell,” in Robert Lowell, Quatro Poemas, Série Cadernos Brasileiros, Rio de Janeiro, 1962; English translation by George Monteiro, Elizabeth Bishop Bulletin, Summer 1998)

“A Sentimental Tribute” ( Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin, Spring 1962)

“Flannery O’Connor: 1925–1964” ( The New York Review of Books, October 8, 1964)

“On the Railroad Named Delight” ( The New York Times Magazine, May 7, 1965)

Gallery Note for Wesley Wehr (March 1967; Vassar; Elizabeth Bishop, Poems, Prose, Letters, edited by Robert Giroux and Lloyd Schwartz, Library of America, 2008)

“An Inadequate Tribute” ( Randall Jarrell 1914–1965, ed. Robert Lowell, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967)

Introduction to An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry (Wesleyan University Press, 1972)

“A Brief Reminiscence and a Brief Tribute: W. H. Auden 1907–1973” ( Harvard Advocate, vol. 108, 1974)

TRANSLATIONS

From The Diary of “Helena Morley” ( Harper’s Bazaar, December 1957)

Clarice Lispector, “The Smallest Woman in the World,” “A Hen,” “Marmosets” ( Kenyon Review, Summer 1964)

CORRESPONDENCE

Elizabeth Bishop and Anne Stevenson (1963–1965; Modern Literature Collection/Manuscripts, Washington University)

APPENDIX: EARLY PROSE

“On Being Alone” ( The Blue Pencil, June 1929)

“A Mouse and Mice” ( The Blue Pencil, 1929)

“The Thumb” ( The Blue Pencil, 1930)