Ducdame, called ‘some people who were naked’: “Ducdame” is a nonsense word from Jaques’s song in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, which he facetiously defines as “a Greek invocation to call fools into a circle” (5.2.53). “Some people who were naked” probably derives from Pirandello’s play Naked (see 7 April 1948).
time [...] its winged chariot: an image from Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress” (c. 1650).
Wolfe [...] those lines you quote: perhaps Socarides quoted those lines near the end of Look Homeward, Angel (1929): “Inevitable catharsis by the threads of chaos. Unswerving punctuality of chance. Apexical summation, from the billion deaths of possibility, of things done.” WG was so struck by the phrase “unswerving punctuality of chance” that he used it in all five of his novels (R 9, J R 486, CG 223, FHO 50, 258, AA 63).
Werther: the suicidal hero of Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774).
To Edith Gaddis
Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone
[late Feb/early March? 1948]
dear Mother—
An outburst. But I have to burst out somewhere. Having just spent 50$—but on what. Two magnificent suitcases. All English made, beautiful leather, locks, &c. Like Brooks sells for 45$ (the small one, I paid 18) and 87$ (big one I paid 23.50$)——Well. So now I have my little suitcase to carry about manuscripts in and look like the Fuller Brush man. I should have been a fool to miss it—and since it looks like I am going to spend a rather peripatetic (that means doing things while moving about) youth, all the better.
I have your letter—and hope you do get to Virginia this weekend—I am off to work now, go to Taboga at 6 am tomorrow. Hot spit. With typewriter. This novel, dear God. If only I could stop living for a little and do it. But you may imagine the sort of life I lead if packing 2 cans of beans, six of sardines, a loaf of bread and a box of cinnamon buns, and going off to an island for 3 days alone excites me so that my handwriting gets like this. Got to write a novel, got to work and save, got to go to Costa Rica, to Haiti, to Jamaica, got to know people, write letters, got to read, study, think, learn—got (at the moment) to go to the dentist — — — Isn’t it fantastic? Wonderful? I am going off my trolley—so much. But most of all I have got to finish a good novel, don’t I. Because that’s what I’ve set myself to do. And when one forces one’s self to rise above the idiotic futility of it all, the vanity of human wishes, the acquisition of “things” (vis. luggage)—then it is splendid.
I had wondered about you and the Harvard Club—and am so glad it is as good as you write it.
I don’t think I could stand Crime & Punishment on the stage. Who was this Dolly Hass—Sonia? What an opportunity that part would be for a young actress. She could probably never play a part again.
Main reason for this, I have so many ideas, for writing. But they must be written mustn’t they? You see I suddenly find myself to engulfed with new thoughts, interpretations, impressions, Revelations, that I can’t sit still to finish one. Well, you know. I’ll get over this. (In psychology we call it Euphoria).
And many thanks. I await the civilised cigarettes and reading matter (if that book doesn’t sober me up, nothing will).
So did you go to Williamsburg? And be reckless enough (how you and I give ourselves gifts, with such guilty pleasure) to take a sleeper. I hope so.
Love,
W.
Fuller Brush man: archetypal door-to-door salesman of the early twentieth century. the vanity of human wishes: title of a pessimistic poem (1749) by Samuel Johnson.
Crime Punishment on the stage: opened in New York in January 1948, starring John Gielgud as Raskolnikov and German-born actress Dolly Haas as Sonia.
To Edith Gaddis
Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone
[10 March 1948]
dear Mother.
You were so good to have sent this divination book right off. I have just got it; and of course it is in a way preposterous, and foolishness. But quite exactly what I wanted, and thank you.
Sometimes this life gets so horrid; but then, the time I have set myself runs out in 5 weeks! Dear God, to be ‘free’ again briefly. But then, the reading I have been doing recently (except for the New Testament, such a wonder)—has not been of a high character—Dostoevski’s House of the Dead—an account of his Siberian imprisonment, and one cannot help but find analogies to the sterile barbarity of the Zone. Incidentally, we haven’t had an extended talk about Americans. I am so glad you managed Virginia. When things are exceptionally woeful, I go in to Panama and simply walk. Such colours, and unarranged humanity, and rest. A lime-green building with brown trim, or another brown with blue, and pink, and so much wonderful white. Tomorrow night I am going in, and Juancho—this kind fellow who is a judge, and could ‘write’, so nice to me, humanly so—is going to play for me the Messiah, 35 sides to its recording! How I look forward to it, music is so badly missed.
A very distracting letter from John Snow. I shall show it you; he thinks he is well-off, but you may read it and may understand why I don’t see going back to Harvard, where he is. Very sad.
And Granga and I seem to have got up a regular correspondence! Glad of course that you are passing such a jolly and busy winter. I trust you still attend your ceramic classes in the midst of all that gaiety! Eh?
Since I am on very bad terms with myself—writing going badly, so I have no sympathy here—I shall cut short, before I begin railing at something.
Love,
Bill
divination book: probably The Book of Fate, ascribed to Napoleon, first published in 1822, reprinted often thereafter, and quoted a few times in R (137, 754).
Dostoevski’s House of the Dead: documentary novel first published in 1861–62. 35 sides: 78 rpm phonograph records held only about four or five minutes of music per side.
To Edith Gaddis
Pedro Miguel, Canal Zone
[13 March 1948]
dear Mother.
One thing I do not understand. You know, I left N.Y. with comparatively little luggage. And now this room is littered. Junk all over the place, and all over the
