LETTERS: 1973
4.
January 4, 1973
Dear Friend Singh,
I write chiefly to send you the following excerpts
from letters mentioning you:
From Dr Kamal Wood, Head, Department of English,
University of Bombay –
It was nice hearing
from you again and I have taken all this time to reply to you because I was waiting for the young man, Mr. R.K. Singh, to
write to me. He has not done so, nor did
Mr. S.M. Pandeya speak to me about him when he was in Bombay during
October-November participating in an all Indian Conference which we had
organized. We discussed American,
English and Indian Poetry in English from 1940-1970…. Dr. Pandeya’s paper, as
you may have heard, dealt with your poems along with those of Updike and F.T.
Prince. I shall indeed do what I can for
Mr. Singh but I am beginning to give up hope in his interest in the University
of Bombay…
From Dr. P.S. Sastri, Head, Department of English,
University of Nagpur –
Your kind letters. Mr.
Singh wrote to me also. Later Dr S.M.
Pandeya of Varanasi spoke to me about him. Surely I will take him and give him
a subject. I think a study of
confessional poetry from 1930 to 1960 might be a good subject for him. This will really pose problems of critical
approach.
I trust that you may have found a new university
post and one more to your pleasure. The
one at Pulgaon indeed seemed grim.
But,then, I think that you, like me, may never find teaching quite what
you wish to do. I found most of my
university work, except the months abroad, very grim, so grim that I sometimes
buckled. But, as a married man with three growing daughters, I could not afford
to cater to my whims. Never quite
breaking into trade publication enough to make a living that way, it was for me
teach and pretend to like it.
Right now I am really enjoying myself. I can write
what I please without other duties to impose upon my time, and without fear of
harming my professional status. This is important to me, because the fiction I
am writing hews close to actual experience.
Without requiring strict literal
adherence to any man’s life, I am
requiring strict accuracy in interpreting a part of experience that has come
into my vantage point of viewing. When the details are not pretty, I still can
find a kind of beauty in the accurate description of events. Like Goethe in his Dichtung und Varheit (Truth and
Poetry), I can hew to the spirit of a life-stream without being fenced in by
the need to record facts exactly in the order they occurred. Such is the advantage of fiction.
Yours,
Lyle
Glazier
I am planning ahead, hoping to be in India in May
1974, a long time ahead; I hope to see you if I come.
5.
May
23, 1973
Dear R.K. Singh,
When I wrote last, I was much aware of having
delayed a reply to your letter, because I had been working hard to get my novel
done before June 25, when I return to Beffalo for 6 weeks to teach in the summer session there. For that reason, I
wrote so briefly.
As for my irritation at what you had said, I was
irritated through a misunderstanding. I see that now. In order to comprehend my feeling, you must
have in mind that what no one in the United States can endure, above all, is the
thought of ownership of another human being—I mean by this, the buying and purchasing of another human
being. Your phrase “as if you owned me”
seemed to imply that you were puckishly telling me that I had behaved as if I
had purchased you. I think now that you meant, “as if I were one of your own”—meaning
one of my own sons, or one of my own brothers.
In that sense I am delighted to “own” you.
I doubt if my letters to you have given me more
pleasure than your have given me. It is flattering for me to think that a young
man like you is interested enough to keep writing to someone so far away whom
he has never seen. When I come to
Varanasi next year, I am very anxious to meet you. In hope that you will take me where you live. One of the disadvantages of being an American
in India is that I almost never had a chance to visit people at home—I do not
mean a ceremonial visit. I don’t wish to
have your mother or sister or your wife spend hours and more money than your
family can afford to make me a large welcome.
But I would like to be able to
walk into your house for a cup of tea, only a cup of tea. Then we could sit and talk, and you could
show me around the neighborhood. To see
India only by seeing large, luxurious hotels and the historical monuments is
not to see India. I am more interested
seeing the people of today—my VD poem #192 is a very genuine expression of what
I really feel. So, please, when I come,
you must come to see me at the Hotel de Paris, and I will come to see you at K
27/5 Bhairo Bazar.
Of the recent poems you sent me, I like very much
#191 and #198. They are absolutely right in word and sentiment. So very good I
myself do not write poems until I finish my novel. Then, next fall, perhaps, I will go back to my
poetry and my music. Since March 15, I have not practiced the piano.
Affectionately,
your friend,
Lyle
Glazier
6.
June
8, 1973
My dear R.K. Singh,
Your sister’s remark that “Glazier is far above our status…”
was kindly meant, but this is far from the truth. My origins were at least as humble as
yours. My father was a factory worker.
He was a high school graduate who never went to college; my mother did not go
to high school. When I finished high
school, we were very poor. My older
brother and I went to work in the factory as common laborers. After a year I had saved enough to pay part
of my expenses for one year at college; by waiting on table in the freshman
dining hall, I survived that year.
During the summer and for the next four summers I was a bell hop in a
hotel; every school year I worked in the freshman dining hall as chef’s helper,
preparing fruit and vegetables for the table, washing pots and pans, and
helping to keep the kitchen clean. When
I finished my fourth year, I was $1000 in debt, a large amount at that time. It
was during the 1930s, when the economy
in the United States was suffering from what we call the Great Depression. I could not find a job teaching school, so I
became the custodian of a Community House, where I vacuumed rugs, waxed floors,
polished woodwork, and was, in general, a kind of working housekeeper. In October that year my father lost his job
in the factory and committed suicide the day he learned that he was fired; in
the afternoon of the same day my mother walked out through the shallow water of
a river and let herself be carried away by the current; she was dead when her
body was recovered. My thirteen-year-old
younger brother went to live with me at the Community House, and for nearly 10
years I was his father-brother. I became
a teacher in an elementary school, then for two years in a boy’s high school,
then I began to work summers for an MA, and the year I got my degree, I found a job at a
small college in Maine, where I remained for five years, during that that time
marrying and becoming a father. When World War II broke out my wife and I moved
to Boston, Massachusetts, to another college, and I began to study part-time at
Harvard. I became the assistant in the
Shakespeare course at Harvard, and began to study there full time; then I
taught freshman English there for 21/2 years. In 1947,
now with a second child and my wife pregnant with a third, I moved to Buffalo
as assistant professor, and after three years, finally, at the age of 39 got my
Ph.D. at Harvard in 1950. In 1961, I went abroad for the first time, as
Fulbright Chairman of American Literature at the University of Istanbul. During the past 10 years, I spent four years
in Turkey, with increasing excursions into India. Now I am retired and
professor emeritus. During the years I
have had time to write the poems you have read, a book of essay and other
essays, 7 novels, none of which has been
published. Writing has been my fulfillment. Also, I have a loving relationship
continuing with many students. Young people like you renew my life.
Your letter wrings my heart with what you say about
your parents’ efforts in behalf of their
children, and your effort to find
work. I know so well what you
suffer. But I believe that such
suffering however agonizing is better than remaining unschooled. I hope that in time you and your brothers and
sisters will have some of the same kind of good fortune that has been my lot.
In two weeks I will go to Buffalo to teach for 6
weeks, hoping to earn enough money for a trip to India. However, today the American dollar is so
depressed on the world market that it may be that I will not have enough, and
will have to postpone my journey. If I come to Varanasi, I wish to see you and
your home, but please – remember that I am one of you and no stranger. It will disturb me very much if you go to any
expense to entertain me. I will come to
see you, please, if you will entertain me with conversation and tea. Some day when your family is wealthy we will
talk of tea-drinking day and remember it as a happy, loving time together.
I continue to read your poems with pleasure-- #103,
#105. “my journeying joy on this road of
life alone.” For the epigraph of part
III of my new novel, I chose Wordsworth’s
tribute to Sir Isaac Newton (Prelude
III) “…a mind for ever/Voyaging
through strange seas of thought, alone.”
Yours affectionately,
Lyle G
Lyle G
7.
August
11, 1973
Dear
R.K. Singh,
Your
last letter reached me in Buffalo, where I was too frantically busy preparing lessons
to have time to write. Not having done
any systematic reading during the months of my retirement, I had to work hard
to keep abreast of my two summer classes. Actually, the work went well, and I
felt rewarded with the results.
I
am sorry not to have been able to comply with your request to look up some
bibliographical information on confessional poetry. Here, unfortunately, I do
not have access to a large library. Perhaps I will travel to Williamstown,
Massachusetts, sometime this fall; if I do, I will try to look up something for
you. I doubt very much that we will ever
be working together as advisor and candidate for your dissertation, much as I would
enjoy the relationship. As professor
emeritus, I do sit on committees, but not as the major advisor, only as a
consultant. Two Buffalo candidates will be sending me their chapters this
coming fall; both are candidates in Black (Afro-American) literature. Last year I sat on the committee for a
candidate writing on Chaucer.
I
cannot be very helpful, either, in advising you about placing your poems. By
all means, send some to Poet Magazine (Dr. Orville Miller); I do not know the
magazine or the editor, but you can be sure of a fair reading. I have not been trying to place my own poems,
but I was pleased to have an invitation to submit a group to a small magazine
being published by a Buffalo colleague. He is not, however, looking for other
poems, since he has little space for poetry, and usually invites submissions.
I
have been pleased to be invited to return to Buffalo next year for the 1974
summer session. Perhaps then I will not
be quite so pressed for time, since I will probably repeat at least one of the
courses I taught this summer.
I
am trying to make plans for my trip to India.
I will perhaps come in late February or early March. Would that be a good time? In Varanasi I will probably stay at the Hotel
de Paris, where I stayed last time.
I
have recently reread your MA thesis, and marvel at some of your
trenchant comments,, particularly what you say beginning page 100, where you
really hit your stride. I am reminded of
what Thoreau said of Whitman in a letter to Harrison Blake: “There are two or
three places in the book which are disagreeable, to say the least, simply
sensual. He does not celebrate love at
all. It is as if the beasts spoke.” Of
course, I don’t at all agree with you or Thoreau, classifying you both as
puritans. What do you make of my pp. 17, 19, 37, 50, 52, 85 (Orchard
Park & Istanbul ), pp. 5, 6, 14, 18, 35 ( You Too) and no. 63,
67, 89, 103, 148, 166, 167, 168 (VD)? Is it possible that you and Thoreau
are over-responding to evidences of unorthodoxy? I sometimes wonder by what rationalization
some people reach the conclusion that their biases represent the God-sanctioned
only right behavior?
Please
don’t think that I wrote that last paragraph in heat or for self
protection. I was simply speculating on
what my have lain behind your best pages.
Do
you have copies of all four of my books? If not, I can send you YOU TOO, THE
DERVISHES, and VD. I don’t have extra
copies of OP & ISTANBUL, which is now out of print.
I
look forward to seeing you in a few months. I will be deeply hurt if your
family entertains me lavishly, and as deeply hurt if I cannot come to meet your family in order to talk, over a cup of
tea.
Affectionately yours,
Lyle
Glazier
8.
September
26, 1973
Dear
R.K. Singh,
Your
letter came today with the glad news that you have a job. I am very glad for
you. Even if the work is not quite what you would choose, it is better for you
to have work. I remember being unhappy
when my first teaching assignment sent me to be the principal of a small
grammar school. Now that I look back on
that year, I realize that it could have been a happy year if I had not been afraid
that I was trapped for life, as, indeed,
I was not. My 13 year old brother was living with me, for it was the year after
my parents’ deaths; I managed to save enough money for six weeks in summer
school, and the next fall I went to teach in a boys’ boarding school, where my
brother became a student. After two
years in that school, the year I got my MA, I went to teach in a small college,
where I spent five years before moving to Boston, where I started graduate work
at Harvard, taking one course each semester for five semesters, then becoming a
full-time student. Looking back one can
imagine a pattern, but although there was effort and ambition, there was also a
great deal of happenstance. I wrote a sentence in my novel: “There’s Fate—something
your engineer so perfectly that there’s no way for it to turn out differently.”
We cannot exercise that kind of control over our lives.
Now
that you will be in Lucknow, I am wondering if it will be possible still for us
to meet. My plans are to go from Madras
to Varanasi to Khajuraho to Agra to New Delhi.
Perhaps you can manage to come to one of those places to see me. At Khajuraho or Agra, if you could come
there, you could stay with me as my guest.
Please think about it. I shall
probably stay at least two nights in Khajuraho and one night in Agra. I think that I will be in India during the
last two weeks in February.
Your
poems continue to flow and continue to show vitality. #291 has an ending that reminds me of my
mother’s death. I like the two short
ones-- #258 & #249. #268 has the same theme of an article I have just
finished: “Atheism as an Article of Faith” yet I think you do not carry your
premises to the same length as I do. You
seem to be condemning the malpractices in religion, rather than condemning
religion. When I was in Tirupathi in
August 1971, I wrote a poem that was meant to be all ironic, at the same time
it was concealing its irony:
The
steps to the temple are made of stones
The dome of the temple is made of gold.
It was meant to be a
protest over the bloodstained footprints of pilgrims sacrificing their pennies
to religious zealots.
#303 I like
very much. But it is #308 that moves me to the fullest comment. Granting the subject (what Henry James called
donné) the last stanza of this poem is excellent. The last line of stanza 1 is too vague, I
think, as if you shy away from naming persons—I would like better: “the
chastity of self, lover, or sweetheart.”
The middle stanza troubles me, because your Puritanism seems so
grim. Although I am not a biologist, it
offends me to have you speak of the life-stream as “filth”; what is filthy about
the liquid manufactured by the prostate gland as a vehicle for conducting the
sperm? Far from being filthy, I should
think that this liquid emission is one of the purest as well as precious
creations of our bodies—perhaps in a physical way as pure and precious as our
poems. What can be shameful about such
an abundant supply of the life source, so abundant that it must be expressed,
particularly when so little of it is needed for the mechanical business of
carrying on the race? Nature is very generous.
Be glad of that, not ripped apart by shame.
I am happy
for your family that it turns out that your mother is not ill, as you once
thought. I hope that there will be good
days for your family, for all of India, for the U.S., and for all mankind.
Yrs.
Lyle G
9.
November
10, 1973
Dear Mr.
Singh,
Your last
letter gave me much to think about, particularly that stirring #310 in your
poetry series. Like you, I despair over the new democracy, which seems hardly
more humane than the old colonialism.
What the nations of the world require is nearly impossible to achieve—since
a corrupt system can corrupt good leaders, we require a benevolent system;
since corrupt leaders can corrupt a
benevolent system, we require benevolent leaders. What we require, therefore, is nearly
impossible—at the same time a benevolent system and benevolent leaders. Where and when on earth have men been
fortunate enough to have both? Your poem makes me think of all of this, with
sadness more than with hope.
I
am continuing to plan my journey. I think you must know that wherever I travel
in India, there will be old friends whom I wish to see, so that my time is not
really free. I am glad that you would
like to see me. The question is where and when.
I think it is particularly important that no effort to come to see me
should interfere with your work, for it seems to me very important that you
have a job. My plan now is to travel, probably by bus, from Varanasi to
Khajuraho, on Monday, February 25.
Several possible opportunities for a visit with you occur to me. Saturday or Sunday, February 23-4, except to
be free at the Hotel de Paris in Varanasi.
That would be a good time for us to meet and talk. Or, if you wish and are free, you may wish to travel with me
to Khajuraho and help me on that difficult journey. I think that there is a government house in
Khajuraho where we could stay. Please
think about this. On Wednesday,
Febrjuary 27, I will be going on to Agra to stay overnight, before flying to
New Delhi on Thursday, February 28.
Please
do not think of me as a guru, by no means.
I am an ordinary person who likes to write poetry. Don’t embarrass me by overestimating me.
Yrs.
Lyle
G.
No comments:
Post a Comment