by Paul Bowles
1927 Performs with the Phylo Players, an amateur theatrical group. Reads André Gide. Buys an issue of the Paris-based literary magazine transition, which has a major impact on him. Is promoted to poetry editor of The Oracle.
1928 Graduates Jamaica High School in January. The Hoagland sisters help him sell his paintings; when father refuses to support his artistic aspirations, mother pays for classes at the School of Design and Liberal Arts in New York. Bowles publishes poem “Spire Song” and prose poem “Entity” in transition. Spends summer working in the transit department of the Bank of Manhattan. Enters University of Virginia in the fall. Reads The Waste Land; discovers Prokofiev, Gregorian chant, Duke Ellington, and the blues. Experiments with inhaling ether. While home on winter break, attends one of the Aaron Copland-Roger Sessions Concerts of Contemporary Music, featuring music by Henry Cowell and George Antheil.
1929 Returns to University of Virginia in January and is hospitalized with conjunctivitis. Decides to move to Paris and obtains passport with the help of Sue Hoagland and Mary Oliver; tells virtually no one else of his plans. Arrives in Paris in April and works as a switchboard operator at the Herald Tribune. Mother refuses request to send money to Bowles made by a friend of Oliver’s. Bowles receives 2,500 francs from Oliver and quits job; takes a short trip to Switzerland and Nice. Publishes poems in English and French in the Paris-based magazines Tambour, This Quarter, and Anthologie du Groupe Moderne d’Art. Visits northeastern France and Germany. Loses virginity on a camping trip with a Hungarian woman he had met the day before at the Café du Dôme; has sexual experience with Billy Hubert, a family friend. Accompanies Hubert to St.-Moritz and St.-Malo. Decides to return home and sails for New York on July 24. Works at Dutton’s Bookshop and rents a room at 122 Bank Street. Begins writing “Without Stopping,” fictional account of his travels in Europe.
1930 Meets Henry Cowell, who calls Bowles’ musical compositions “frivolous” but writes a note of introduction to Aaron Copland. Moves to parents’ home in order to use piano after Copland offers lessons in composition. Returns to University of Virginia in March. Hitchhikes to Philadelphia to attend Martha Graham’s ballet Le Sacre du Printemps on April 11; meets Harry Dunham, who will become a close friend. Decides to leave college after finishing out the term in June. Spends September and October with Copland at the Yaddo Arts Colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. Asked by college friend Bruce Morrissette to edit an issue of University of Virginia magazine The Messenger, solicits submissions from William Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein, and Eduard Roditi, who becomes a lifelong friend and correspondent. Quarrels violently with parents in December.
1931 Sails for Europe on March 25. Shortly after arriving in Paris, looks up Gertrude Stein, with whom a friendship develops. Meets Jean Cocteau, Virgil Thomson, Ezra Pound, and Pavel Tchelitchew. Goes to Berlin with Copland at the end of April. Meets Jean Rhys, Stephen Spender, and Christopher Isherwood, who will give Bowles’ surname to the heroine of his Goodbye to Berlin. Continues composition studies with Copland but dislikes Germany. Visits Kurt Schwitters in Hannover and is impressed with his studio; Bowles will soon incorporate one of Schwitters’ abstract poems into his Sonata for Oboe and Clarinet. Writes to friend Daniel Burns that he feels his poems are “worth a large zero” and stops writing poetry for more than two years. Spends part of July with Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Bilignan, France, where they are joined by Copland; at Stein’s suggestion, the two men visit Morocco, which enchants Bowles and frustrates Copland. They live in Tangier until early October. Bowles meets Claude McKay and the surrealist painter Kristians Tonny. After visiting Fez, Bowles writes to Morrissette, “Fez I shall make my home some day!” Travels in Morocco with Harry Dunham after Copland leaves; returns to Paris via Spain. Attends final Copland-Sessions concert on December 16 in London, where his Sonata for Oboe and Clarinet is performed.
1932 Taken ill during a ski trip in the Italian Alps. Travels with literary agent John Trounstine to Spain and Morocco. Returns in May to Paris, where he is hospitalized with typhoid. Bowles’ songs are performed at Yaddo. After leaving hospital in July, travels in France, seeing Gertrude Stein for the last time and meeting mother and Daniel Burns at Morrissette’s house near Grenoble. Completes Sonata No. 1 for Flute and Piano. Goes to Spain with mother and Burns; after their departure, stays with Virgil Thomson and the painter Maurice Grosser. Visits Monte Carlo, where he becomes friendly with George Antheil. In December, finishes Scènes d’Anabase, based on the poem by Saint-John Perse. Leaves for Ghardaïa, a town in the northern Sahara recommended by Antheil.
1933 Arrives in Ghardaïa and settles in nearby Laghouat, where he uses the harmonium in the town’s church to compose a cantata, using his own French text. Travels around the Sahara and North Africa with George Turner, an American. Goes to Tangier, where he shares house with Charles Henri Ford, surrealist poet and editor of View with whom he has been friendly since 1930, and Djuna Barnes. Returns to United States after a three-week visit to Puerto Rico en route to New York City. Sonatina for Piano performed on WEVD in New York on June 18. Bowles has difficulty adjusting to life in America; on June 24, writes Thomson, “Certainly nobody hates New York more than I do” Writes short story “A Proposition” Writes song cycle Danger de Mort and Suite for Small Orchestra and score for Dunham’s film Bride of Samoa. Publishes “Watervariation” and “Message” in pamphlet Two Poems, his first separate publication. Sublets apartment from Copland at 52 West 58th Street. Founds music publishing company Editions de la Vipère and publishes Scenes from the Door, songs based on passages from Stein’s Useful Knowledge. Sonatina for Piano performed in December at the League of Composers’ Concert, where Bowles meets John Latouche, who becomes a close friend.
1934 Bowles meets George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein, who are interested in commissioning a score for American Ballet Caravan. Hired as a secretary by Charles Williams, director of The American Fondouk, a foundation in Morocco working for the prevention of cruelty to animals. Pays for Atlantic passage by working as a guide for a stockbroker vacationing in Spain. Buys records of North African music. His duties end in October and, after a brief stopover in Spain, he travels to Colombia; smokes marijuana for the first time while at sea. Falls ill from unpurified water and recuperates on a coffee plantation in the Colombian mountains. Returns to the United States, visiting Los Angeles and San Francisco, where he sees Henry Cowell; Cowell offers to publish Bowles’ compositions in quarterly New Music.
1935 Accepts job as live-in companion to a wealthy Austrian invalid in Baltimore. Collaborates with painter Eugene Berman on an aborted ballet project. Quits job and returns to New York City. Receives commission to write score for Balanchine’s Yankee Clipper. Allows his records of North African music to be reproduced for Béla Bartók. Writes music for Dunham’s film Venus and Adonis, which is premiered at a screening and concert featuring several other works by Bowles. Scores two short films by Rudy Burkhardt and writes incidental music for Who Fights the Battle?, a play by Joseph Losey. Works as copyist for the Broadway composer Vernon Duke.
1936 With the help of Virgil Thomson, receives commission to write music for Horse Eats Hat, Edwin Denby’s adaptation of a Eugène Labiche farce directed by John Houseman and Orson Welles and supported by the Federal Theater Project. Helps to found the anti-Franco Committee on Republican Spain. Article by Copland commends Bowles’ music in Modern Music as “full of charm and melodic invention, surprisingly well-made in an instinctive and non-academic fashion.” Bowles learns orchestration and works on score for production of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus directed by Welles.
1937 Doctor Faustus opens in January; Thomson praises the score in Modern Music as “Mr. Bowles’ definite entry into musical bigtime.” In February, Bowles is introduced to Jane Auer (b. February 22, 1917) by John Latouche. Sees Auer the following week at E. E. Cummings’ apartment; when Bowles and Kristians Tonny propose a trip to Mexico, Auer asks to join them, and Bowles goes to meet her parents the same evening. Order
s 15,000 anti-Trotsky stickers to distribute in Mexico. Travels to Mexico by bus with Auer, Tonny, and Tonny’s wife Marie-Claire Ivanoff. Auer falls ill with dysentery a week after arriving in Mexico and returns home without telling her companions. Bowles meets the composer Silvestre Revueltas, who leads an impromptu performance of his Homanaje a García Lorca for him. Works on pieces influenced by Mexican folk music. Travels to Tehuantepec and helps prepare for the town’s May Day Festival, then visits Guatemala. At Kirstein’s request, returns to New York to orchestrate Balanchine’s Yankee Clipper. Auer invites him to spend a weekend with her in Deal Beach, New Jersey, after which she sees Bowles regularly. Yankee Clipper premieres in Philadelphia. Bowles begins writing music for opera Denmark Vesey (now lost), with libretto by Charles Henri Ford. The first act of Denmark Vesey is performed at a benefit for The New Masses.
1938 Bowles marries Auer on February 21. The couple honeymoon in Central America, then travel to Paris. Jane Bowles works on novel Two Serious Ladies. The Bowles meet Max Ernst and the painter and writer Brion Gysin, who will become a friend. Marriage is strained as Jane spends much of her time apart from Bowles. Couple separates briefly when Bowles goes to the south of France; Jane joins him after Bowles urges her by wire to do so. The Bowles rent a house for the summer in Eze-Village near Cannes. Returning to New York in the fall, they move into the Chelsea Hotel. Bowles is commissioned to write music for Houseman and Welles’ production of William Gillette’s Too Much Johnson; finishes score but when the production is canceled, transforms his music into the piece Music for a Farce. Nearly broke, moves with Jane to a cheaper apartment.
1939 Receives relief payments from the Federal Music Project. Joins the American Communist Party. Writes score for the Group Theater’s production of William Saroyan’s My Heart’s in the Highlands and uses the money to rent a farmhouse on Staten Island, where he works on Denmark Vesey while Jane resumes writing Two Serious Ladies. Writes short story “Tea on the Mountain” Mary Oliver moves in and becomes Jane’s friend and drinking companion, causing Bowles to move out. Bowles rents a room in Brooklyn and invites Jane to live with him. Jane refuses and moves with Oliver to a Greenwich Village apartment; the Bowles continue to attend parties and social events together.
1940 Bowles and Jane move to the Chelsea Hotel in March. Bowles completes music for Saroyan’s Love’s Old Sweet Song, which begins trial run in Princeton on April 6. After being hired by the Department of Agriculture to write music for Roots in the Soil, a film about soil conservation in New Mexico, travels to Albuquerque with Jane and Jane’s friend Bob Faulkner. Finishes score in June and goes to Mexico with Jane and Faulkner. Meets Tennessee Williams in Acapulco. Reluctantly moves to Taxco when Jane rents a house there without consulting him; Jane invites Faulkner to the house and begins a romantic relationship with Helvetia Perkins, an American woman working on a novel. Bowles returns to New York alone in September to compose music for the Theatre Guild’s production of Twelfth Night, which opens on November 19. Bowles’ score is a critical success; he receives a second Theatre Guild commission for Philip Barry’s Liberty Jones, directed by Houseman. Jane arrives in New York on Christmas Day and rents a separate room at the Chelsea, where she is joined a few weeks later by Perkins.
1941 Liberty Jones opens on Broadway on February 5; the play and score receive negative reviews. Bowles writes music for Lillian Hellman’s Watch on the Rhine. Attempts to quit Communist Party and is told that expulsion is the only means of leaving the organization. Writes Pastorela, an opera-ballet based on Mexican themes, for American Ballet Caravan. Lives with Jane at “artist’s residence” on Middagh Street in Brooklyn Heights (other residents at the time include W.H. Auden and Benjamin Britten). Publishes obituary for Revueltas and essay “On Mexico’s Popular Music” in Modern Music. Receives Guggenheim grant in March to compose an opera and travels to Taxco with Jane and Perkins. At the request of Katharine Hepburn, writes music for the play Love Like Wildfire, written by Hepburn’s brother Richard. Meets Ned Rorem, who will become a friend and lifelong correspondent. Pastorela tours South America. Bowles meets Mexican painter Antonio Álvarez, who becomes close friend. Hospitalized with dysentery in September; recovers but falls ill with jaundice and recuperates at a sanitarium in Cuernavaca. Reads manuscript of Jane’s Two Serious Ladies and suggests revisions.
1942 Works on light opera The Wind Remains, based very loosely on García Lorca’s Así que pasen cinco años, in Mexico after Jane returns to New York to look for a publisher for Two Serious Ladies. Jane attempts suicide by slashing wrists but does not tell Bowles for many years. Bowles returns to United States with Álvarez, who is now partially paralyzed from a suicide attempt. Moves to apartment on 14th Street and Seventh Avenue and becomes acquainted with Marcel Duchamp, its previous occupant. Sees Jane often while maintaining separate household and finances. Debuts as music critic for the New York Herald Tribune on November 20; will contribute reviews regularly until 1946. Drafted for military service but dismissed after psychological examination.
1943 The Wind Remains, conducted by Leonard Bernstein with choreography by Merce Cunningham, premieres at the Museum of Modern Art on March 30. Jane Bowles’ Two Serious Ladies is published on April 19 to mostly negative reviews. Composes incidental music for productions of John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore and a stage adaptation of James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific. “Bluey: Pages from an Imaginary Diary,” a section of his childhood notebooks, is published in View. Bowles meets Peggy Guggenheim, who organizes a recording of five of his pieces. Meets Samuel Barber, Gian-Carlo Menotti, and John Cage. Visits Canada with Jane.
1944 Writes music for Theatre Guild production of Franz Werfel’s Jacobowsky and the Colonel (adapted by S. N. Behrman) and for Congo, a film directed by André Cauvin with script by John Latouche; receives recordings of Congolese music from Cauvin that influence the score. Composes music for ballet Colloque Sentimental, produced by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo with sets by Salvador Dali, and incidental music for Williams’ The Glass Menagerie.
1945 Moves to an apartment on West 10th Street; Jane and Perkins rent apartment in the same building. Edits special issue of View on Central and South America and the Caribbean, translating several articles and contributing an anonymous story supposedly taken from a Mexican magazine; story will be revised four years later as “Doña Faustina” Writes “The Scorpion,” inspired by his reading of indigenous Mexican myths, later writing that “the objectives and behavior of the protagonists remained the same as in the beast legends. It was through this unexpected little gate that I crept back into the land of fiction writing.” Travels to Central America with set designer and distant cousin Oliver Smith during summer. Publishes “The Scorpion” and writes “A Distant Episode.” Translates Borges’ story “The Circular Ruins” Develops close friendship with Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks, who will set Bowles’ texts to music and become a frequent correspondent.
1946 Writes music for Blue Mountain Ballads, with lyrics by Tennessee Williams. Works on translation of Sartre’s play Huis Clos. Publishes “By the Water” in View and “The Echo” in Harper’s Bazaar. Completes Sonata for Two Pianos and several theater scores. No Exit, Bowles’ translation of Huis Clos directed by John Huston, opens on November 29 and is awarded Drama Critics’ Award for the year’s best foreign play.
1947 Partisan Review publishes “A Distant Episode” At a meeting with Dial Press about a possible collection of stories, Bowles is introduced to Helen Strauss, who agrees to be his agent. Hears from Strauss that Doubleday has offered an advance for a novel; Bowles signs contract and leaves for Morocco soon after. Writes “Pages from Cold Point” while at sea. Works on The Sheltering Sky, spending the fall in Tangier. Although he will travel frequently to Europe, Asia, and the United States, Tangier will be Bowles’ home for the rest of his life. Contacts Oliver Smith in New York and they agree to buy a house in the Casbah of Tangier together, which upsets Jane. Meets Moroccan artist Ahmed Yacoubi, w
ho will become a close companion during the 1950s. Begins taking majoun, a jam made from cannabis; tries kif, which he will begin smoking regularly and in large quantities from the 1950s through the 1980s, when health problems force him to reduce his consumption to one cigarette a day. Goes to Fez in December.
1948 Crosses into Algeria and travels around the Sahara. Jane arrives in Tangier with her new lover. Edwin Denby arrives and the four visit Fez. Jane has adverse reaction to majoun, hallucinating and experiencing severe paranoia. Bowles finishes The Sheltering Sky in May; travels through Anti-Atlas Mountains with singer Libby Holman. Returns to New York alone in July. Doubleday rejects The Sheltering Sky and demands return of the advance. Several months later, English publisher John Lehmann reads The Sheltering Sky while visiting New York and agrees to publish it; James Laughlin of New Directions promises to bring out the American edition. Writes music for Williams’ Summer and Smoke. Concerto for Two Pianos, Winds, and Percussion premieres in New York. Bowles becomes friends with Gore Vidal and Truman Capote. Jane develops an intense emotional attachment to a Moroccan woman named Cherifa that will last for many years. Bowles returns to Morocco, writing “The Delicate Prey” while at sea in December.
1949 Hosts Tennessee Williams and Williams’ lover Frank Merlo. Travels in Sahara with Jane, who is impressed by the desert and writes her last completed story, “A Stick of Green Candy,” in Taghit. Visits Paris for a performance of his Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra. John Lehmann publishes The Sheltering Sky. Bowles works on novel “Almost All the Apples Are Gone,” which is never completed. In October, travels to England, where he is feted and introduced to Elizabeth Bowen, Cyril Connolly, and other British writers. New Directions publishes The Sheltering Sky in a small first printing on October 14, planning a second printing of 45,000 for the following year. Sails for Ceylon and begins writing a new novel, Let It Come Down.
