Went to see The Quiet American [Graham Greene] on Monday evening; and I’m now rereading the novel – disappointing. He now lacks the subtlety of works like The Heart of the Matter and The Power and the Glory.
Thank you for your candid comments about the first few poems. Now that a little distance has come, I am beginning to feel that they don’t have sufficient substance; a little thin. Here and there some nice lines. But poetry? No, my Ingrid, I’m not a poet. You are. I also don’t know whether I shall continue. (“I won’t be rhyming for very long / my words are too few / and there’s too much / still waiting in the queue”.) It’s not something I can predict in advance. It must either happen – or not.
I’m sending one or two more; but I will only know with any certainty whether I’m likely to carry on after the Cape trip. Is it “original inspiration that might wane” that you’re talking about? I know it might; everything might; must, perhaps. But that’s for later. For now, what is, is. And that’s more than “inspiration”! I really don’t know what to think any more; and I don’t know how to continue. You’ve said to me repeatedly you have no faith in promises; and you yourself have experienced the proof of this all too often, and all too bitterly. I don’t want to contribute to it as well. But if I say that I love you, then it’s true – now. All I know is that it’s been a long time since I’ve experienced such a state of clarity as in recent times; and it’s not just the quietude of autumn, either.
My reaction to the seemingly endless labour on the novel seems to have caught up with me in the last two days only. (I got the idea end Nov. – it split off from a different book I was about to get working on –; began writing end Jan.; finished mid-March; then revised; and retyped.) And the reaction is: profound, heartfelt depression. Like a great vacuum coming down over me. You’re like a little shoot in the dark, quite unprotected. Something has run its course; come loose from you. Is this the way it felt when Simone was born and was no longer inside you, not part of you any more? Or was that different? All I know is that I won’t be writing anything in a hurry – not such a long thing. It’s too unbearable; it overextends one. Maybe poetry is different: each in its own right a rounded-off piece of feeling and experience. A drop of water rather than a drainpipe.
Speaking of sewage brings me – naturally – to Abel Coetzee. (Have you demanded your money from him yet? You must.) I see the Sunday Times is once more splashing out the fact that he might become the chief bigwig of the Kakkademy. Bill [W.A. de Klerk] told me in his most confidential (!) manner about the interview and the implications of Abel’s presence (in the waiting room, not at the interview, I deduced) – but it was all presented as such a big secret that I had to blink twice. Is this another of [Maish] Levin’s loathsome (but in its own way inimitable!) stunts? Or did Bill or someone else talk out of turn? Meanwhile I feel very happy about the additional names. We did achieve something. It stands, and it’s undeniable. Now we must engage in our work ever more in the manner of acte de défi.
I’m counting the days until Rook en Oker [Smoke and Ochre] appears. If it appears too soon before my arrival, rather keep it there with you – otherwise I might miss it in the post. Lobola’s second imprint should be out this week; with a new ending. I await it with greater equanimity and je m’en foutisme about the reception than before. W.E.G. L[ouw] is apparently going to write a notice, again. Making the most of his little talent.
I don’t have all that much time to relax after Die Ambassadeur: now I must get going with translation again to earn R300 before 31 May, otherwise I might have to go into liquidation. I am always bankrupt. This time it’s all those “respectable” things like property tax and insurance premiums and stuff that has got the better of me. It makes me MAD that one should be so trapped in the mere struggle to keep one’s head above water; it’s humiliating, actually. But just listen to me, complaining like this! You have to endure all those days at the Citadel. For me, it’s an unbearable thought. Particularly you. And the Citadel! Please don’t work yourself to death. Look after yourself. And be happy.
With love,
André.
Ek is Een v/Jou Minnaars [I Am One of Your Lovers]
Jy’s Nooit Gedoop Nie [You Were Never Baptised]
Proefleser [Proofreader]
Nooi Hom [Invite Him]
{The P. stands – against my will and lifelong protest – for the sturdy name Philippus. And with that, the worst has been said between us! (Or do you still have a Petronella or a Fransiena somewhere?)}
{Oh my God, you should come and lie here with me on the grass in our enormous garden. One can smell the sun.}
Citadel Press
145 Bree Street
Cape Town
Thursday, 9 May 1963
My dear André,
So, what happened to you last night? I understand you called earlier but at the moment it’s quite a thing to reach the house … probably difficult for you in the evening? After the last part of your MS yesterday and your note I wanted more than ever to chat to you and perhaps explain what looks to you “incomprehensible” and “cool”. Or is that in the past now? Thank you, dear heart, for your telegram today – yes – I know maybe what you’re talking about but not actually what you mean. You’ll have to educate me! Will you? I’m still reading your Pot-Pourri, which I am thoroughly enjoying – I’m now near “nothing for a sixpence” – and have not started the new MS yet – don’t be disappointed – the weekend lies ahead and I can go through it at leisure, something I’m looking forward to greatly – just because it’s also a part of you.
And thank you very much for the assignment – and yet it connects – I mean the “restlessness”, to a trusted friend’s heated remark today, which has left me in a state of dismayed shock! It was so unexpected, and we weren’t talking about the topic at all – “Loyal!” she says. “You’ve never been loyal to anyone in your life!” Now I wonder whether this is true, and if it is indeed true, is it a terrible attack on my integrity as a person and a writer? What does it actually mean? I didn’t wait for an explanation, but left immediately, without saying goodbye to her, and went for a cup of tea in a café … “This above all: to thine own self be true …”
And I honestly try to be that, seeking, investigating, experiencing, analysing, but scared to death especially for people I may learn to love or whom I already love. Touchiness? Selfishness? Fear of isolation, or actually just a fight for self-preservation and contact?
So if I sometimes sound remote, may I tell you that this is already grounded in a feeling of responsibility towards you, in a certain sense “loyalty” too? That I also consider your family life; that I don’t want to deny you, as a writer, any disappointment (!) and that as a person, I still want to protect you against it … (?) Does that make any sense?
You know, my little heart, this poem “Even Saints” is the most successful one so far. Already told you: the end resembles Van Wyk Louw too much: I want to suggest that you limit it and work around these lines:
Even saints
Must leave behind signs to be remembered
Etc. but more poetic: Then:
but you are remembered only by my body
And:
the way in which your little dove breasts nestled
in my hands;
and your virginal still sweet sleep with me afterwards.
But now that you are gone
And I your only archive
Who will rely on the word …
… small futile forgettable signs …
One could cry, reading that line – I also agree with you and [Lawrence] Durrell: “Love is a form of metaphysical enquiry.” No, child, I feel that this poem already has a hold on your unconscious, that it is planted squarely in your imagination; just shorter, sharper, more patience, darling, the “patience that can carry so much” and of which you (true or not?) do not have much!
Chris came here last night, a little sick, a little gloomy, and sends his regards and looks forward to your arri
val. We’ll have to organise a party immediately. I hope you’ll give me a date.
Do you perhaps know David Lytton – [C. Louis] Leipoldt’s cousin? A Place Apart or The Paradise People or The Goddamn White Man? He once said to me: “Never pretend what you don’t feel or overestimate what you do feel.” And now I feel so unsure again, and I wish you’d come back: “And I wished that he would come back, my snake … I felt so honoured.” D.H. Lawrence: “Snake”. Or, as my ouma would say: Ecc. 1. v. 13. But now I’m going to “bath immediately” and get into bed with your sketches, and try to believe … in myself, in something … in you?
Love, darling,
Ingrid.
PS: Which American collection do you want: the big Modern American Poetry or the smaller paperback New American Poetry 1945–1960?
Your letter, 3 May: Try to come by car – the flat is my own, yes, and Simone’s; I have an aversion to people knowing all my business! I don’t think you, especially, need to have a fear of the bourgeoisie – although it’s a healthy fear; break loose – about the “single experiences” the two of us will chat – about the stupidity and idiocy – Uys said “it’s the century of the glorification of the asinine” – André, I’m not answering your letter curtly now, trust me. I read your letters often and often again – if I say I appreciate everything it sounds weak and it actually says nothing – with poems I will always help and support and encourage you – how do you manage in any case to do everything that you do?
You say, “dearest auntie I bring you roses”, to which, in the first place, I object emphatically – at the moment I am still your little girl – in the second place – I hope I do indeed have a sense of humour, but this sentence is inappropriate as it exists in terms of earnestness and honesty and beauty – as is the case with you.
Are we going to Paris together one day?
Ingrid.
PS: What is the crisis? IJ.
PPS: Just thought: “How long will it take / moment of reality / without the insanity / and in touch with the dream?”
IJonker.
Grahamstown
Friday, 10 May 1963
Lovely, beloved dear,
Just a note to set your mind at ease. (Heavens, it seems each time one has to say again afterwards what one actually wanted to say in the first place! The purest commentary yet on human communication is surely to be found in Hamlet’s “Words, words, words”!) Therefore: please don’t imagine for a moment that I wanted to run you down about your piece in Drum! It was meant with a twinkle in the eye. And the photo is indeed lovely. (I said this yesterday, too.) All I meant in my comment about the “strange” you, was this: I suddenly realised how exceedingly much more of you there was, is, than the little fragment that’s “mine”. I was therefore speaking precisely about your “infinite variety”, or trying to do so. (God, it was this, among other things, that so disturbed me for a while that night at Chris’s place: the astonishing way in which you are so different in every moment, so deliciously different!) My only reason for dismay is: I would so very much like to understand and know all of you and – ? – have it as my own? But that’s impossible, simply because I have met you only now, instead of 28 years ago. Or rather 27 years and 11½ months ago, when I first saw the light of day (or the dark? I no longer remember). Once again, purely “physical” reasons, thus.
Ag no, no, man, Ingrid! The flat only on the 25th? I am totally shocked. I was hoping so much – but very well, then. I keep learning the lesson: don’t count your chickens before they hatch. In that case, please would you book a place for me at your boarding house, near to you. Otherwise we can go and stay at Lanzerac in St’bosch for a few days (e.g. from Wednesday through to Thursday, a holiday) and the weekend. But I think I should phone and see what you say, tomorrow, from the university if possible (though it’s a little side connection there – several phones all over the building using the same number). Last night I had a call booked because I was meant to be alone in the house – but then plans changed and I quickly had to cancel the call. With a gnashing of teeth.
This accursed pen-and-paper business. I want to be with you. Talk. And – then stop talking and be with you.
Don’t be ill. Did you go see the doctor after all? What was it in the end? You’re far too precious to be overcome by illness.
Thank you, also, for the vignette of you, or the lot of you, at the river in Douglas, naked, and the swallow’s nest. Perhaps we can do something as bourgeois as look at all your photos when I’m there.
I must go and mark more essays now, with a head that’s fit to burst. Since January I haven’t had a single day without sinus – except for those few days in the Cape. Allergic to the climate. Etc. Perhaps it’s mere hypochondria.
Lonely little thing: just ten days; by the time you get this letter: only a week. We have much to say and still more to do, to be.
My record player has come back after months at the electrical shop. That’s why I felt compelled to send the telegram this morning. There is indeed still Brahms, and many other things that make me mad with joy. I just had to send news about the Sanctus, because last night I closed my study door and sat alone in the dark, listening, with a glass of wine, and with memories for which you, despite your best intentions, were responsible.
And then that also had to come to an end because it was Anton’s bath time. He and I always bath together in the big tub; I wish you were able to see this. It’s the highlight of his day. But afterwards I’m exhausted. I want to help you put Simone to bed. Or is she very particular about strange men?!
And this was supposed to be a “note”, did I say? A hell of a mixed bag, I fear. And maybe I’ve said a whole lot of stuff that I’ll have to explain later, again! I don’t want to explain things any more. I want, once more, to “climb down your little rock pool and find the anemone”.
Love,
André.
Friday, 10 May 1963
My dear André,
Thank you for today’s letter – tried to read it between all the work and sent Anne out a few times for all kinds of trivial little things; this afternoon a lovely rain started in Cape Town and now it is pouring out there and everything is cosy inside: Simonetta over there, drawing, and talking to herself – I’ve just finished Jan’s mail and I’m drinking a glass of red wine. Child, your letter has something of a threat – so much “our house” and “our garden” and “maybe I won’t come alone” – the days when you “will stay with me” I will be working in any case …! The “cock that crows” is of course also a denial (!) and that’s also why it doesn’t flow and I think you know why:
En al ons dade, al ons denke selfs,
Bind ons lewensgang aan bande …
Quote from “Bonds” by Abr[aham] H. Jonker … You don’t know if the “inspiration” can, will or must fade. It’s all very logical and honest, but Lord! And it looks as if everything depends on your “Cape Town detour”. And it scares me. I hate it when people expect something of me that I may not be, and I hate having to put on an act to ensure their approval (love?). And perhaps on top of it all you think I am “clever” or learned – I’ve got a 2nd class matric and that’s all. Afrikaans Lower, because I was at an English school that I hated; and besides, the circumstances at home were anything but good: but there was at least the Child Life!
I think your second name is nice. André Philipus. Brink? Is that Dutch or maybe German? We on the other hand are from Java. Our family name is Adolph Jacobus Jonker, and the first guy with this name was a Javanese slave, who today, of course, would not qualify as a white or as a human.
In any case, my dear heart, I would die if I had to live in a house like that with a garden and insurance. I tried it in Johannesburg’s suburbia, until we departed, raging, for Hillbrow’s slums.
My next address (I am apparently terribly “elusive”, especially to creditors) I’ll call through to you, if needs be. It will be third class at best – the boarding house, because, like you, I am always bankrupt an
d don’t care much for “filthy lucre”, if it weren’t for my child, I probably would never “work” – because, as you say, it is, to put it nicely, at the very least degrading to be bound to this sort of existence.
When do you actually sleep? Seems to me you keep writing and teaching and reading, and going out, and then sometimes you lie awake at night too!
And now, must I find you accommodation with me for the week, or will it be a hell of a lot of sneaking around, which I have an aversion to?! Don’t worry, I’m actually in an excellent mood, have been all day.
Now I’ll make us some food and have a bath, and then I’m expecting people. Will write to you again tomorrow – if I don’t – I might become “Dear Ingrid” – more businesslike than my publisher, from whom I heard, by the way, that my little volume is appearing this month – goodnight, darling.
Babsie (that’s my family nickname). That was when my father was still UP [United Party].
PS: Anne says your photo in Die Huisgenoot is nice. But she doesn’t like the one in Pot-Pourri, she says it looks like a girl. (While I’ve been writing to you, Simone came and stood behind me and combed my hair – now she’s got a cup of water here and it’s wet – excuse the drops if they land here.)
Your poem “You Were Never Baptised” (how’d you know that?), at least I was baptised at five years of age, is good: especially
never a wedding dress
but naked dressed in light …
Do you know what [D.J.] Opperman said about “Begin Somer”: “insignificant” and “could perhaps be accepted as a small visual sketch”. Are you also so “visual”? I am. Till tomorrow … I.
Ek wil nie meer alleen slaap nie
Ek wil nie meer alleen wakker word nie
Sonder om die lig en die lewe
Opslag te herken.
(Éluard)
Good night! I. Jo.
Flame in the Snow Page 5
