1922

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

Dear Brother

we mustnt let a mere matter of dollars get in the way of our
Trip. I wish I could say to you 'forget it: come along with me':
but since I cant, the least I can do is to say, that if there must be
an advance that you can pay back, I can probably manage it, provided
it is not too great. So that's settled, dear man.

Wherever we go, South, of course we go together. If you go as Negro, cant I also? What is a Negro? Doubtless, if the Southerner could see in my heart my feeling for 'the negro', my love of his great qualities, my profound sympathy for his trials and respect for the great way he bears them, that Southerner would say' why you're worse than a nigger' ...so if you go as a Negro, so go I.

love to you......

As I see it now, September 1 will be the date I'll be droppin' in on
you but don't lets spend more than a day or so in Washington ..I've
got but 20 days in all

PS I have always felt that the only truly Christian people in America
are the Negroes. Perhaps, since Christianity is a deep outgrowth of
Jewish thought, and I a Jew, this is why I feel as I do toward them.

Dear Brother

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

There's healing in that letter to your friends of which you send me a
copy. Although a part of me demurs at the thought of your boosting
me through your own personal following among these people, it is a
very insignificant part. For the important thing is not the selling
of copies .. but the impulse that makes you write that letter. You
have helped me too, Jean. Who can measure the balance one way or
the other? My deep concern is, to live up to what you from your
own generosity of spirit have put upon me and look to me for. It is
hard, but the challenge of your love is good, and I accept it .. for
the whole course of my life.

And in the light of these things, the matter of copies sold or not
sold of any book is ridiculously irrèlement. Still, it's got to be
said: if you want more circulars you can have as many as you like. And
for whatever you sell you will receive the regular Dealer's discount
which graduates from one third to 40%, according to the number. Why
bother about details? I've got 'em in a book, and when the time
comes I'll look 'em up. Meantime, however, have you the CAPITAL needed
for your onerous chérical work? Let the enclosed check go toward
stamps etc., or, carfare. You can refund with your final check. ♦♦

BEMerkX

What a healing time we shall have in only a month! O how I hope
nothing turns up to bust that up. I am getting skeptical, you see,
in my ancient age. I believe in no delights till after they are there.

my love to you

Walso

WALDO FRANK
DARIEN CONN

Bratia

(now what language is that CREVORE)

Liveright writes he is interested and that a
Spring publication is still possible. I write him
again today that the book am acomin and Spring Pub
be desireable MOST.

Tell me frankly: would you rather I dndt write the
intro.? I have so many enemies, brother mine,
that perhaps you'd be better off without my open
sponsorship. In that case, be frank. Dont misun-
derstand. I want to do it, but I dont want this
pleasure that wd be mine to stand in your way. You
are a genius, and your success is all I want. (Per-
haps I'm only the mislead ranting ASS that so many
folks so often call me. I feel grey at times, and
beaten, and full of an ashen spirit. ) But I am
sure of You.

love

Your criticism of Unwelcome Man is keen, sensitive
definitive, like most of your reactions.

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

May 2, 1983

Jean:

It's glad I am that the time's really
so near for your appearance. When you reach
N Y and are ready to come out, better let me
know beforehand: the reason for this precaut-
ion is that just at present the baby's sick.
I don't think anything serious, add it'll
doubtless be over before your coming North ..
but just to make sure you we shall be ready
for you. It's too bad on the whole that
Hart Crane should have spent so long at
Gorham's .. I think he's still there. He's
failed so far to land a job.

à bientôt

Waldo

"Came" proofs are being sent to me. I'll
hold Holiday proofs for you, in N.Y.

W.

WALDO FRANK
DARIEN CONN

September 29, 1923
(October 1, 1923)

Dear Brother

Well, at last I've had a chance to read your Dial paper
and to think about it. If there were anything to quarrel with you
about, I'd do it cordially. But the one thing to be said above all is
that you've done a very fine bit of technical criticism. We talked of
your one point in structure, and I told you that it was a point that
had already bothered me. I suspect you are right. I am not quite sure
if I left the thing as I did because I could not better it, or because
some inscrutable right instinct would not let me "better" it. That
we'll all see clearer in ten years.

My "critical" observation on your paper is extrinsic. I
miss in it .. quite personally.. a certain glow which is in you, and
in your work and which, it seems to me, would not have made the fine
intellectual lines of what you wrote less sharp. I understand, how-
ever, why that "glow" is not there, and I appreciate the difficulty,
altogether external to the essentials, which kept it out. Another
thing, still less essential. You opening paragraph suggests that
in your opinion there is no meeting ground between my reality in Hol-
iday and the reality which exists fundamentally in the South. I know
you do not say this, and you do not believe it. Put in your omission
of the opposite, there is the suggestion of this. And I regret it,
because practically all the critics are jumping on me for not know-
ing the South, and you are one man who knows I do, who was in a posit
ion to state so with some authority.

I move from here in a week .. where I know not yet. I shall
try to get a place with a couch as well as a bed, so we can live with us
in New York. A long visit between us will go far better than a jagged
hour out from the nervous extraneity of New York.... Love
Waldo

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

WALDO FRANK
DARIEN CONN

Dear Brother

Thanks for writing and showing
me the Broom review. Darn good of you .. hope
you havent spent too much energy on my pesky
old book. I had xM dinner with Kenneth Mac-
gowan the other day we spoke of Kabnis. He
is impressed but says 'The thing is not in
form for presentation .. it is material,
good material, that would have to be revamped
for the theater.' He is speaking to Jones of
it, who by now probably has read it too.

Good luck to you and Gorham .. wish
I were with you. Well, someday, I will be.

love

Waldo

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

My dear Brother

It is good news indeed you send me .. that the new
book is already shaping. I didn't think it would be long. Meantime,
Gorham writes me that you are writing splendid criticism. Fine! The
ship is launched. I am working at my translation of Lucienne. I am
rather spent after the last novel, and you'll forgive the lack of
energy which this letter may reveal. I have had to take forced trips
to NY . but there's been no time for seeing anyone personally. AS
soon as I see a way to that I'll let you know. I did see Liveright
yesterday and he says he is going to enlist your help in reaching
a possible Negro public for HOLIDAY. I know you'll do what you can
in this. Unfortunately, I have to think of sales . . more and more.
There's such an ironic abyss between honors and receipts. In one day
I receive letters from leading Magazines in France and Spain asking
me to be their regular American correspondent (honor and no cash), and
a lachrymose letter from my British agent saying that no English
Publisher will print my novels until I learn how to write English
(an English market would mean cash, even if no honor.) The one country
in Europe whose exchange does not disappear when turned into dollars
spurns me utterly...I don't know why I mention this trivial matter
to you . . doubtless if I'd written you tomorrow instead of just now

when the letters arrived, I'd not have thought of it at all.

I hope you are well and thriving and working. These are crucial
years for you, and you will make the most of them. I am certain, of
that.

I don't understand the behavior of Tennessee Anderson. She was so eager to see your play she wanted me to try to get you up that very afternoon! Well .. as you say .. it's up to them. It was but a slim hope at best. What news of Kenneth Macgowan? If you happen to hear from Littell about the fate of Lola's article, will you tell me.

yours as ever........

Brother

Cane proofs have just come, and on the first cursory glance I have seen SO MANY THINGS WRONG, that I hasten to write you, inorder that you may delay their making *plates* until you've had time to make corrections.

If you had already given them your final O K, please wire to Komroff to hold off. Here is the result of my first glance:

1. "Foreword by Waldo Frank" is omitted from title page; it should be placed there, in smaller type than your name.

2. In the Foreword, my name should appear not at end of but at the beginning under "Foreword", otherwise the reader will think he's reading your text till he gets to the bottom, which should not.

3. I've found several typographical errors in the foreword.

4. p. 13 ; ; last par. of Becky is printed in small type. "Face" should go on a page by itself.

5. Therefore, the entire book requires new pagination.

6. I regret that you printed the verse in smaller type than the prose but I suppose you'll have to let that stand.

BUT .. the *INDIVIDUAL* poetry pages should start a uniform distance from the top of the page, not, as you have it, skipping up and down according to the poem's length.

7. At beginning of Part 2, you have too many blank pages. There should never be a blank oddnumbered page in the middle of the book. As paginated now, *Part Two* should *start* p.67.

Note: I am not quite certain about point 6 .. perhaps you prefer to have the poem centered, whatever length, rather than have it run over a page. That is for you to decide.

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

Brother

Herewith, Cane and Holiday. Giving FACE its full page will make the pagination for part Two and on, come out right. On thinking it over, leave my name at end of my foreword, instead of putting it at the beginning .. the thing on the title page is the only change needed.

In going over Holiday dont kill yourself with hurry. There's always time to do a thing right. Is that song "Dark River" as I have it on p.17, or "Deep River"? if the latter, will you change it? If there's any place where you think a change would help my dialect, go to it. I can trust you better than myself in this. Or any other suggestions you have to make?

Rushing through Cane hurriedly as I have, I am struck quite afresh by its colossal power. Box-Seat strikes me right, now. I don't see how the critics can avoid the immense pursuesiveness of Cane ... but it's always best toe realise that they're stupider than we could ever dream.

love

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

WALDO FRANK
DARIEN CONN

Brother

I saw Gorham for a while last night: there's a healthier color in his face than I've seen since I knew him. I saw your essay in his book, for the first time. A truly amazing piece of work. It too resolves it self into an artform. It makes me all the more eager to see your DIAL essay.

They are attempting to assure a few good reviews of CANE ar B&L
They count on Seligmann. Litell writes in that he is thinking of review
ing it himself. I saw John Crawford and he said he'd go straight up to
the TIMES for it. The book is out, displayed at many shops. I do not
think there's the slightest chance of its selling in large quantities, but
also I do not think there's the slightest chance of its not establishing
you, among the handful who count. Just the other day, after I'd had my
quota I got 6 copies of CANE and I am going to be dishonest and swipze
em and shoot some of them over to France. They'll respond to you, instant
er, I believe.

Lucienne is done, I believe I told you. Now, I must recruit a litt
le energy and go at the next job. My energy is like a very shallow Spring
One scoop of water from it, and you've got to wait a hellogatime
before it fills in, again.

One of these days Paul will be coming back and then I must get out.
I'll probably take a room somewhere. And if there's an extra couch in it,
you'll be welcome to stay there. You know I suppose that the Munsons
must get out of their place.

my love to you

Waldo

I enclose a letter from Littell which evidently crossed mine. It may
amuse you. Also a letter from Spingarn. Will you shoot 'em back?

W-

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

Brother

Instead of wiring me from Washington when you leave, suppose
you phone me from N Y (Darien 55) when you arrive. Then we can settle
something right off. I hate to think of your squandering your money
on hotels like the Brevoort, even for a day. If you can't stop the
night at Gorhams, perhaps you can come right out here. But suit your-
self.

you've got to keep on the trail of printers for every detail.
Doubtless the man who set up your title page, never saw the MS and did
not know about the foreword at all. Moreover, publishers are always so
busy with the "next books" that they never have more than half a mind
for the books on hand. All that you can safely leave with them is the
selling. I think that authors should not mix into that any more than
needed. But if they have any regard for make-up at all, they've got to
look sharp .. otherwise there is always something wrong. I suppose
you have both Holiday and Cane by now. Don't mind troubling the printers
about corrections. That's their job. You are not responsible for their
elements. And they are supposed to do WHAT YOU WANT.

Holiday you can hand back to me, when you've finished with it.

love

PS the whole tendency nowadays is to make the artist think that he is
the favored one .. and it is all bosh. The right attitude to take is that
we are the _favoring_ ones in the essential.

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

Dear Brother

I was glad to have you here, but I was worried lest in my
very wearied state I prove a rather unsatisfactory companion. I may not
in any overt way show it, but I am tired out, and life seems very hard:
and I don't feel fit company for such as you. I'm glad you are so un-
derstanding.

Good luck and my love, till the next time ....

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

[1923]

Brother

What news? I suppose Hart Crane is still keeping you from New York. But you'll be coming soon. I can't write to you. Suddenly ten days ago, an explosion took place in my inners and I started writing another novel . . . a queer affair the idea of which I had casually jotted in my notebook where, by all the rules, it should have remained for at least two years . . . and possibly never been written. But it just cavalierly threw out the Play and took the center of the stage . . . and in 10 days I have written Part One, 30,000 words! I have a sneaking suspicion that it's rot . . . and that it may be Goddam good. We'll see.

How are you, old beloved comrade at arms?
Started the garden yesterday . . peas, beets,
spinach, radishes, lettuce . . even though it
still is very cold.

thine

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

ther,

In looking for some scrap paper the other day I came across
a letter I started to you sometime last year. It was headed 'Dear Waldo
Frank'. It doesn't seem possible that you could have been that far away
from me, ever.

What you say about the review makes me feel good, good. Always, when one measures what he has done well by what he feels he can do, doubt creeps in. I think that the review, as it stands, is too long for S4N. It would take up a good half of the issue. I'll have to write a shorter one. So I've sent the ms together with your note to Liveright. I wanted him to see it anyway. I've explained how matters stand. If he can get a NY publication, and you do not think it a serious violation of reviewing ethics (I don't know what they are)- fine, and I'll send S4N (since I've promised a, but not this review) something less in scope. At any rate, if S4N won't run it for a month or two, so there's plenty of time.

Your placement of the esthetic in literature and criticism
seems to me to be right. One needs to emphasize it now, especially the
young writers who are still searching for their own esthetic need to
emphasize it. Once they have found it, they are then free to handle a
really dimensioned life. In my own case, I search questions of form
etc when I am not directly creating. Even while the piece is shaping in
my mind I fit and select and reject according to esthetic notions, but
the minute I begin to write, I write, as I must, intuitively, from my
own complete abundance. And then, after a time, when I come back to the
stuff I've writen, I again weigh, to the best of ability, by esthetic
standards, by what little I know of my own esthetic to date.

When Munson tackled the Study there where two figures
in the equation. His need, as you state, for personal esthetica clarity,
and, - YOU. Do you really realize what a mass and intensity you are?
Domination! my biceps are about as strong as the next one's, but I havent
as yet succeeded in lifting even a segment of you. It's one thing to

Brother,

I thought maybe that you were out of sorts. I am too.
But it's that damn stomach of mine. I was congratulating myself on having
done a pile of work with no bad consequences, when suddenly the old
indigestion began. It has held me a week now. I'm tired of it. If it
really makes me sore, I'll kick the devil out of it.

Do you think Broom will smash before Kabnis is run?
Nincompoops should get what's coming to them. I only hope that none of
the deserved cuffs carom off to me. The Dial, Kenneth Burke, Editorial
Department, returned the new Box Seat. I got the msx this morning.
"I am sorry that the editorial decision on this manuscript was finally
in the negative. But we did find it of great interest, etc." With Broom,
more or less formless at best, now going; with Dial given over to
continental stuff to the extent that it has little or no creative native
functioning; With Little Review personal and uncertain, with Secession
too narrow a form perhaps to contain the power and chaos of America, with
the other reviews incurably second rate, your motion for a MAGAZINE has
the floor. I second it, and move that we work towards that end. Damn
but I would like to see a triumvirate of you, Munson, and myself. (I
think Munson will break with both Burke and Josephson before long. He
has roots (is he not coming up through you?) and feelings. He belongs to
us rather than to the other two.) Boy but we could make things whiz and
go!

Perhaps Holiday and Cane will come out about the same time? Too much, brother, too much for the mussle-heads. They'll bolt and butt their damn brains out. I want to see Liveright, and I'll be glad to have the chance to talk things over with him. His enthusiasm is the real thing.

I won't come to NY before Spring. I want to see if I can't
bring that article on you up with me. And I want to do some other things.
You bet I'll run out to see you. I'll have enough work along with me

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

2

to leave you to your own stuff, during the day, if that seems best.
And then at night... I give you fair warning: if I hear French or
Spanish or German or Italian or Hindu coming from a certain room the
first thing in the morning, I'll bounch out of bed and deliver an
oration in my own incomparable language. Thomas will be tickled to death,
but the Lord only knows what will happen to Margie! It feels good to
know that she loves Cane. And I'm anxious for her direct impressions.

I am particularly interested now in that play of yours. The
doldrums dont seem to interfere with work. I'll be looking forward to
the NR.

Me? Just at present I'm trying to work above, or, rather, beneath
my dryness and indigestion. The review. The article on you. I'm consider-
ing working over Natalie Mann and that Withered Berries thing, of
adding to these a third long piece that I'm forming in mind, and make
from them my second book. I'm not quite ripe enough for a novel. But
brother, one is coming! As I now vaguely see and feel it, it is tremendous.
This whole brown and black world heaving upward against, here and
there mixing with the white world. But the mixture being insufficient
to absorb the heaving, it but accelerates and fires it. This upward
heaving to be symbolic of the proletariat or world upheaval. To be
likewise symbolic of the subconscious penetration of the conscious mind.
Great guns, brother! Whenever I get a real glimpse of the thing, a
terrific emotion sweeps me. In my present condition I cant think long of
it.

I dare say that before this drama is actually finished, several
smaller ones will have been written. And then too, I'm reading Flaubert.
 Yep. Bovary started me into him. I'm now on a life of him, and am reading
St Anthony. I'm going to write you my detailed reactions to him. For
now I'll just say, that Bovary has sap and lovely cadences. St Anthony
(I'm on the third part) seems to me to be stiff, dry, artificial. A
saint, a saint's temptations without emotions are absurd. There is no
feel to his colors. There is no dazzle to his to gorgeous canvasses.

3

And as for the agony of soul, the drama has thus far left me cold.
Kabnis could have given points to St Anthony. In his use of color-
words without emotion, Flaubert **MAKKAHKA XXEKA HHA** is the precursor of Amy
Lowell.

S4N is small. But Munson asked me to, and since He had
already asked Glenway Wescott to do it for Secession, S4 N was as good
as another. I'm going to send Munson my direct reactions to the Study.
I'll send you a copy of these. And I'll also send a copy of the review.

Grandma is keeping pretty well these days. She sends
her love to you. When I'm not using it, she reads the Study! If her
insight were equal to her will to understand, she'd give cards and
spades to any of our 'men of letters'.

Love, old brother mine,

PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

Brother,

I've been over Part One twice. But my mind doesn't grip it in the way I want it to. So I'm not going to send it back with this note; I'm going over it again tonight, or tomorrow morning.

First impressions:

Nazareth lives in its divisions. The contrasts are sharp and clear. There is an insulator between them. When this insulator is removed, or rather, momentarily shoved aside, Nazareth will live as a whole.

The characters are real. There is no stiffness or self-consciousness about them. They are mobile. They are rivers flowing from their source. They are not fictions of the mind of one who stands aloof at the river's delta, and gazes backward. The physical charaterizations are fine- just a phrase: <u>ramauxthe</u> ...hair thrusts like a pinwheel; ...old brown hands, black at the nails, blue at the knuckles, clasp in wistfulness;... strain vicing her hips; ...His round thick body was erect. Sweat flowed from his bull head and his neck. His broadcloth suit wrinkled as his muscles worked. All fine. The folks are <u>there</u>.

The scenes are vivid. Especially the nigger church, and John with his mother and with Mary Cartier. The soil is close to them. It <u>breathes</u>.

Some bits of the dialog are unusually good? "Ah'll be ready in a minute dears. John, yo keep Mary company till I tidy up", for instance. And then at times it becomes a little stiff. John would never say, "May I kiss you, Mary?" Better: Ken I kiss you, Mary?" Or, if beneath his conflicts he really loves her, then it would probably

be, "Ken I kiss you, hon?" Negroes are lyrical and fulsome about
love, feined or real. "I sho do love, Mary." They are emphatic. Etc.

"An it will be, John. O I am right to fear... O John, how right
I am to fear!" Better, "An it will be, John. O I knows I'm right to
fear... O John, I knows I'm right to fear!" Etc. But it is only here
and there that the stiffness creaps in. Of course, for this very
reason it is the more noticeable. And I'd use "sho" almost always
in preference to "yes."

Virginia's poem...perhaps death is white?.. soul, your
a little black babe under my heart..golden as the sun, my soul...
good.

Brother, HOLIDAY moves. It grows a curious complexity
up from a stratified elemental life. It has the de p urge and the upward
yearning, the sharp memorable images that one expects from you.

More tomorrow.

Brother,

The one thing I was uneasy about in a foreword was this: that in doing the necessary cataloging and naming etc the very elements which the book does _not_ possess would get plastered across its first pages. I was sure of _you_. I knew you could do the thing. You have. The facts for a curious public to toss about, are there. But your point of view is so overwhelmingly that of Art that the divisions and parcellings do not obtrude. I get a good feeling from the whole foreword. And from passages, particularly where you write about the Form of CANE..."an aesthetic equivalent of the land"...and about Kabnis and about me as a force, personal, artistic, an understanding wells up that raises the general tone far above a superficial diplomacy.

Damn! what a job you had. Congratulations, and love, my brother. And THANKS!

 Yep, I've got to look out. Not only am I done with CANE; I'm done with real writing for the time being. My mind doesn't grip as it should. Its power to select and form, and to be _certain_ of its functioning, is below normal. I have to hunt for words; when I'm in trim they flash to me. Etc. But I think I still have enough stuff in me to judge the merits of the two Kabnis's. (?) In the one I have on hand there is no essential alteration. Nor will there be any. Better send CANE to me. I'll watch my step. And I'll get it off to Liveright two days after its arrival. Perhaps the same day.

love...

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

Brother,

Part Four.

Your handling of the church, your having the mob bud from
it, the mob finding a life in the lynching which the church could not
give, all this is sheer mastery. The urve is inevitable. The crowd's
maturing, its final snake-like movement into Niggertown, an wonderful. The
mob is integrated. It lives in itself in the South. It has a life that
is universal. Man but you did create! Yea! The snake image is perfect.

And there is a deep tragic beauty in John's last scene
with Mary and his mother that I shall never forget.

The mob's hesitancy when it fronts John. The final
triumph of the Rope... Yes!

Virginia in bed. The contrast. Lilies in Arcady !!!

"Yet it is your wound, John."

"O Christ...O Christ." It was a fine stroke that put him
with the women.

I'm in doubt about the last line. That last line for me
functions as a release. My emotion, my attention travel# along it out
into the world. It gives me back to myself- too soon. I find myself in
Washington wheras I would exist rather be held longer in Nazareth. If this
is what you want it to do, it does it perfectly. The corak is taken out.
The life of HOLIDAY spreads over the world. It can stand the dispersion.
Perhaps I feel as I do because I like to soak. Somehow, I'd rather come
up of my own weight rather than to have you help me...

There is a thick, living beauty in HOLIDAY that I have not
experienced in any of your other works. Your beauty is always intense.
But here, it comes with blood and soil and warmth. Any number of scenes...
the one where Virginia, entering Niggertown, comes upon the women working,
John and Virginia, John and Mary and His mother, the mob, the crowd...
have the heaving pulse-beats of arteries. The reason for this lies deeper
than your material. For the significant fact is not that you have

2

written about Negroes and whites in the South. The important thing is
that, using them, you have released this thick beauty from yourself.
And this release may be explained only in terms of an inner quickening.

In design and style I think HOLIDAY to be a natural progression
from your other works. You are budding to poetry my brother. Who ever
heard of such a thing! Most writers give their poems first. Budding?
My God! HOLIDAY and RAHAB and CITY BLOCK are tremendous poems. Hail,
brother, deep great man that you are, POET!

HOLIDAY, less rarified and intense than Rahab and City Block, is
closer to the earth, it has the earth-throb in it. It is a symbol of
your dipping down. It is your Spring, your freshening.

I'm going over Kabnis for Broom. They want it for the Negro number.
What is this Negro number? And who's going to appear in it?

I'm incorporating the introduction into the body of the work. In
this way, two or three pages are cut off. I'm wondering if this form
wouldn't be best for the book. I don't believe I lose anything essential.
And the piece gains in concentration. As I go over it, new lines etc
form. I think I'll have a better Kabnis. However this may be, I'll send
a copy of it on to you as soon as I finish.

Love...

Brother

bother

Damn decent impulse in you to bother to refute Mumford .. I know Gorham will appreciate it as well as I. But .. thank God .. you're a better poet than controversialist. Frinstance, how many dozen of the 60,000 readers of the N R will understand this sentence: "And in its aspect of anti-body, the study dismisses this work." Gawd, man!

The Ethiopian Art Theater blew into town, and I went to the first night .. a sketch by a Howard U. boy, and Salome. The producer is Raymond O'Neil, a very sensitive person from Cleveland. I spoke to him of you, he is THIRSTY for plays .. and if you ever wanted him to have you, he'd be good. I wish you'd seen them when they were in Washington. Raw, but sincere and naive .. and rather pathetic and wistful to think of 'em having to give Wilde because no one better has written plays about passionate women cutting off white men's heads.

Glad a million times over that you're to be hereabouts. And soon. About time you and I had another pow-wow.

Did you get proof of my foreword to CANE? I have no copy. I wonder if I shouldn't glimpse it. Well, if we exchange on paged proofs that'll work of itself.

love

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

Brother

I'm wishing you'd blow north, although doubtless if you did I'd be working less. The new novel which I may call quite simply "The Story of John Mark" (this is my second hero John .. can't be helped, the names impose themselves quite unbudgingly) has been interrupted by proof of holiday which I take in to Komroff tomorrow. Monday I hope to be off on part Two. But speaking of holiday .. quite incoherently as is proper after a hard day's work .. and an hour to ward off my hunger before dinner (i saw in the kitchen a long delicious sea trout to be cooked with big slices of onion and tomato sauce), here's a suggestion: it's always good to let some other fellow give your final proofs the once-over. Why don't we exchange? I'll go through your paged proofs, you go through mine, for final suggestions and any typ. errors that might have evaded our eagle-eyes? It'll mean a delay of a few days at most .. less if you're North by then as I trust you will be: but it may be worth it. There's something very irrevocable about the printed book. What say you?

in the NR of 2 weeks ago?

Did you see Mumford's disgraceful slam on Munson? Gee it hurts to see you fellows going through the beginning of the gauntlet which I've become inured to. Yo'll get it too, brother. I fear. There's a certain sort of dynamic and ruthlessly honest person .. the only sort who counts .. who just naturally inherits hatreds and gratuitous antagonisms by the score. Imagine the dishonesty of accusing Munson of having written a "mere eulogy" of me! Of course, what Mumford is sore at, was that he should have written the book at all: but if he didn't think the subject worth writing on, why didn't he meet Munson on a few specific points? HONEST opposition comes so rarely to the artist from these weak fish (critics, that after a few years of backbiting and misrepresentation and sneers and innuendo and underhand stabbing, you get to welcome it). That's why, for all his limitations, I feel **grateful** to Burke ... he has furnished almost the only decent hostility I've had. Of course, there are severities in Gorham's books that have cut far deeper into my complacence (if I have any left) than all the billingsgate-slingers put together.

Well, old sunofagun old viking old twofisted cerebral old flaming ray of the high sun singing through a world at Spring ... God bless you.

and
come
up
soon
and
reserve
for me
from
your
highjinks
in
NY

at least a few good days.

an old Nordic form of
outlaw
you see
it is written

o
d
l
a
w

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

brother

"Must one macerate and mutilate oneself in order to enter the Holy Land?" you ask: no: that's not the point: the point is, Flaubert had to. You cant generalize about genius and achievement. And the fact that you cant is about as good a proof of the divinity of the manifestation of creative expression as you can find. You must take Flaubert as himself: his experience is as unique and as special and as universal withal, as is his work. You have a right to say that such and such a book is deeper, sublimer: but you have no right to quarrel with Flaubert because he wrote and worked as he did. Howsoever, I think your impressions on the man are extremely profound and fine. You have got him: and once again I take off my Fedora to the critic. He was not destined to be sublime in his achievement: that element he needed to work out in his noblest tortured life. His Correspondances are therefore the Flaubertian work that crowns the Education and the Antoine and the Bovary. I agree with you that I prefer to see that element fleshed concisely as in the Thoughts of Pascal or the Confessions of Saint Augustine. But let us rather than cavil thank the Lord that the letters are there. But I am sure that some horror must have overtaken the English of Heroides. For in the original, we have a substanced fugue of passionate and gloriously colored thematic movements, the like of which I find in Bach or Persephone rather than in another writer... those parts of Bach, for instance, where he takes his religious theme and develops it secularly ... personally,... passages of the Passion of St. Matthew, for example.

I am sorry you are starchless. Me too. Gad, I wish you were here. I'd wire you to come, but we are just entering into our 99th domestic crisis and so guests are out of the question. Far too great a part of our energy goes into making the household run (with the supposed end of freeing our energy from household) If you don't keep servants, one of you has to be a drudge: and if you do, you have nowadays to nurse the servants ... unless you are rich and have a community of them who take care of themselves and each other. Insoluble problem. Insoluble life. Amor fati I suppose is the one gentleman(s) answer to the intricate in exhaustible fantasmagoria of complications.

I stand helpless before my play and disheartened too. It comes forward and recedes in such swift rhythms that I know not if it be a substantial thing or a mirage of a own will which has so long said: I want to write plays. (I have written at least a dozen rotten ones). Ideas continue to dazzle my head: each day a new idea, and NOTHING WRITTEN AT ALL. I used to be able to write in the "good old days". Today I am all babble and hint and fume.

You employed bad strategy in making your Munson criticism so long. It gave the cold editors a chance so honestly to say NO. That is not the way to wage war, brother. But O those editors. At a dinner the other night, I met Glenn Frank, editor of Century. I feel that it will be a hundred years at least before a man like that accepts work like mine. Shallow, complacent, shrewd ... playing a game from start to finish, worshiping money, success, celebrity: there is your perennial make-up of the literary man. It embraces everyone that one meets at the Hotel Algonquin. I know them all, and I vomit. If but once I had the personal means that only Hermesheimers and Cabells seem to receive from God, in this country. In France Gide is the sort of person who is rich, in Italy Croce, in Spain Unamuno .. and in America those drivelling chaps

bah

PS

When you're in NY I shall see you meet ~~Foxixx~~ Robert Littell, and he shd give you some reviewing. also he may consent to your reviewing holiday if you want to. He commissioned Lola Ridg to review CityBlock lasy July, and she never did........

LETTER:

and Baal.

By Elohim and Iahveh, Chamos and Baal, Assur and Aphrodite, you tempt me mightily my brother. I am heavy handed. Ideas burgeon and keep me in a great discomfort, but I can write nothing decent: I have just wrote an essay on a splendid subject, pending an entre-acte in my play meditations, and this morning reading it over, I did not recognize my style: such pedestrian awkward marshalling of words. I know that a week's visit with you, and at least two nights of Bacchanale would oil me up, put gasoline in my tank and grease my ballbearings something fine. But

there's the furnace to run

there's a new nurse, just in, who may last or may not we
gotta wait and see

there's Margy who wants to run up to Boston on an important errand.

About the middle of the month, I may shut down the furnace, and there'd be about a week's spell before FARMING begins. If you were still in Washington then, I'd split a gut or two, trying to come down. But probably you'll be in NY then. Of course, when you are in NY I'll see you up here, for you are coming: but needless it is to say, 'twont be the same thing as that week in Washington. Well, if for some reason, your trip to NY got delayed till the end of the month and the coast is clear here, I'll be with you, brother mine. There's nothing, nothing I want to do so much, as that and you're a dear man to ask me. Send my love again to your grandmother for being willing to have me: and don't forget old Ken, of whom I think very often indeed.

I've sold two essay to the NR ..one on Shapeskere that is coming out I am told this week, and one on Dickens. And the essay I have so BADLY WRITTEN is a religious manifesto, that deserved my best-running pen.

O I do hope I can have that week .. but, if I can't .. there will be other weeks. We are poor creatures of circumstance, even though often we don't find it out until we have gray hairs like your

old

Waldo

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

Brother:

I don't want you to put off your trip one minute on the change of my coming down. I say this, not because I think I cannot come, but because I wonder if I should. I am in a pretty bad state, and the right instinct for a man in such a way is, like the animals, to slink off my himself. I can't do that, but Heaven knows I don't have to poison my friends with my moods and pregnancies. I stick here, therefore, and see no one and say no word, beyond the necessary. Occasionally I go to New York, but when I am there my visits are "business" and my pleasure is going to a maudeville show. New York is almost a desert for me, now. A new New York, in which I have no home, in which I have no place ... I'm on the outside.

To be with you would help me, greatly: in fact there is absolutely no one else I want to be with: but it would probably be damned stupid for you. So take the train, brother, and at any rate I'll see you here. If you still are in Washington, in ten days or so, at any rate, I'll find out by wire, and may come. No holding you there, however.

I can't tell you how delighted I am that you have found someone you can speak to in Will Marion Cook. That is a deep ke conquest ... Doubtless, you will be nourishment to Cook. I must hear him. And I want to meet him.

Have you ever sat in a stationary rather rattly Ford, and pushed down the gas and pushed down the spark till the engine howls with commotion: and left your car so, stock still, screeching with vibration? That is what I am like. My mind-motor is enormously active, and I cannot move.

Have you corrected proof yet on MacGowan's CANE?

I understand Macgowan is enormously enthusiastic about Kabnis and sorry it is too long for him to use. The realmen are growing aware of you, dear brother. Now, when the vermin-critics have begun to bite you, you will be altogether arrived. That'll happen next Fall, I warn you. Don't expect Rascoe and Macy and the rest of the swine to change their snouts so they can sing to your song. Grunt...

my love to you,

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

The
Have you any short things from CANE that you could sent FREEMAN (xxx West 13 St N Y) If so, send them to Van Wyck Brooks, editor, with a note to the effect that you do so at my suggestion. I spoke to WWB at length of you when he was up here last weekend. he Freeman wd be most receptive to prose, I imagine, and not exceeding 1500 words.

BROTHER

Your response to T R Smith's criticism of Holiday is so amazingly in tune with my own intuition that I am strengthened. The line you quote accurately from memory "It is your wound, John" appears to me the flyorum and climax of the entire work: and that you should so light on it corroborates my feeling of success. Smith's reaction is merely valuable as an indication of what other "intelligent" persons will say. But I believe in receiving all suggestions, quite openly: if one is not a weakling, even a blizzard of suggestions cant snow one under. The point is simply, that the vile current realistic novel has spoiled all minds for the essential and pure lines of aesthetic form: they cant see anything except smudges: a true fine pencil stroke or brush-stroke makes no work upon their retinas.

The third and todate latest somersault of BROOM IS his wire to Lola Ridge that Broom is going on after all, and to hold all for Josephson .. the evident heir. This, after Lola per instructions had returned all and sent out letters per hundred and got DIAL to undertake unexpired subscriptions. Loa, who is somewhat responsible, simply because she has permitted Loeb to make a combination office-boy and dishrag of her, blandly complies. My final and complete reaction to it all is NAUSEA. Buch weakness as Loeb and all his crowd have demonstrated is simply the emetic that induces vomit when XXXXXXXX in contact with healthy stomachs. For me, Broom is dead ... and I shall act henceforth as if the hope that turned into this nasty mess had never lived. Fortunately I did not give Loeb Holiday. When are you coming to town? .. I am at last at grips with the play. And in a horrible state of doubts and doldrums in consequence thereof. Lots of love ever, ......

JEW TOOMER COLLECTION

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

PS I should like to know what you think of Smith's criticism as per en closure. Read the PS for amusement. It is the comment of Liveright's secret ary who wnlivens the office withher "critiques" of B&L authors. Do you think it would help or mar the last chapter of Holiday to lift up virginia's state into a more concrete image of her life? It's all ther now, but abstract. I am uncertain if that abstractness is a great merit or no. Of course, if it is RIGHT, the fact that it obscures the book a bit as Smith suggests must not be considered.
Brother

I feel sore that your review of MUNSON may be condemned to the ms state.
I do not know, from your statement to him, if you consider it disqualified
for S4N. Of course, if you,ve promised it them, that's an end of it. but
sometimes a Publisher can place reviews like this one in the Metropolitan
Press. I enclose a note to Liveright: and if the thing is free, you might
send him it and ask him to place it. I am sorry it is not 2 pages shorter.
but it is a very fine estimate of Munson's achievement. The stress today
must be upon the utterly neglected essence .. the aesthetic. But just the
same, that sort of criticism is in the final analysis transitional, and x-bem-
explicity. It corresponds to the "abstract" painting that went on when the old
associational forms needed to be cast off. As soon as the artist had once
more achieved the ability, through that exercise, to apperceive form freshly,
he was unafraid once more of essential representation. So, I predict, when
gorham has his aesthetic essences crystallised, he will not be afraid of
the introduction of the "representational" .. the philosophical and the
emotional .. elements into his study. for the truth is, that these elements
provide the formulating materials of the aesthetic synthesis, even as phys-
ical forms in painting provide the formulating of aesthetic diemension. But
this Study is an achievement. And I preface am certain that it will meet the
hilarity and antagonism that achievements always do meet. As to your study
of his study, you are an allround man .. you have the penetrating strength
critically of ahl genuine creators.

Was in town yesterday and they told me they are having difficulty in sett-
ing up your book, because of inconsistencies in punctuation. sometimes you
use apostrophes, sometimes not. I told em to write to you. I thought you'd
cleaned all that up.

I am still in the doodydrums........This has been a frightfully hard time for
me, brother, and you have helped me more than you will ever know.

my deep love to you

Give your Grandmother my love, and tell her how
deeply I appreciate her faith in you and her helping
you.

WALDO FRANK
DARIEN CONN

Brother:

I have just sent you a telegram on receiving
one from Horace Liveright. He accepts CANE, and
intends a late summer publication. I shall see
him on Jan 8, & which time I shall talk matters

He will then of course send you a contract.
over with him. I shall bring back the MS to Dar-
ien and go over it carefully, and if there are
any suggestions, you will have them soon. As you
know, I did not wait to do more than glance at
the book, because I wanted L to have it at once.
Congratulations! You have made a real start: a
start which I know will carry you far. You have
still unfathomed riches, dear man. You have that
old-fashioned thing called Soul and that thing
called Mind. I say quite openly to you that
I know no one now in America in whom I have higher
hopes, and no one to whom I feel quite so close.
God bless you.

ever yours

JEAN TOOMER
COLLECTION

I am correcting HOLIDAY which will probably appear
at the same time with CANE.

I am glad you have made a contact with Sherwood Anderson. The violent anti-pathy of Munson and Burke to Anderson is a bit hard for me to understand, although I think they are quite right not to be satisfied with him. My history with Sherwood is so intricate and subtle that I wonder if I'll ever have the energy to tell it to you. It would be almost as hard work as writing a novel. It is a novel, in a way. But though he has hurt me very deeply and disappointed me, doubtless, I am as alive as ever to his merits and as warmly moved by his genius, and so are all the other novelists. The Sherwood Anderson that counts is a tender, sensitive, pure human being. There's a strange strain of the girl in his brash masculinity -- and hence doubtless have come all the troubles and contradictions.

I am sorry that you have set yourself a task in writing about my work, that it gives you pain. But I confess to you, that such a study will be damn wellcome if you do ever write it. Who around here has your deep direct understanding?

I am sorry that this letter reflects as it probably does, my weariness. I wrestled all morning with Part IV of Holiday and it has left me ragged. But I did so feel like gossiping with you. Well, that will come too. Tell me about Mae, more, will you? You know how deeply she touched me. What's her address by the way? -- in case I was moved to write her a note.

Your Grandma is a DEAR ... and if she really likes me, I am PROUD. Send her my love.

and to you -- and good greeting, bother.

How is it going?

Waldo

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION
No. 859
FISK UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

WALDO FRANK
DARIEN CONN

Muy hermano mio

I am so glad that Kabis came through good. I
am sure it is the real thing, all the way through.
for that matter, it was that in its rough form.

Have the conspiracies to bring you to NY fallen
through? Do you think, if it is needed, you can
work another season in Washington without serious
injuries to yourself? When your book is out, do
you think it will be easier to raise some money
among the rich ones you had designs on?

I have already written to Liveright to see if there
there be still a chance of a Spring publication
for your book, provided he has it, and accepts it,
by a certain date. If possible, I'd like a spring
publication for your book, precisely for its ef-
fect on the money-raising possibilities. But
don't set too much hope on it, brother. To begin
with you mustnt rush the book, then I may decide
that his Spring program cannot bear another title,
and the of course even his taking the book at all
is still in the realm of the unachieved.

Have no fear however, on any score. You may be
marooned a while longer in Washington, but your
lifelines are out to NY .. and you're still full
of the sort of guys that can live anywhere.

Love to you

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

WALDO FRANK
DARIEN CONN

JEAN TOOMER COLL

BROTHER

The copper wire poem I like: it is a very excellent fantasy, though not so deep as the Georgia portrait by any means. The other poem strikes my limitation: I don't understand it. Hence I don't like it. I think you should decide about Prayer ... it certainly is far more deserving than the other poems. It is tragic by the way that your own conflict anent MW should have spoiled her poem.

Go through the book quietly, and maturely, and
dont rush. There is plenty of time, I think.
If the compositors have it by April, I should
imagine, they cannot kick. But I'll get an
exact date from Liveright. My impression is that
he would have it set up much before May even
if it was earlier in the Office. So make the
book whole and tight ... and number the pages
and shoot back to me, for my Foreword (which
I prefer to the term Introduction).

How happy I am that you approve of Holiday!

(over)

love

We do

BROTHER

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

Herewith Part IV and Last .. I hope the parcelled way I've sent you the book has not altogether spoiled your pleasure of it. If you have any general remarks of criticisms, I'll be grateful for them, as pretty soon I'll be shipping the thing to Liveright.

I have a feeling BROOM is busting up. Loeb is an absolute incompetent, and calmly went back to Germany leaving everything in Lola's hands .. Lola has been trying to resign for a month or two, but Loeb just dumps things onto her and plays on her good nature, knowing she is not likely to leave the thing in the lurch. I am dubious of letting Broom have HOLIDAY for I have my doubts of being paid. Josephson has more or less succeeded in ruining the book at any rate.
DIAL publishes novel after novel by Germans 60 years old, who had reputations before we were born .. and there you are. A distressing situation. If you give Broom KABNIS insist on immediate payment .. say you're broke, starving, anything. Loeb hasn't paid Loba her miserable pittance of a salary for six months. Nauseating. The Cuggenheims were appealed to (his mother is of that leprous group who between them own probably close to $200,000,000 .. and they refused to give a cent! O what a bog is human nature...... When I see the bungle of our magazines I am strongly tempted to start one again myself.

The Reading was a failure..... Poor crowd. The only one of the five talks that has drawn a decent audience was Amy Lowell's, she drew Fifth Avenue, some how. Kreymborg is depressed, but the truth is (if he really is responsible for the management, that it is his fault, as he has had no idea of how to launch these recitals. Bad publicity .. some more bungling. With the result, that we all had to get up, week after week, and recite to empty seats. I am dubious of your being asked to NY since the things have not gone better.

I shall get to CANE now at once. I haven't had a chance yet to look over the new BOX SEAT.

love, brother, to you

Brother

JEAN TOBSCHEW COLLECTION

I was going to work tonight, but I'm weary, and besides happy... your letter's done that: so I'll chat with you a bit, and then turn in. What a wondrous thing is sleep: the deepest of all voluptuous experiences, surely. If it were systematically cabined and denied like Love, what a Literature it would inspire.

When your letter came, relative to what Sherwood Anderson had written you, I was too busy to answer it. But I want to say now: that the day you write as a negro, or as an American, or as anything but a human part of *life* your work will lose a dimension. Now typical that is of most recognition: that effort immediately to limit you, to put you in a cubbyhole and stick a label underneath. I intend, possibly above all else, in my introduction to CANE to point out that the important thing which has at length finally released you to the creating of literature is that you do not write as a Negro... that you take your race or your races naturally, as a white man takes his. The few talented writers among the negroes have been ruined because they could not forget... the world would not let them... that they were negroes. For an analagous reason, when the Jews were first liberated from ghettos, they produced second rate books and music and pictures: they were too conscious of the limiting detail of their race and art, and became the Norm of their creations, instead of Life itself. Precisely, because you have been able to go South as a human being, among negroes as one of them because you are a human being first your work is released into real creation. And the miracle that came to me at last last Fall with you, after several years of loving and understanding the South, was that I also was able to get to the deep reality in which color and race disappeared as entities: and took their place as mere surfaces. I am gratified that you reacted to S A's response, flattering as it doubtless was, in the way you have. You are a strong deep man, my brother: and I not only love you: I am proud of you.

--I was moved to send you a wire to give you an idea of the HURRAH your letter, (and the relief, it) gave me. I really always believed deep down I suppose that my intense feeling of at-homeness with my subject and of ripeness could not be illusion. (The idea of HOLIDAY you know came to me when I first encountered the negro in Richmond and matured in Alabama where the story has its place)

I shall send you the other parts in quick order. You can help me INESTIMABLY Jean, if you will go through the whole thing carefully -- take what time you need for that, and mark all the "stiffnesses" and give me your suggestions of improvements. And all other points. Of course, you have not yet read the crucial scene between John and Virginia --- but I think it is RIGHT. Your little variora (as of Mrs Cloud's saying how she fears) are so excellent and so superior to my passages which they correct, that I greedily ask for all that come to you.

And how grateful I am!

Yours

Your news about Mae hurts my heart. Oh how sad, how sad! How I would like to be able to touch that girl, just simply, just as a human being... giving her the warm of my touch. But how can I? What for that matter can I say to her in a letter? What a hunger this stiflement gives me! Why cannot I have a long walk somewhere in a wood with Mae, quite simply, and make her know that I feel very close to her? O these damnable conventions and taboos and customs -- how important they make the Lies, how effectively they kill the Truth!

Give my greetings to Ken and XEXX to your Grandma XEX my love.

I am writing to you, my love.

No. 869

Nai

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

BROTHER:

Have read Box Seat. Living stuff .. but I think your old form of it,
with Dan's energy sloughing off in the quarrel with the neighbor
and then his disappearing through the alley forgetting all about the man
he was to fight is better. I think there is too great a formlessness in
Dan's suddenly getting up with his yell. JESUS WAS ONE A LEPER:

Think it over, and when you get proof, you can do what you think best.

My next job, is the foreword.

Eager to have your statement on Holiday. How would you place it with
Rahab and City Bloc,?

lots of love, old soldier.

AVENIDA DE PIY MARGALL, 12

MADRID

TELEFONS 24-78-M Y 11-41-M

APARTADO 12193

Feb. 18, 1924.

Address:c/o Morgan, Harjes Co

Place Vendome
Paris, France

Dear Jean:

I wish you would write to me, and tell me
why you left New York the way you did, and why you
did not answer the letter which I wrote you on
my departure: and tell me what you have been do-
ing and what is going on in your soul, your mind,
your life.

I have been away nearly four months. I
have thought much of you, and waited patiently for
a letter. I have had no word. Did you possibly
write, and was your letter lost? I know that such
things happen. I know nothing in the way of news
of you save an occasional mention by Gorham who
says he sees you little, by hart who says likewise
and that you are meditating much, and by Margaret
who mentioned your presence at a party of Paul's &
one evening at MacDougal Street to dinner. That is
the exact sum of my knowledge, of you. Do you think
that is just?

WALDO FRANK
DARIEN CONN

Dear Jean:

Voila. I hope this is not too much less
than more, what you want.

How goes it? I shall be back in America in
August. And before as well as after, always most
eager to hear from you.

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION

Paris, May 30, 1924

Dear Jean:

A request to define an english abstract now in common use throws into
glaring light the chaos and impotence of our western thought. Experience
-- as we cross the artificially lit threshold of this cant sound, we find
ourselves in the darkness of aworld which has slighted reality for facts.
I cannot give myself now to the task of a conclusion which would satisfy
me, or you. That would entail too thorough groundwork. But if an impress
ion will suffice, I shall say this:

Experience to me is a fusion of elemental and essential knowledge, expressed in human terms, or possessed in a symbol. The base of this knowledge man has at birth. And from that base, he must proceed to build a conceptual structure in the form of personal life, which shall be the equivalent of the initial base. Thus, the true experience is but a **body** of birth. To the building of this symbol, man deploys all manner of material and tools: events of mind and body, reflections, reactions, actions, emotions, analyses, thoughts. To these various elements, as they occur to him, he is wont to give the name experience: for he is too often unaware that he is inexorably dedicated to the task of unifying all of them with and into the personal body. Indeed, were it not for this unifying process, he would be unable to retain, to gauge, or to assimilate the variety of what he calls his "experiences." The one impossibility for the human mind is incoherence, since mind is above all an active agent of coherence. The word experience should be confined to the form of that **thatxtakeanxthe** fusion of the initial reality of a man's life with the unitary synthesis of what he knows his life to be.

*Every instant and in every act,*

JEAN TOOMER COLLECTION Wal de Han