To Georges de Lauris
My dear Georges,
When I spoke the other day of Moses on the threshold of the Promised Land and yet unable to enter it, I didn’t know how apt it was. Twice I have been to Paris and the state of my asthma has suddenly worsened as a result of the difference in [...]

To Sándor Ferenczi
Dear friend,
It is remarkable how much better you can present yourself in writing than in speech. Of course, I knew very much or most of what you are writing about and now need to give you only a few clarifications pertaining to it. Why didn’t I scold you and in so doing open [...]

A man has committed suicide in St. Paul’s which I allow is inexcusably sloppy of him but it has caused a delicious fuss and fluster among the shovel hats. The Cathedral will have to be re-consecrated, they fear, but perhaps they may be able with their highly developed muscles of evasion to wash out the [...]

To Frank Shay
Dear Frank:
I was damn glad to get your letter. And encouraged to learn from the enclosed clipping that I’m a Mexican. Because I’m lighting out for a trip through Spain in a few days and maybe my native tongue will return from that hidden past. Which would be a help! But I’m afraid [...]

On the steamer between Flushing and Queensborough
This is what took place yesterday.
Together with Kann I left The Hague in the morning for Amsterdam, where I had asked my letters to be forwarded. I did not expect, or only vaguely, that Eulenburg would reply.
At the Doelen Hotel I was told that a gentleman had called to [...]

3 AM
After one’s heart gives a jump comes a feeling of great sadness! A sound of galloping and up comes a Scout on a horse: Colonel Bassini! Colonel Cossovich! Then trumpets blow. How raucous is the note from the picket guard and how ill-omened! But the reveillé that trills forth like a mountain lark from [...]

To Ludwig Lewisohn[1]
Dear Ludwig Lewisohn:
Your book[2] has arrived, has occupied me a good deal, and I would have written to you sooner were it not that my morbidly swollen correspondence, the product of these times, some days keeps me from my own writing. Today I received the news—or rather the confirmation of a report I [...]

Thoughts, then formed and written.
There are certain miserable People to bee executed on the morrow, for horrible Crimes by them committed; A Man, for a Rape; and Two Negroes, for Burning of Houses, and Persons in them.[1]
What use am I to make of this?
I. Lett mee, with deep Humiliation reflect on the Vileness of my [...]

To Louise Colet
[Croisset, Monday morning]
… As for Madame Foucaud, she is indeed the one I knew. Is your cousin sufficiently reliable to be entrusted with a letter, can I be sure he will deliver it? For I feel like writing to Madame Foucaud. She is an old acquaintance; don’t be jealous of her. You shall [...]

Darling Laura,
Time seems to stand still here. I believe that the war would have been over sooner if I had become assistant registrar of a hospital. I find nothing to do between meals & there is nothing to tell you. Our wireless operator has taken to drink with a frenzied zeal which is disconcerting in [...]

Everyone is more and more concerned with the departure for Moscow, although nothing has yet been decided. And yet things are being moved . . . ministerial archives, valuable furniture, the collections of the Grand Duke Nicholas Michael and the Prince of Oldenburg, and the pictures and statues from the Hermitage. It is a strange [...]

Hôtel Majestic, 2, Rue de Condé, Bordeaux
Dear Larry and Nancy—
I left Paris a few days ago to take a vacation after finishing Capricorn and having my teeth fixed. Found the country too dull and came on here just as things began to look really bad. Before leaving Paris I packed all my belongings carefully. Gave [...]

A letter to Maxwell Perkins.
Hotel Tiberio
Capri
Dear Max:
As the day approaches, my nervousness increases. Tomorrow is the 1st and your wire says the 10th. I’ll be here until the 25th, probably later, so if the book prospers I’ll expect some sort of cable before I leave for Paris. All letters that you write after the 15th [...]

A letter to Anthony Powell.
Dear Mr. Powell,
This is a very belated note of thanks for a most enjoyable luncheon the other week, and to say what a great pleasure it was for us to meet you.
I was sorry I didn’t get round to telling you what I had determined I would tell you: that I [...]

A letter to Franz Overbeck.
My dear friend:
I feel as if you had not written to me for a long time. But perhaps I am wrong; the days are so long I do not know any more what to do with a day—I have no “interests” at all. Deep down, a motionless black melancholy. And fatigue. [...]

A letter to George Bernard Shaw.
95 Irving St.
Cambridge, Mass.
Dear Mr. Shaw,
I am sending you a new book from which I have drawn much instruction – Jane Addams’s volume: “New Ideal of Peace.” It deals mostly with our problems of immigration. You will notice the extraordinary absence of rancor in her temper, and the big holes [...]

A letter to Henry Adams.
My dear Henry
I have your melancholy outpourings of the 7th, & I know not how to acknowledge it than by the full recognition of its unmitigated blackness. Of course we are lone survivors, of course the past that was our lives is at the bottom of an abyss – if the [...]

A letter to Catherine Eliot Norton.
My dear Mrs Norton,
Last evening I had the extreme satisfaction of receiving your kind letter; —four days after its date; and I beg you not for one moment to wrap yourself in the illusion that any letters you receive can give you half the pleasure, that those you write give [...]

reichenbach’s lecture at the university of california on determinism. our system of causes is limited by a kind of reproducibility which einstein once expressed as follows: he described very irregular and rhythmically unstable movements with his finger and said, for instance if the stars moved like that, there would be no astronomy. (although they would [...]

A letter to Gilbert Murray.
Dear Murray
Certain wars and rumors of wars at the Stage Society move me to warn you to waterproof yourself against all tales of intrigue & villainy which may reach you. The great object of the contending forces is to get an author as King’s Evidence: the wise author preserves a bland [...]

Edward Taylor came last night & gave us in the old church a Lecture on Temperance. A wonderful man; I had almost said, a perfect orator. The utter want & loss of all method, the ridicule of all method, the bright chaos come again of his bewildering oratory, certainly bereaves it of power but what [...]

From a letter to R. H. Brabant
Calne, Monday Morning
I missed the opportunity of sending the parcel on Saturday, by an Hour: and without affectation I did not think the contents of the inclosed Letter justified the expence of postage.—If you should have time to look over Dr Williams’ larger work, in addition to what I [...]

A letter to Susan Gilbert (Dickinson).
Dear Susie—
I’m so amused at my own ubiquity that I hardly know what to say, or how to relate the story of the wonderful correspondent. First, I arrive from Amherst, then comes a ponderous tome from the learned Halls of Cambridge, and again by strange metamorphosis I’m just from Michigan, [...]

A letter to Alexei Suvorin.
. . . What do you know? I am writing a novel! I am keeping at it, but can’t see the end in sight. I have begun doing it, i.e., the novel, all over again, revising and abridging considerably what had already been written. I have already clearly sketched in nine [...]

A letter to Thomas Moore.
I rejoice in your promotion as Chairman and Charitable Steward, etc., etc. These be dignities which await only the virtuous. But then, recollect you are six and thirty, (I speak this enviously—not of your age, but the “honour—love—obedience—troops of friends,” which accompany it,) and I have eight years good to run [...]

A letter to Katherine Anne Porter.
Dear K. A. P.: If you have occasion to write to John Bishop, please tell him this: Auden referred to him as one of the two really good critics of poetry in America. There’s so much malice and back-biting going on that I like, sometimes, to pass on praise if [...]

A letter to Ludwig Martin Kahle.
Mr. Dean,
I am pleased to inform the public that you have written a little book against me. You have honored me greatly. On page 17, you reject the proof of the existence of God based on final causes. If you had reasoned the same way in Rome, the Jacobin reverend [...]

A letter to T. S. Eliot.
Dear Tom:
I want to apologize for plaguing you with so many telephone calls last November and December. When the “enthusiasm” is coming on me it is accompanied by a feverish reaching to my friends. After it’s over I wince and wither. Fragments of the true man, such as he is, [...]

Yesterday I wrote the third of my five pieces. Gretle liked it—but not unreservedly.
This evening: alone with Dr. Spitzer. He’d come to rehearse my songs. He sings them all pretty indifferently and pulls funny faces all the while. At one point, I looked at him and almost laughed out loud. He laughed too, but didn’t [...]

A letter to Carl Van Vechten.
Meschrabpom Film
Moscow, USSR
Dear Carlo, I am sending off to Blanche today a new manuscript of poems called GOOD MORNING REVOLUTION containing the best of the proletarian poems I’ve been doing the last two years. I hope they’re good poems. I’ve had expert criticism on them over here, and have selected [...]

Tried to find A. Consul, Page, & Jarves. Failed in all. – Went to Baths of Caracalla. – Wonderful. Massive. Ruins form, as it were, natural bridges of thousands of arches. There are glades, & thickets among the ruins–high up. – Thought of Shelley. Truly, he got his inspiration here. Corresponds with his drama & [...]

A memo to E. B. White.
Mr. White:
I found your note about the BIDE-A-WEE HOME FOR VERBS idea two minutes after you left my office the other day, as expected. Hence I am reminded that you spoke of putting a notice on the bulletin board calling for nauseating verbs. I favor your doing this, and I [...]

A letter to Lotte Lenya.
My dear Linerl,
I’m glad I was able to reach you by phone. I’ve had some stormy days. Thursday, quite by accident, I ran into a friend from Paris (Jean-Michel Frank, a friend of the Noailles’). In the afternoon he called me and told me that Madame Schiaparelli—the owner of the biggest [...]

To Coby’s. Alec Brook, Peggy Bacon, Niles Spencer and Betty Spencer were there—all slightly lit and anxious to tell dirty stories but no one could remember any. “The best one,” stuttered Niles, “is the one—well, I’d better not tell it—it’s pretty bad—ladies would get insulted—anyway there’s a lot of French in it and so on—I [...]