{"id":168341,"date":"2024-08-21T12:39:29","date_gmt":"2024-08-21T16:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=168341"},"modified":"2024-08-28T10:33:39","modified_gmt":"2024-08-28T14:33:39","slug":"hearing-from-helen-vendler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/08\/21\/hearing-from-helen-vendler\/","title":{"rendered":"Hearing from Helen Vendler"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Helen Vendler in her home in Cambridge. Photograph by Stephanie Mitchell.<\/p><\/div>\n

Earlier this year, the visionary poetry critic<\/a> Helen Vendler died at the age of ninety. After her death, the writer and psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas<\/em>\u2014<\/b>author of<\/em> \u00a0The Shadow of the Object, Cracking Up, and <\/em>Meaning and Melancholia, among many others<\/em>\u2014<\/b>collected\u00a0a correspondence between himself and Vendler that unfolded over email during the last two years of her life, which began as Vendler was clearing out her office at Harvard in 2022. These emails, which have been selected and edited by the <\/em>Review (with spelling and punctuation left unchanged), touch on the relationship between psychoanalysis and poetry; the experience of aging in all its forms; and the growth of a friendship, and understanding, between Bollas and Vendler.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

January 22, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Christopher Bollas,<\/p>\n

A friend of a friend quoted, in an email, your generous notion that what I do as a critic of poetry has a resemblance to the work of analysis. I take that as an amazing compliment.\u00a0I don\u2019t know where you said that, but I did see that one of the steps in your career was a PhD in English at an exciting time at the U. of Buffalo, and that you\u2019ve written a series of books with intriguing titles, which (\u201cnow that I am old and ill\u201d\u2014Yeats) I may not get to immediately, but hope to see a couple of them once I finish the interminable task of clearing my office (now that we once again have access after the Covid ban).<\/p>\n

Yours truly,
\nHelen Vendler<\/p>\n


\nJanuary 28, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Helen Vendler,<\/p>\n

Well, I guess if you live long enough, along with the ordinary suffering (and the somewhat dispiriting knowledge\u2014and now sense\u2014of the ending), one may be visited by something remarkable, enlivening, and utterly unpredictable.<\/p>\n

So when I saw your name on an e-mail yesterday, it was simply \u2026 well, I do not have words.<\/p>\n

Except. Thank you. It is so kind and generous of you to write.<\/p>\n

Your work has inspired me for so many decades and I have in most of my books used your revolutionary intelligence.<\/p>\n

In my view, you understand unconscious thinking better than anyone.\u00a0And I say so.<\/p>\n

I gather you are clearing out your library (as am I) so I could send you a few of my books but you will not have room and frankly I am not a writer.\u00a0That I have written a few books does not make me one and so I can spare you that.<\/p>\n

But this last week when listening to a father talking about his son\u2014they were at an impasse\u2014I asked: \u201cHave you read Sandburg\u2019s Chicago Poems<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n

I was as surprised by what I said as I suppose was he as I never recommend anything to analysands.<\/p>\n

But he ordered it, he read it out loud to his adolescent, who grabbed it and took it to his room.<\/p>\n

Does life get better than this?<\/p>\n

With appreciation,
\nChristopher Bollas<\/p>\n


\nJanuary 28, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n

The mot juste\u2014\u201cdispiriting\u201d: it rang so true.<\/p>\n

Congratulations on the Sandburg insight. Yes, such happy moments suffuse the day they occur\u2014and years afterward. And for the lucky recipient they can be life-changing.<\/p>\n

I would take the gift of a book very kindly. You choose.<\/p>\n

I attach a new essay on a little-known poem by Hopkins that wrestles with \u201cthe selfless self of self\u201d\u2014of interest to you, perhaps as to me\u2014a phrase that had long troubled me.<\/p>\n

Yours,
\nHelen<\/p>\n

P.S. No need to reply; but your offer of a book is delightful. You ARE a writer: nobody but an instinctive writer would have written so many serious books!<\/p>\n


\nJanuary 28, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Helen,<\/p>\n

Would you be so kind as to send me a postal address so can send the book?<\/p>\n

Best,
\nChristopher<\/p>\n

P.S. Your wonderful essay, The Selfless Self of Self<\/a>,\u00a0brought back to mind the puzzle that certain essential words\u2014like \u201cself\u201d or \u201cjouissance\u201d or \u201camae\u201d\u2014are deeply known by those speaking their language but no one can define them.\u00a0 Which I think is rather the point. My French friends insist that \u201cself\u201d cannot be translated into French and when I try to explain it, of course, I am in hot water. But these essential terms fascinate me because I think the word is almost the \u201cthing\u201d; it conveys an internal experience of knowledge that cannot be described.<\/p>\n


\nJanuary 28, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n

Helen Vendler<\/p>\n

58 Trowbridge St.<\/p>\n

Cambridge, MA 02138<\/p>\n

Thank you. Will I learn about “unconscious thinking?” I hope so.\u00a0Helen<\/p>\n


\nIn a Facebook status, Vendler writes that she has Covid.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

February 9, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Helen,<\/p>\n

I am so sorry to hear you have covid and only hope it is the more moderate kind.<\/p>\n

I wanted you to see a few paragraphs about your work in a manuscript that has been on my shelf for many years. (It can take ten years for me to finish a 50k manuscript.)<\/p>\n

So, you will see yourself in a \u201cwork-in-progress\u201d because you have asked how I could possibly use your work in the realm of psychoanalysis. You know more about unconscious thinking than anyone I know although I gather this is unconscious knowledge. All the better!<\/p>\n

And odd fact of my unconscious. I have (in memory) merged Wyatt and Marvell. I connected \u201cTime’s wing\u00e8d chariot hurrying near\u201d with \u201cThey flee from me that sometime did me seek.\u201d For at least a decade I thought this was Marvell.<\/p>\n

I think I can see the connecting threads.<\/p>\n

Christopher<\/p>\n


\nFebruary 12, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m still waiting to read further in your book. But I see that for me you illuminate the links between achieved work by an artist and a successful preceding unconscious assemblage and consolidated genre of unconscious thought, and that that is why \u201cinspiration\u201d does not seem self-generated by the artist. That style is in fact the materialization on the page of a hidden (to the artist) internal web of unconscious thinking that has required time to form itself is I\u2019m sure true, and that this revelation, by disposing of the idea of external inspiration, deeply depressed Hopkins is what I was groping after in the close of my piece on Hopkins.<\/p>\n

You must know Keats\u2019s ode on indolence\u2014the best picture of \u201cwise passiveness\u201d that I know. His successive \u201cvisions\u201d of what he imagined his unconscious was seeing and assembling could be much clarified if you took them on. I\u2019m not at all sure I read them securely in my Keats book. Thanks so much for this!<\/p>\n

H.<\/p>\n


\nApril 4, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Helen,<\/p>\n

I do hope you are well.<\/p>\n

I have been \u201cenlisted\u201d to speak with officials in European governments about Ukraine and Putin.\u00a0The conversations and participants are all confidential but one of the most disturbing features of what is taking place is the utter lack of understanding of human psychology. These are intelligent people stuck in an adolescent frame of mind and they have no clue this is the case.<\/p>\n

Am trying to finish up a book but hard to find the spirit.<\/p>\n

Best,
\nChristopher<\/p>\n


\nApril 4, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n

Deep in your gripping Oedipus.<\/em> Still my livre de chevet, learning so much seeing things from your angle!\u00a0Delay from health issues, but ongoing immersion in your pages.<\/p>\n

I bet the \u201clack of understanding\u201d in the officials is easily matched by higher-ups everywhere. It helps to be a mother, even better to be a single mother with no money for babysitting. Even better to be one who swore she would reject every aspect of her parents\u2019 idea of child-raising. Even so, I had no idea how to teach young people when I started out. \u201cFull-grown lambs\u201d says Keats in \u201cTo Autumn\u201d; the oddity of that phrase (\u201cWhy not say \u2018sheep?\u2019\u201d) taught me that my students were \u201cfull-grown babies,\u201d and I understood them much better.<\/p>\n

With Rene\u2019s thanks for the Bollas Reader\u2014an excellent introduction to your originality\u2014<\/p>\n

Yours,
\nHelen<\/p>\n


\nApril 4, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n

For \u201cRene\u201d read \u201crenewed.” Predictive spelling a devil\u2019s gift. H.<\/p>\n


\nMay 9, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Helen,<\/p>\n

Have enjoyed your lectures on You Tube.<\/p>\n

Best,
\nChristopher<\/p>\n


\nMay 9, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Christopher,<\/p>\n

I\u00a0am sorry to have been delayed\u00a0in writing more about the joyous experience of reading you. I\u2019ve been sadly occupied arranging for hospice in home for my closest friend, whose health proxy I am. That was accomplished last Sunday, and I am relieved that it has been done. I think the end will come soon, so I grasp at this free day to write my delayed thanks.<\/p>\n

It was the eeriest thing, reading your essay called “Psychoanalysis and Creativity,” where I saw the parallels between your remarks as a listener and my experience as a reader (and necessarily a listener too). The “gravitas” that brings the separate particles of experience into that grouping that you call “psychic genera” and from which you can glean, after hours of listening (more for that than for content as such), a sense of the map of the intermixed feelings and thinking processes of the analysand, also works exactly for the generation of style in poetry (which people generally don’t read for, being more interested in semantic content, philosophical implications, historical relevance, etc.).<\/p>\n

It made me genuinely happy to see the parallels in lifting what may seem (but is not) accidental into visibility. The unknown known is a wonderful way of putting it. I think that the poets may be able to know more of the unknown known than the analysand, since the composition of poetry is a way to elicit it in symbolic form. And your explanation of the multiplicity of things to be inferred from words, gestures, emotions\u2014and the tendency of those things to arrange themselves like iron filings to a magnet (as Donne says\u2014\u201cAnd Thou like adamant draw my iron heart”\u2014) has its strict analogue in the way in which, after one immerses oneself (ideally) in everything an author wrote, those magnetic forms arise in my mind as “explanations” of stylistic gestures in a poem. One can’t command them; they have to rise as the result of a long process.<\/p>\n

The frustration of not being able to understand something by will alone makes me remember a summer in which I was working very hard to understand Stevens’s long poems. I would teach summer school all morning, return and be with my son from noon till 7 (when he would fall asleep), and then going to my library office after the arrival of the babysitter, and work till late. It was a taxing schedule, but usually I could make progress. One night I was so despairing of figuring out 3 lines in Stevens’s last long poem that I burst into tears; then I suddenly heard a young voice behind me at my open office door in the deserted Smith library saying “Oh Mrs. Vendler, I’m just taking my sister\u2014” and then broke off in an apology, seeing the tears running down my cheeks.\u00a0 I imagined she thought she was interrupting some tragic experience, and I didn’t want her to think that, so I said unthinkingly, “I’m all right, I was upset because I just couldn’t understand a passage in Wallace Stevens.” She probably thought anyone who wept for that reason was very peculiar. But in reading your passages in various essays where you say, “I was pondering X” or “I was piecing together,” or some other phrase intimating how much thinking you have to do to glean the visible off the impalpable in the analytic process, I felt that your thinking resembles mine\u2014though for different reasons and for different results. And the “evidence” is often so “accidental”:\u00a0 I remember thinking about how Stevens used the definite and indefinite articles, and being frustrated because they were not included in the (predigital) Concordance.<\/p>\n

I was struck by your comments on the artificial creations (adobe architecture, “Cape Cod”) of places in Orange County towns, as the opposites of architecture that has grown out of forms within temporally growing mentalities. My son has a house in Laguna Beach, and I’ve spent enough time there to know exactly those “theme park” constructions, as well as those like our “Sturbridge Village” in Mass., replicating a pioneer town with docents in historical costume. It’s a repellent sight if one has read any writings of the era. And, as you say, it’s all “fake”\u2014not least because they have no Cotton Mather among the historical figures.<\/p>\n

Of course, your reflections on everything from stand-up comics to serial killers are fascinating. Who hasn’t pursued comparable characterizations of comic or sadistic apparitions in culture? Your anecdotes (Ken Kesey and the Panthers) offer a moment of relief in the argument of a serious article, and your personal anecdotes are equally attractive on a written page. I often wish that the criticism of poetry offered that sort of relief to the reader, but I can’t manage it, not wishing to be intruding on Keats or Shakespeare. You’re working with human beings in actual life\u2014so different from working with etymological and semantic and syntactic phenomena\u2014but I wish I had your sense of relish of the human comedy (and tragedy). As you say, “A sense of humor … captures the intersection of two realities: the intentional and the unintentional\u2014 … breaking down one’s receptive equanimity upon encountering the ponderous”\u2014and literary criticism is always leaning, if only slightly, in the directions\u00a0of the ponderous. I love creative writers far more than scholars because of their disruption of the expected:\u00a0I wish I had their wit. The “ironic fate” of any analytic session in its unwilled disruption of itself is a defense of listening with the third ear, which perceives that fate.<\/p>\n

You have such interesting topics, but among them, the ways in which experience allows us\u2014or drives us\u2014to the invention of a “personal idiom” is particularly revealing. To think of selfhood as a “personal idiom”\u00a0<\/em>is very helpful to me, carrying, as it does, both verbal and visual implications.\u00a0And your transformation of Freud’s “jokes” into excellent anecdotes (“rat” and “erratic” is my favorite) also enlivens your pages along literary lines. It’s always possible for a literary critic to miss such verbal play, and I’ve probably missed some in Stevens, and certainly in Shakespeare, who can’t help how much he loves them.<\/p>\n

Well, enough. I’ll return to your articles; they even make me wish I had been in analysis. I didn’t understand it enough when I had friends in graduate school who were transfixed by it. But I did\u2014twice\u2014after bafflement, consult a therapist who clarified things from my past I thought I understood, but didn’t. I was being taught a new way of thinking, just by the intellectual reproof I took from her superior interpretation of the phenomena that had baffled me. She’s dead now, but I often think of the months I was lucky enough to have her in my life.<\/p>\n

I treasure your “Reader.”<\/p>\n

Thank you.<\/p>\n

Yours delightedly,
\nHelen<\/p>\n

Note from CB: Vendler likely<\/em>\u00a0meant the “unthought known,” a concept of mine, but unconsciously inserts her own interesting wording of the idea.<\/em><\/p>\n


\nMay 19, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Helen,<\/p>\n

I hope this finds you well.<\/p>\n

Here is a bit from a rough draft of the introduction to my notebooks (In the Stream of Consciousness) which will be published in 2024.<\/p>\n

Best,
\nChristopher<\/p>\n

“Shuffling off to Buffalo: English Literature and Psychotherapy Training\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1969 I drove east to the University of Buffalo where I was to do a PhD in English literature. At the time it was the most radical and creative English department in the country as Nelson Rockefeller\u2014who called it the “university of the twenty-first century”\u2014put a fortune into gathering a remarkable faculty. Many of the poets and writers from the Black Mountain School (which had closed) found their way to Buffalo, especially the doyen of that group, Charles Olson; as well as Robert Creely and Gregory Corso. They joined other poets and novelists\u2014Robert Hass, Carl Dennis, and John Barth\u2014and it was Hass who would change my way of thinking. In a seminar on Wordsworth’s “Prelude,” Hass and other faculty attending taught us how a poem thinks, an act of sustained immersion that of course demands that one suspend consciousness to simply allow one’s unconscious thinking to receive the logic of the poetic text.<\/p>\n

Most great poems at first read elude consciousness. They are unconscious presentations and require hearing or reading again and again before one’s consciousness begins to gather\u2014much less to consider and organize\u2014some\u00a0<\/em>of that unconscious thinking.\u00a0The subtitle of The Prelude<\/em> is “Growth of a Poet’s Mind” and I think this work\u2014along with Freud’s\u00a0Interpretation of Dreams<\/em>\u2014became the background for my own views of unconscious thinking and free association.<\/p>\n

To encounter any complex poem is remarkably similar to listening to any complex movement of patient association. The logic of a poem moves at times in cryptic condensations that are similar to free associative speech. The finest teacher of psychoanalytic thinking, in my view, is Helen Vendler. Read any of her books critically examining a poet and his or her work, and you find an evolution of Freudian method that is stunning. Her analysis of syntax opens up a perspective that allows us to see how and in what ways character is syntactical.<\/p>\n

Buffalo had a strong contingent of French writers and philosophers such as Rene Girard, whose lectures on the “enemy twin” were complex musings on the psychic reality of the double: a forerunner of my own thinking on the borderline personality. Psychoanalysts such as Guy Rosolato (and others) would visit for some weeks. Rosolato’s detailed lecture on the movement of the phonemic\u2014words echoing one another\u2014was illuminating.<\/p>\n

Our resident genius was Michel Foucault. His English was not great, and as my French was touristic I found his lectures hard to comprehend. But somewhere in my unconscious\u2014my father was French\u2014I seemed\u00a0<\/em>to understand him.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

May 19, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Christopher,<\/p>\n

A fascinating passage. Thanks for the kind nod to me.\u00a0I look forward very much to the book. (A couple of typos here in proper names: \u201cCreeley\u201d and an acute accent on final e in Rene.)<\/p>\n

You hope your note finds me well. Yes and no: I have some of the disabilities of being 90, and have consequently abandoned Cambridge for Laguna Niguel, CA, to live independently near my son and his family, who live in Laguna Beach. I think you\u2019re somewhere nearby, if I recall correctly.<\/p>\n

Yours,
\nHelen<\/p>\n


\nMay 20, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Helen,<\/p>\n

Very kind of you to reply and thanks for the heads up about the typos.<\/p>\n

I hope your move to Laguna Niguel is proving to be a good one.\u00a0We moved from Santa Barbara to Venice a year ago in order to be near our son (he is a mile away or so) and we did that in the nick of time.\u00a0I have had \u201cordinary\u201d health issues for a near 80 year old but I hate regimented exercise (why count the blooming number of steps one takes?) and my frame of mind has let this old body down.\u00a0But I am now exercising and improving and there is hope.\u00a0I have declined spine surgery (severe stenosis) but I found a neurosurgeon and a neurologist who both agreed it was too risky. I made it clear I was not desperately afraid of death (loss of consciousness?) but I did fear dying. As soon as we made the decision I felt much better. Enjoying acupuncture and reflexology.<\/p>\n

And a question that came to mind about six months ago. I asked myself \u201cwhat \u2018works\u2019 of literature have changed the way you see the world?\u201d Four came to mind right away: the Epic of Gilgamesh<\/em>, Oedipus<\/em>, Hamlet<\/em>, Moby-Dick.\u00a0<\/em>I was surprised by the selection but it was fun to think about why these works and not others.<\/p>\n

Life is endlessly interesting.<\/p>\n

It would be wonderful to meet you one of these days. It is easy enough for us to visit you in Laguna or Laguna Niguel.<\/p>\n

Best,
\nChristopher<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

August 7, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Christopher,<\/p>\n

Forgive my belated reply to your last e-mail. I won’t even try to describe my excuses, both professional\u00a0and personal.\u00a0Almost every one of Hopkins’s letters begins with excuses, the basic one always being that the day’s demands filled up the day, which is pretty much true here, too.<\/p>\n

I’d be delighted to have you visit, just to set eyes on you and hear your voice.\u00a0I’m too infirm to make tea, and I live alone, so you’ll understand if I offer you and your wife cold drinks instead! Would you like to come on a weekend, when the traffic is not so fiendish?<\/p>\n

I’m housebound, pretty much, so I leave it up to you to choose a date to visit. I no longer drive, and must use a walker, but also I have the fatigue of being 90, which is very strange: you just crash. I’ll attach a picture taken on my 90th birthday in my son’s house, just so you’ll recognize me. And what is your wife\u2019s name?<\/p>\n

Yours,
\nHelen<\/p>\n


\nAugust 8, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Helen,<\/p>\n

It is wonderful to hear from you and so kind of you to invite us for a visit.<\/p>\n

We would love to come.<\/p>\n

We will actually be in Laguna next week and could come by on Wednesday the 16th or Thursday the 17th if that works.<\/p>\n

If not, then in October?<\/p>\n

We go to our farmstead on the prairie (North Dakota) for September.<\/p>\n

And 1 to 3 is perfect.\u00a0You will see that I too hobble about (use a walker) and am in a new infantile stage which I try to make interesting.\u00a0Certainly it is a curious time in the so-called \u201clife span.\u201d<\/p>\n

When we do come to visit I will text you if need be.\u00a0But I am rarely late.<\/p>\n

You sure look a heck of a lot younger than 90 and it is good to see you!<\/p>\n

My wife is Suzanne: English, architect.<\/p>\n

Best,
\nChristopher<\/p>\n


\nAugust 15, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Helen,<\/p>\n

I am so sorry to say that I will not be able to see you tomorrow. I have been having vertigo for a few weeks now and my balance is so precarious that the decision was made on doctors\u2019 advice that I stay put and just wait for \u2026 whatever.<\/p>\n

I know you have health issues and reckon, like me, that you take it on the chin and just push on as best you can.<\/p>\n

I hope you are able to visit the seashore, or the cliffs of Dana Point where one can gain a fine view.<\/p>\n

My very best wishes,
\nChristopher<\/p>\n


\nAugust 15, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m so sorry; vertigo is awful (as I know from a friend with Meni\u00e8re’s disease).\u00a0Of course I’m disappointed not to meet you tom’w, but when it’s possible, let me know.\u00a0I hope your balance will return!\u00a0 There’s nothing worse than a bad fall; mine gave me a subdural hematoma.<\/p>\n

My best wishes for your recovery, in return.<\/p>\n

Helen<\/p>\n


\nAugust 18, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Helen,<\/p>\n

I am so sorry that I could not come to meet you.<\/p>\n

I lost proprioception about 2 years ago and it has been an interesting struggle to find some way to reverse this. (I refuse to accept that this is \u201cit\u201d and I should just adapt).<\/p>\n

I write now, however, to give some advice about the \u201churricane\u201d meant to descend.\u00a0It is\u00a0not true<\/em>\u00a0that we have not had the likes of this before: we have. (Laguna was flooded in the 1990s with town flooded all way up the canyon, etc.)<\/p>\n

Perhaps you have been told what is important for you to have near you.<\/p>\n

Please get bottled water or bottle what you have now as your water supply may be contaminated or compromised.<\/p>\n

Close all your blinds that face the storm.<\/p>\n

If you do not have a flashlight then do get one and have it near your bed along with cell phone.<\/p>\n

Have food that does not require cooking.<\/p>\n

You no doubt have a delivery account with Whole Foods or some such so you should be able to get what you need.<\/p>\n

You are better on high ground and along the cliffs of the coast but you do not want to be in, say, Capistrano or downtown Laguna.<\/p>\n

I reckon this is sensationalized but given climate change it may not be.<\/p>\n

It should be rather beautiful and amazing.\u00a0I loved the storms in Laguna.<\/p>\n

Best,
\nChristopher<\/p>\n


\nAugust 18, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

How kind of you, Christopher! I\u2019m up on the ridge of a big hill and my son is on the top of the big bluff at Laguna beach, so we\u2019ll be safe. I have no outside blinds, not lots of glass. I have sparkling water, milk, and OJ, plus plenty of food (and an instacart acc\u2019t). I also have one of those \u201cgood for 3 hours of power\u201d electrical lanterns and a superfluity of flashlights with intense light<\/p>\n

I love storms, except for the destruction of trees post hoc.<\/p>\n

Anent \u201cadapting,\u201d I feel like Millay: \u201cI know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.\u201d I\u2019m very sorry that you have the trouble with proprioception. They are discovering new treatment methods every day, and I\u2019m sure you have doctors that are at the top of the field: Are there new trials going on? My mother used to say, dismally, that Hope had to be practiced like a virtue, the surest sign of her own despair.<\/p>\n

I hope you\u2019re able to write: that does me a world of good.\u00a0And my door is always open, needless to say, should your health improve.<\/p>\n

Thanks for all the good suggestions. I\u2019ll think of you if the thunder arrives. The 1938 hurricane blew down a big tree in our backyard as we three children begged our father to go out and hold it up.<\/p>\n

Yours,
\nHelen<\/p>\n


\nNovember 4, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Helen,<\/p>\n

I hope this finds you well and enjoying the Dana Point sunrise.<\/p>\n

I am sorry we could not meet up in the summer but I can come to Laguna this week or anytime really in November or early December if that suits you?<\/p>\n

For a one hour visit and please there is no need to provide juice or tea.\u00a0It would just be great to see you in person and say hello.\u00a0Round 1pm?<\/p>\n

I am around the house for another hour or so and then back after noon.<\/p>\n

Best,
\nChristopher<\/p>\n


\nNovember 4, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Christopher,<\/p>\n

Terrific! But I have a series of scans and tests coming up through Nov 17th, and can\u2019t foresee after that till I see the pneumonologist for the \u201cwrap up\u201d appt on the 17th. After that, any afternoon except Mon and Tuesday (fixed helper appts, lucky me). Sounds as if you\u2019re doing better! It will be a pleasure meeting you and Suzanne if we can work this out after Nov 25.<\/p>\n

As ever,
\nHelen<\/p>\n


\nNovember 4, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Helen,<\/p>\n

Good to hear from you and good luck with the scans.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s see how it goes as we are quite flexible and can come for a visit in early December or if you prefer we could wait until January.<\/p>\n

I am a bit better, thanks, as I have decided not\u00a0<\/em>to walk with a walker or cane or live in a wheelchair but \u201cfight back\u201d which feels better even if it is more hazardous. It was wonderful to be on the prairie although I found the airports and flight, etc., far harder than I expected. Still \u2026 this is an adventure!<\/p>\n

Best,
\nChristopher<\/p>\n


\nNovember 5, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

Congratulations.\u00a0But I hope you use a quad cane!<\/p>\n

Thanks for your kind indulgence.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll write after seeing dr for \u201cwrap up apt.\u201d Don\u2019t let our visit interfere with your Thanksgiving.\u00a0Give yourself a day before and after, at least! H<\/p>\n


\nNovember 6, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

I actually do not know the term a \u201cquad cane\u201d but I think I have seen the object<\/em>\u00a0and can imagine it.<\/p>\n

I took a rather bizarre cane with me to Dakota. It is a single stick with a \u201cseat\u201d embedded in it which one can open and then just sit on it. Ugly as hell and ungainly. But it works if one is too tired to stand anymore and there are no seats or places to sit.<\/p>\n

Am struggling to finish my \u201cnotebooks\u201d: titled \u201cStream of Consciousness\u201d as the publisher is eager to get on with it. But it is a risk. These have good moments but also very flawed ones. I think I want to publish the flaws because it is my own truth: of thinking, revising, contradicting myself, etc. etc.<\/p>\n

An odd time.<\/p>\n

Maybe a trip to Laguna will turn me around!<\/p>\n

Best,<\/p>\n

Christopher<\/p>\n


\nNovember 6, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Christopher,<\/p>\n

I too had one of those X-canes, but it wasn\u2019t enough for long waits, so at airports I resigned myself to a wheelchair (not even realizing it brought you to the front of the security line). One of these days Elon Musk will undo the ADA and forbid wheelchairs on flights so as to save money: ever since Trump mocked the handicapped man, and the Trumpists laughed, things have gotten worse.<\/p>\n

Do you know that predictive spelling for \u201cI\u2019ll\u201d gives, as its first choice, \u201cill\u201d?<\/p>\n

Are there more \u201cill\u201d people than \u201cI\u201d people? By body-count? Or by which of their weird protocols\u2014\u201ccapital letters before lowercase,\u201d perhaps?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be back in touch. You are courageous!<\/p>\n

Helen<\/p>\n


\nNovember 29, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Helen,<\/p>\n

Would it work for you if we came for a one hour visit on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday the 10th, 11th, or 12th of December around 11 am?<\/p>\n

If not, then I reckon we could come late January or early February.<\/p>\n

There is\u00a0no need\u00a0<\/em>to do anything other than let us in!<\/p>\n

We do not need tea, coffee, or anything.<\/p>\n

Best
\nChristopher<\/p>\n


\nNovember 29, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

Any chance of a later, afternoon visit? I\u2019m a night owl, hardly compos mentis before 1pm. (And ever such: I did my PhD thesis between midnight to 4am.)<\/p>\n

But you may have lunch plans that would interfere with a later time: if so, we\u2019ll stick with 11 am.<\/p>\n

My \u201cprocedures,\u201d so tiresome, came out well, nothing more than COPD, with portable oxygen for any day promising to be tiring.<\/p>\n

Yours,
\nHelen<\/p>\n


\nNovember 29, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

We can come anytime in the afternoon. How about 2pm?<\/p>\n

Well \u2026 you have stamina amongst other gifts. When I applied for college my core worry was \u201chow am I going to survive in a place where I hear they stay up until 11 pm?\u201d \u00a0I always went to bed at 9pm sharp. This anxiety vanished soon after I arrived. Such is the stream of life.<\/p>\n

By the way, am musing over \u201cI\u2019ll\u201d and \u201cill\u201d which is fascinating …<\/p>\n

Am working on \u201cinner conversation\u201d which I find fascinating and it is, as you know, utterly ignored by psychoanalysis. But surely this is our most important conversation. I loved Blanchot\u2019s book on it. Bataille tried and of course Vygotsky. But \u2026 no one seems to get it or be able to represent it.<\/p>\n

I believe that love of one\u2019s self is so deeply important. And I think our conversations with our self are so crucial. Certainly in February of this year when my GI system simply stopped almost completely for a week and no one knew what to do I changed from the occasional yelp (it was painful) to a conversation. I literally\u00a0<\/em>spoke to my swollen abdomen as if it were an infant. And this helped. The pain came in surges every 15 minutes or so and so I did have respite. By speaking to my belly-infant I actually consoled my self. This is embarrassing but \u2026 what the heck?\u00a0 What does one have to lose at this point?<\/p>\n

So Tuesday the 12th at 2pm?<\/p>\n

We really look forward to it.<\/p>\n

Best
\nChristopher<\/p>\n


\nNovember 29, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tues 12 at 2 it is, thank you, H<\/p>\n


\nDecember 8, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Helen,<\/p>\n

I am so sorry to say that I have a rather bad cold (3rd day of) and have looked up how long I am infectious and it states that one is until all symptoms are gone: usually two weeks.<\/p>\n

This means that I should not come to visit you until all\u00a0<\/em>the symptoms are gone and that won\u2019t allow us to meet in the next weeks.<\/p>\n

Perhaps we can chat on the phone?<\/p>\n

I hope you are well.<\/p>\n

Best,
\nChristopher<\/p>\n


\nDecember 8, 2023<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Christopher,<\/p>\n

I\u2019m so sorry about your bad cold, just when you\u2019re deep in the planning for your diaries. Somehow I shrink from a spectral voice. If a visit becomes possible, fine; if not, that\u2019s OK, too.\u00a0A pleasure shouldn\u2019t become an obligation.<\/p>\n

Yours with best wishes for your recovery!
\nHelen<\/p>\n


\nHelen Vendler died on April 23, 2024. She and Christopher Bollas never met.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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