Dear Mr. Eliot: I can imagine no good reason why you should publish a poem of mine of this length. But I send it nevertheless in the hope that you may unreasonably like it enough to excuse its bulk.
In Italy in the summer of 1952 Truman Capote was asked by the director JOHN HUSTON: (on the recommendation of David Selznick, who had admired Capote’s work on an ill-fated Vittorio De Sica movie entitled Indiscretion of an American Wife) to collaborate with him on the script for a movie called Beat the Devil.
What follows are the authors’ discussions on the first stirrings, the germination of a poem, or a work of fiction. Any number of headings would be appropriate: Beginnings, The Starting Point, etc. Inspiration would be as good as any.
We have the intention of joining you.1 How is it? What do you pay? What is the hotel? Can I, like Northcliffe2 on the Rhine, preserve my incognito among your fascist pals? or are they liable to give Hadley castor oil?3 Mussolini told me at Lausanne, you know, that I couldn't ever live in Italy again. How the hell are you any way? e sua moglia? How long are you going to stay? Answer any of these that seem important.
Entered U.P. Penn at 15 with intention of studying comparative values in literature (poetry) and began doing so unbeknown to the faculty. 1902 enrolled as special student to avoid irrelevant subjects. 1903—5 continued process at Hamilton College under W.P. Shepard, “Schnitz” Brandt and J.D. Ibbotson. 1905—7 P.G. at U. of Penn. Chiefly impressed by lack of correlation between different depts, and lack either of general survey of literature or any coherent interest in literature as such (as distinct for example from philology).
Ezra Pound was obsessed with language. Quotations from seventeen languages, from hieroglyphics to the dialect of the Na-Khi tribe of China are scattered through the Cantos. Two cantos were written completely in Italian: numbers 72 and 73. It is not perfect Italian, though Pound had lived in Italy, off and on, for thirty years when he wrote the poems in Rapallo in 1944 toward the end of the war. There are minute errors of syntax and a few slight slips in verbal tone. But Pound’s ear was so keen, the finest of his generation according to Yeats, it was nearly impossible for him to write a line that was not melodic.
Two years ago, Frank Fontis, the caretaker of Tennessee Williams’ property in Key West, was murdered. It was an especially vicious killing. He was shot at point-blank range late at night in the living quarters of a railroad museum he operated on the island. It was a curious affair.
Truman was a great jazz buff. Peggy Lee was one of his favorite singers. So, I called up Peggy who was a friend of mine and I said, “I’m here with Truman and we’d love to take you to dinner. Are you free tomorrow?”
The twelve months ending in May, 1957 are counted as the 2500th year of the Buddhist Era, and they have been a holy occasion for the millions of Buddhists in Asia. The big moment was last year at the May full moon, a time that is always celebrated as the triple anniversary of the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and departure from this world.
In June 1990 I found myself in Romania again: in Constanta. Another television assignment. A survey conducted by the French Antenne Deux gave me a chance to show off my knowledge of my native land.