Selected Letters of Robert Penn Warren

New Beginnings and New Directions, 1953-1968

Robert Penn Warren, William Bedford Clark

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9780807161890
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Volume four of the Selected Letters of Robert Penn Warren covers a crucial time of personal and professional rejuvenation in Warren's life. During the fifteen-year period spanned by this correspondence, he completed Brother to Dragons; Segregation: The Inner Conflict in the South; and Who Speaks for the Negro? As these titles suggest, these years were marked by Warren's immersion in American history and his maturing interest in race relations. They also saw his return to lyric poetry, after a ten-year hiatus, with the publication of the Pulitzer Prize--winning collection Promises. Along with seeing the completion of some of his most successful work, this period was a time of momentous change in Warren's life, including his move to Yale University; his marriage to his second wife, Eleanor; and the birth of his two children. As a chronicle of Warren's thoughts on his family, his work, his friends, the state of literary studies, and the culture at large, these letters are invaluable.Unlike many writers, Warren rarely drafted his correspondence with future readers and scholars in mind; he typically saved his prepared statements about the human condition and the state of the world for his poetry, fiction, and social commentary. His letters offer a candid and personal glimpse of Warren's relationships as well as his personal views on literature, politics, and social trends. Their recipients include Ralph Ellison, Allen Tate, Saul Bellow, Robert Lowell, Eudora Welty, and Louis Rubin, as well as Warren's editors, reviewers, collaborators, and other friends.Providing an unusually vivid and personal account of Warren's rich and fully realized life, these missives are equally revealing of his thoughts on the state of contemporary American culture during this dynamic time in American history.

1953

Robert Penn Warrens two-decade marriage to Emma Cinina Brescia ended in divorce in June 1951. After he married the writer Eleanor Clark on December 7, 1932, the couple cast about for a place to settle, considering briefly a farm near Warrens boyhood home in Kentucky before finding the spot that would become their primary home for the rest of their lives together—two barns on Redding Road near Fair-field, Connecticut. Complications with the remodeling caused the Warrens to cancel their plans to summer at La Rocca, a ruined fortress overlooking Porto Ercole in Italy where Eleanor had lived and worked at times for a number of years already and where the Warrens would go for several years thereafter with their children. Instead, they camped about (as Warren put it to his friend Andrew Lytle) in Rhode Island during the spring and then in first one Connecticut cottage then another during the summer and fall— near enough to the place on Redding Road to be handy for consultations and near enough to Yale for Warren to honor his commitment to teach one semester per year.

The couple’s first child, Rosanna, was born on July 27, 1953, dramatically, on the living room floor. Thereafter, it was a rare and most businesslike letter that did not include a report on her development and exploits and, after his birth in 1954, the development and exploits of her brother Gabriel.

As always, Warren also had much work on his writing desk. By the end of 1952, he had a complete draft of one of his most important works, the long poem, Brother to Dragons: A Tale in Verse and Voices (1953; rev. ed., 1979). The poem, based on the murder of a slave by two of Thomas Jefferson’s nephews, served as a prelude for much of Warrens work during the 1950s and 1960s, both in terms of its new experimental form and its reflection of his interest in the legacies of American history and race relations in America. When the poem was finished, he set to work on the novel he had been planning for some time, Band of Angels (1955), the story of a Kentucky belle who discovers upon her father’s death that she is the issue of one of his slaves.

Several of Warrens letters early in 1953 demonstrate just how widely he had distributed drafts of Brother to Dragons among his friends for their opinions.

TO JOHN PALMER

ALS

Stowe, Vermont
January 2, 1953

Dear John:¹

This is a much delayed letter to give a supplement to the announcement that, no doubt, has long since reached you. Eleanor and I were married three weeks ago at her mother’s house at Roxbury, Connecticut. J. E. P. was sadly missed! Present were E’s mother,² sister and brother-in-law,³ K.A.P.,⁴ Albert,⁵ Cleanth and Tinkum,⁶ the Kenyon Brookses⁷ (son of Van Wyck, who is a friend of Mrs. Clark). The bride, may I say, was strikingly handsome and the groom managed to get through his lines with a minimum of confusion and a considerable sense of high dedication and even more of self-congratulation. His complacency survived over ten days of skiing in Vermont, which certainly proves the sincerity of the prothalamic high sense of dedication. Skiing, I’ll add, is not a thing I was born to, but there is, as yet—this piously uttered—no broken leg. Only a slightly wrenched knee, which makes this letter possible by taking me off the mountain for an afternoon of hot packs. Tomorrow, back again for the ineptitude, disgrace, exhilaration, and terror. I often sympathize with what must have been your sentiments upon entering the bay at Anzio. But I guess I’m bit. I’m already planning another trip.

As for our general plans, we’ll get a place west of New Haven and in striking distance of NYC. This for a half of each year. For the rest, some Dixie and some Italy. We hope to be in London in March and sip deep of your hospitality. Maybe we’ll start a couple of novels at 11 Pelham Place. E’s about to begin one, and I hope to do so. That is, as soon as the revising of the poem is done. A draft exists, but there’s a lot of work yet. Hence the delay till March for you and London.

News of our friends, much the same. Cleanth and Tinkum are well and happy. He gets a sabbatical next year and will probably come to England in the summer, on the way to Italy. As for Albert, things go about the same, except that he now is becoming very much the young bachelor about town, and, as he puts it, is having to invest in extra dress shirts. Jean Stafford has left Jensen⁸ and, after a recent operation, is heading for the Virgin Islands. There is some coolness now between Eisenhower and Taft.⁹ And that winds up any news of others.

To revert to the all-absorbing topic of myself, I do wish that you had been here with us that bright Sunday three weeks ago. But send your belated blessing. We’ll see you in March.

A Happy New Year and our affectionate greetings.

Red

Dear John—Hello—we’ve been thinking of you often and did wish you’d been there. I’ve also been thinking for a long time of answering your fine pre-Raphaelite letter. Which will do. And see you soon. Best. Eleanor.

TO FRANK LAWRENCE AND HARRIET OWSLEY

TLS/VU

1786 Yale Station
New Haven, Connecticut
January 5, 1953

Dear Frank and Harriet:¹

When I came back from vacation this morning I found your Christmas-card note, and felt very happy at the fact. I don’t know why I’ve been such a bad correspondent, for you all are often in my thoughts and recollections, and some of the pleasantest pictures I have of the past involve you all. This country is just too damned big, and it’s a terrible pity that a fellow can’t be in more than one place at the same time.

To sort of catch up on things, I came to Yale as a visitor for a term in the fall of 1950. That next spring the President offered me a professorship in the School of Drama, and I took it. Drama is not my line but I am interested and am getting some education along the way. I am here on a one-semester-the-year basis (fall to end of January), giving the old Workshop 47² in the Drama School, and one course in the English Department. This gives me eight months a year for my own writing, and I shore love the Lord for fixing it up this a-way. I have been living in Silliman College, as a resident fellow, both last year and this, but now that I have changed from my state of bachelorhood I am about to be evicted. On December 7 I married Eleanor Clark, and can’t disabuse myself of the notion that it is a wonderful notion. I look forward to the time when you all and she can meet. Meanwhile, I’ll send you her latest book,³ as a sort of step toward an introduction. We shall head to Italy in late March, with a stop in London on the way to visit some friends there. Eleanor has a sort of ruined fortress ninety miles north of Rome, a most delightful place, and we’ll put up there until fall and teaching start. As for my work, I am just revising a book-length narrative poem, based on the fate of Thomas Jefferson’s family in Kentucky, a very dark and tragic story. I’ll be sending you all the book when it is out, in June or July.

That about accounts for my doings. I find life here very pleasant. I have some old friends here, Cleanth and Tinkum Brooks, who have a place in the country, a most delightful house, with a small farm—and the René Welleks.⁴ Then there are some new people whom I like. But I should like to make some judicious importations for my personal pleasure.

I wish you d let me have a letter full of your news, and news of Larry.⁵ I was in Nashville last summer briefly and saw the usual group. Isabel, Don, the Starrs,⁶ etc. Lon,⁷ of course. No Owsleys.

Goodbye, and my most affectionate thoughts and regards to you both.

Red

P.S. Please remember me to the Friersons.⁸

[P]P.S. It occurs to me that you might want news of Cinina. After the period in the hospital, she began graduate work at Columbia, and, by all accounts, has done very well at it. She is now teaching Italian there and continuing with her work for the Ph.D.

TO RALPH ELLISON

TLS/LC

1786 Yale Station
New Haven, Connecticut
January 12, 1953

Dear Ralph:¹

I hope to enlist your interest in a little project. An old friend of mine, David Clay² (who was with me, by the way, at your book party), and I are developing a television project.³ The program concerns significant episodes in American history dramatized in half-hour units. The advertising agency that is seriously interested in the matter and is working on sponsorship asks for a list of writers who might be available to do such scripts. My question is this: would you, in principle, be willing to write one or more of such scripts, on a subject to be agreed on and on terms to be arranged? In other words, would you do it if they paid you enough and didn’t mess with your text?

I look back frequently on our meeting, and wish they came more often. Perhaps soon again now. Perhaps we can set up a lunch with Albert?

Sincerely yours,
Red Warren

TO JOHN PALMER

TLS

223 East 75
N[ew] Y[ork] [C]ity
February 4, 1953

Dear John:

It was good to hear from you, and to know that we still have a port on Pelham Place. For we are intending to arrive in London about March 10, for a few days, and would like nothing better than a lot of your society. To lay the background for what I am about to propose, I must let you in on our big news and big secret. It now seems a cinch that our union is to be blest with issue—and if our plans go well it will be blest a few times more in the same way. But the doctor forbids certain things to Eleanor. (Her sister,¹ who now has four children, lost four at various stages along the way, and that tendency apparently runs in families.) One forbidden thing is much riding in cars. So she will go by air to Rome, and I’ll take the car down. How about your coming with me? Could you get a short—or better, long—leave? We could meet Eleanor in Paris, for a day or so, or if that didn’t seem feasible, you could join us there just before we left for Rome, and drive down with me and put up with the Devlins,² etc. for a little visit in Rome. Then come up to Eleanor’s Rocca. Or something, according to your whims. Can’t you manage it? This could be a fine jaunt for us all.

No news here, except that I’m sweating miserably in the last rewriting of the poem, and have fits of black despair about it. Also house-hunting. E and I have to get a place between New Haven and NYC, in the country, near water, at a figure we can afford—and the order isn’t too easy. Her place here has been bought by the city, and we are being evicted. I am evicted from Silliman College. So we are waifs.

Albert is pretty well. Brookses very well. Weather good. Yale over till next fall. Eisenhower is making several kinds of a fool about himself. Formosa.³ Mrs. Luce.⁴

Goodbye. Do try to take the trip to Rome. We’d love it, and I’d be mighty happy to be saved from solitary travel.

All the best,
Red

TO DONALD DAVIDSON

TLS/VU

223 East 75
New York City
March 5, 1953

Dear Don:¹

I’ve had your letter a long time, but the postponement of an answer is not index to the real pleasure I felt in a word from you and in your good wishes. Getting around to the quiet time for an answer has, however, been difficult during the past weeks. First, I had to finish off Yale for the year, then discovered that I was staying on past my arranged time to m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Editorial Procedures and List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• SELECTED LETTERS OF ROBERT PENN WARREN, 1953–1968
• Selected Bibliography
• Index