Let de Beauvoir Know I Am Not So Awful

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) was "a crucial figure in the struggle for women's rights, [and] an eminent writer, having won the Prix Goncourt, the prestigious French literary award, for her novel The Mandarins" (ref. Standford Encyclopedia of Philiosophy). She also wrote the highly influential feminist text, The Second Sex (1949).

As far as I can tell, Miller never met de Beauvoir. As far as my limited research has established, they had no relationship of any kind, apart from an awareness of each other's work and status.

The following anecdote, entitled "Henry Miller's call for a reconciliation with Simone de Beauvoir, a testimony" was posted recently on a website belonging to Claudine Monteil. Monteil is a French feminist writer, theorist, and lecturer. As a young member of the French feminist movement in 1970, she met Simone de Beauvoir, struck up a freindship, and worked closely with her for many years in their fight for women's rights. In 1975, Monteil visited Henry in California. The purpose of this visit is not clearly defined in the story, except that she wanted to speak with him and take notes.

"It was quite a surprise for Simone de Beauvoir when, once, on my return from working as an activist in the Feminist Womens’ Health Center of Los Angeles in 1975, very much at lead in women’s health programs and studies, I informed her that I would be meeting Henry Miller. Simone de Beauvoir was intrigued and asked me to report on her the details of this encounter.
Henry Miller was at the time 84 years old and had retired at a lovely house in Pacific Palisades. He had the reputation of being surrounded by half-naked women and I was wondering how the meeting would go.

"It was in fact a young beautiful woman, lightly dressed, who welcomed me and opened the front door. Behind her, helping himself with a walking frame, a puny little man. Even though he had a watery eye, his way of looking at me was very vivacious, and he invited me to join him in…his bedroom.

I was so shocked that he added: '-Don’t worry! I am a very, very old man now! You don’t risk anything!' And he burst into laugh. As a matter of fact, he did not inspire any cause of concern. He looked like such a cheerful person. But when he offered me as a place to sit to choose either his bed or his wheelchair, I choose the latter.

"As I was seated on his wheelchair trying to take notes Henry Miller declared:-'You are still afraid of me?- Not at all! -I don’t believe you!' Immediately he mentioned Simone de Beauvoir: 'Please let her know that I am not so awful. She must consider me as a macho.' I smiled at him.

"'You know, the Americans, because of their so-called sexual revolution, they find me a little outdated, passé as you say in French. This country will never lose its Puritanism. Feminists should consider me as their ally. Men only destroy what women have built. In the near future, women will liberate us. Please never do what men have done to the planet and to the people.'
A few months later I brought a short typewritten letter I had received from him to Simone de Beauvoir. Reading it, she was dumbfounded. Miller was asking me, as to other people he knew, to write a letter to the Nobel Committee supporting his candidature at the Nobel Prize in literature.

"The content was: Pacific Palisades, august 13, 1978: 'Dear friend, my name, In my attempt to obtain the Nobel Prize for Literature this coming year I hope to enlist your support. All I ask is for you to write a few succinct lines to: Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy, address. Please note that the Committee urgently requests that the name of the proposed candidate not be publicized. Sincerely Henry Miller.'

"Simone screamed:
- I can’t believe this!
- Yes Simone, it’s true, I replied, and why should we not do it for you?

"We had been hoping since 1975 when they had mentioned from Stockholm that she was going to get it, that she would be the next laureate.
-It is ridiculous; I don’t want you to do such a thing in my favour.
-But Simone, with all the well-know women we know from around the world, there could be quite some support for you.
-No, I don’t want to.

Henry Miller never got the Nobel Prize, neither Simone. At her passing, I was sorry I had respected her decision. My suggestion had some sense in this context. We should all have written to the Nobel Committee.

Claudine Monteil has written about Simone de Beauvoir, most recently in Simone de Beauvoir: Her Life as a Woman (2006).

Le Sel de la Semaine, 1969 - Part 2

Here is part two of a 1969 Henry Miller interview on French-Canadian television, which I wrote about previously, after its appearance on YouTube.

A reminder that my French is O.K. but not particularly skilled. I would not make the assumption that everything I’ve translated below is completely accurate.

SUMMARY OF PART TWO

[0:00] Host, Fernand Seguin continues from Part 1 by suggesting that Henry, when first arrived in Paris, had easily found people who would help him. “No, not easily,” interrupts Henry. “Always by accident. The first man had been a Russian in front of a cinema … he was putting up posters. He greeted me and asked if I were American. I said, Yes. And he started to ask me questions. I asked if he would give me some money to eat […] He quickly came down the ladder and said Yes. Just like that.”

[0:45] Henry adds that when he went to Le Dome or other cafés, he often paid his way thanks to young Americans who were coming off the boats with money.

[1:20] Seguin: “The decision to write, for you, was not an easy one.” Miller: “It wasn’t a decision exactly. I was ‘au bout de ma force’ (at the end of my rope?), you could say. I could either write a book or else I was a failure and the world would crumble around me …”

[2:20] Miller’s goal in writing was to “write about my distress […] I wanted to write the history of my distress, my anguish. That’s all.”

[3:12] Miller: “Before going to Paris, I made a plan for all of my autobiographical books. But I had forgotten it there [in New York], so [in Paris] I wrote only what was happening in the moment, day to day." He then repeats himself about the notes, and says something about the last notes not being archived; but I’m not sure.

[4:07] Seguin: “How were your books received in France and abroad?” Miller: “Abroad? In silence. In France, even. But I was graced perhaps by a poor, young woman who sold the books from café to café. She had my books and she introduced them to the tourists. And bit by bit, I started to achieve—" Seguin: “Success?” Miller: “No, not success. Success only came when the soldiers arrived in Paris. American soldiers brought me success. They had discovered my books. And it was, how many years … about ten years after.”

[5:10] Seguin goes into a bit of a long thing which Henry doesn’t appear to be following very well (me neither), in which the host explains how most people were buying his books thinking they were getting pornography, yet later discovered something poetic and “cosmic.” But Miller was still branded as a pornographer.

It’s around this time in the clip that we see something not usually seen much on TV these days: the host leans over and lights Henry’s cigarette.

[6:35] Seguin asks what Miller thinks about charges that his books are obscene. Miller: “This question of obscenity and pornography doesn’t interest me. There is a little bit, sure—it depends on the definition. But it’s difficult to write or give a definition that everyone accepts.” He goes on to say that real life has elements of obscenity and pornography, therefore so do his books. “Maybe I’m a bit strong with it,” he states, going on to explain with a grin that perhaps it’s to do with a puritan quality he has. I’m not quite positive this is what he’s saying.

[7:55] Miller says something here (I think) about a clause in his contract with his editor, stating that he is never obligated to defend his books. “I don’t want to be in a courtroom. They can put me in prison, but I will not be interrogated.”

[9:03] Regarding contemporary social attitudes toward literature, Miller says “Public opinion has changed a lot. Especially in America, and later in England, but with us there was practically a revolution. And suddenly everything was permitted. [In my opinion?] too much is permitted today. I don’t judge books by obscenity, but by the aesthetic, the manner of writing. There are bad writers and good writers.”

Miller in Hydra, 1939

"Hydra is almost a bare rock of an island and its population, made up almost exclusively of seamen, is rapidly dwindling. The town, which clusters about the harbor in the form of an amphitheatre, is immaculate. There are only two colors, blue and white, and the white is whitewashed every day, down to the cobblestones in the street. The houses are even more cubistically arranged than at Poros. Aesthetically it is perfect, the very epitome of that flawless anarchy which supersedes, because it includes and goes beyond, all the formal arrangments of the imagination. This purity, this wild and naked perfection of Hydra, is in great part due to the spirit of the men who once dominated the island."

--- Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi, p. 55

The passage above, from The Colossus of Maroussi, continues in this same vein for a couple more pages. Hydra makes a strong impression on Miller, as does most of Greece during his prolonged visit in 1939. He leaves Greece due only to the tension of the looming world war, when he is forced out and back to America.

Posted today on the photo blog website Ellopos.org, is the photograph of Henry Miller at Hydra , as seen below.

This photo was taken in 1939, and is credited to George Seferis. Seferis (whose real last name is Seferiades) went to Hydra in the Fall of 1939, along with Miller and George Katsimbalis, who were off to visit the painter Ghika at his ancestral home. Miller writes about this visit over the course of several pages of Maroussi, beginning on p. 52.

"Hydra was entered as a pause in the musical score of creation by an expert calligrapher."

Henry Miller Memorial Library Fire Threat

“We are experiencing a severe wildfire.”

These words were posted on the front page of the website for the Henry Miller Memorial Library this week. Lightening and dry, windy conditions are being blamed for wildfires that have been fanning out across seven counties in California including Monterey, where Big Sur and the Library are located.

Some encouraging news was posted on the website at 5 PM on Thursday, June 26th: “A lot of fire suppression efforts, using ground crews and helicopter support, has brought the fire under control and left the Library itself unhurt. Crews are still on location monitoring potential flare-ups. It feels good.”

Lisa Kreiger of San Jose's Mercury News reported on June 27th that the flames had “reached the edge of the library, but were beaten back.” She also reported that the local Post Ranch Inn offered use of its “underground concrete storage unit” for safe keeping of the irreplaceable Miller documents and painting that it has in its possession.

A still from video taken by The Mercury News, which may be viewed on-line.

A benefit for the HMM Library, presented by comedian Rob Schneider, was postponed this weekend due to the fire.

On June 28th, the National Interagency Coordination Center reported that “33 large fires” were continuing to burn in California, while the L.A. Times said that the total fires numbered around 1,000. By Saturday night, wrote the Times, the threatening fires around the Basin near Big Sur grew by 3,062 acres and “was only 3% contained.” President Bush declared that a region of the western U.S., in which the HM Memorial Library is located, is now a national disaster area. But the San Francisco Chronicle assures us that the HMM Library is okay: “To the south, firefighters were steering the Big Sur fire away from populated areas and parallel to the coast. The famed Henry Miller library and several other businesses and dwellings appear to have escaped the fire, which has destroyed 16 homes.”

By 8:30 PM on Saturday, the HMM Library remained closed to the public, while most business in Big Sur were already re-opening (ref). But, today (Sunday the 29th), the HMM Library website has updated their message to assure everyone that “the library is OK.”

Helicopters quelling fire around the Library (source: "Stan"/KUSP website)

Contrary to some erroneous reporting in the media, the Henry Miller Memorial Library was never actually Miller’s home, although he did live nearby for 18 years. He lived on Partington Ridge for most of his time in Big Sur. On a website created to provide community updates on the blaze (SurFire2008.org), Karuna Licht reported around dinner time on Saturday that “The path of the fire hit Partington Ridge and is still burning. This was Henry Miller’s perch, the place where he wrote Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch.” Magnus Torén—director of the HMM Library—reports on the HMM Library MySpace page that “Partington Ridge is not yet safe, there remains a threat from the canyon below. Thanks to the very cool weather on the coast the fire moves very slowly – everyone is praying for continued cool weather so that 'mop up' ‘burn out’ and ‘back burn’ operations can continue.”

Also on that page, Magnus gives us reason to be optimistic: “I believe it is safe to say that the Library is saved. The canyon behind has burned almost to the back deck. on the hillsides on both sides the fire has in some places burned all the way down to the library grounds, less than 40 feet away from the building. We were down there last night around midnight, met with the fire crew stationed there for monitoring the remaining burning embers, had a chat, then left feeling confident that the Library would remain safe. The firefighters, and a helicopter shuttle going up and down from the ocean, saved the Library.”

Good luck out there.

To view a live webcam of the smoke rising above Big Sur, from the vantage point of Nepenthe, visit the website for the Nepenthe Restaurant.

See video reports of the efforts to save the Library at Associated Press (YouTube copy archived here).

For updated reports on the fire, visit Surfire2008.org, Xasauantoday.wordpress.com, KUSP.org, KSBW.com, and the U.S. Forest Service press releases.

Above left: Firefighter at the Library (c) Patrick Tehan/Mercury News).

on the move ..... (delay)

Sorry for the recent slow output and for yet another interruption. I am moving, which means a few busy days, and some tranasition time to get my internet back up. Maybe 7-10 days.

In the meantime, feel free to use the comments section of this posting to report any recent Miller discoveries, make suggestions for posts, plan an international Henry Miller meet-up in New York, or whatever.


Also accepting erotic musing and literate passion from any Junes, Anaises or Madamoiselle Claudes.

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Le Sel de la Semaine, Montreal, 1969

Le Sel de la Semaine ("salt of the week") was a TV program on the French service of the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), called Television de Radio-Canada. The program aired 95 episodes [ref.] from 1965-1970, and followed a simple format: distinguished guests were interviewed by biochemist-turned-TV-host, Fernand Seguin. Henry Miller was one such distinguished guest in 1969.

In a letter to his wife Hoki, dated June 6, 1969, Henry wrote that he was leaving his home in California on June 24th or 25th, and would be in Montreal, then London, then in Paris by July 1st for the filming of Tropic Of Cancer [1]. The Montreal plans appear to have been postponed, as a letter to Lawrence Durrell locates him in Montreal on September 3, 1969 (he had just seen the film adaptation of Durrell's Justine) [2].

Montreal was the headquarters for Radio-Canada; I'm guessing that the Sel del la Semaine interview was his reason for visiting. The episode was produced by Pierre Castonguay and hosted, as always, by Fernand Seguin. 77-year old Henry conducted the entire interview in French, with only the occassional call for a translation lifeline. This interview had been available for sale through Radio-Canada, but seems currently unavailable. However, the entire episode has been posted on-line at YouTube. I've embedded Part 1 below.

SUMMARY OF PART ONE

Please note that my French skills are adequate enough that I can translate Henry's interview and provide this summary, but should not be depended upon for accuracy. If you need to quote something, I suggest you find the timecode and translate his words yourself.

[1:05] Host Fernand Seguin [at left] opens by asking, "Why did you leave America, and why did you return?" Henry states that it was impossible for him to live there, where he felt despair and without hope. But Spain was actually his original destination (although he wouldn't see that country for another 20 years). He refers to June as "Mona, in the books," and credits her with inspiring him to leave: "It was a day in February. It was snowing. I was sad. As I stood in front of a window, she said, 'Why don't you go to Europe? I said, 'Great, but how?' She said, 'I'll find the means.' I was surprised, but said, 'If you find it, I'll go.' She gave me enough for boat passage ..."

[2:30] Henry says that he returned to America because of the war. The American Consulate would not let him go anywhere but his native land. "I asked, why not let me go to Buenos Aires or Brazil." He didn't want to return to America. But they voided his passport [Henry makes X strokes with his hand] and that's how he came to return.

[3:05] Henry mentions that he doesn't decide things; he leaves that up to fate or destiny; when the right moment presents itself, he acts.

[3:55] Henry discusses his feelings about America (i.e. he sees its lifestyle as destructive), but admits that he's content enough at present time to not be preoccupied by it. He's well-situated, likes his home, plays ping-pong, has a chauffeur. [UPDATE July 17/08: Thank you Daniel and your native French ear for pointing out that Henry says "une piscine chauffée" which means "heated pool" and does not refer to a "chauffeur."] "I don't live in 'America' in my life. I live in my house with a few visiting freinds and that satisfies me." [5:35] "I've made peace with my compatriots."

[5:15] Henry: "It's difficult for me to make decisions"

[6:08] Henry mentions the pgymies as an example of a society that has been living a simple, contented life for thousands of years: why change?

[7:00] Henry describes himself as a wannabe writer as a young man: "I had very strong doubts about my own abilities. I had no confidence, as a writer or a genius [thinker?] or whatever. I dreamed throughout my youth about becoming a writer, but maybe I placed the life or spirit of The Writer too high. That's why I was always below. Also, I didn't exhibit a great talent as young man. I tried two, three times to write, but it didn't go well. So I said, 'See, I'm not a writer.'"

[8:00] Henry describes the Paris effect: "It was another world, one of culture, you could say. A world with a sensuality too. In all ways, it was another face for me. It stiumulated me, inspired me."

[8:40] Henry: "I had already written three books [by the time I arrived in Paris], and I'm glad these books haven't been published. But in Paris I discovered my proper voice." He also mentions that he had been close to suicide.

[9:37] Henry explains that he managed to survive in Paris through the charity of others. "I asked like a beggar" ... "I asked for aid, and I gave aid ... I don't agree with Shakespeare when he said, 'Neither a lender nor a borrower be.' I think you need to be both."

You can view the remaining five parts of this 60-minute interview on YouTube. I may translate these remaining parts when I get a chance.

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[1] Howard, Joyce (ed.) 1986. Letters by Henry Millert to Hoki Tokuda Miller. New York: Freundlich Books; p. 151; [2] MacNiven, Ian S. (ed.). 1989. The Durrell-Miller Letters, 1935-80. London: Faber & Faber, p. 434.

Miller And The Matisses

“He is a bright sage, a dancing seer who, with a sweep of the brush, removes the ugly scaffold to which the body of man is chained by the incontrovertible facts of life.”
----- Henry Miller on Henri Matisse, Tropic Of Cancer, p. 164

My interest in this subject began with an on-line anecdote about Henry from the granddaughter of the famed French painter, Henri Matisse. My research on this minor footnote soon led to connections between Henry and Henri Matisse, as well as his son, Pierre. These may seem like trivial points individually, but, stacked together, they establish an intellectual and casual personal relationship with a great family of the arts.

_____________________________________________

HENRI MATISSE

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was a celebrated French painter, noted for his brilliant use of colour. Upon his death in 1954, Andre Berthoin (French Minister of National Education) described Matisse this way: "His was the most French of palettes. Intelligence, reason and the alliance of a sense of finesse and of simplifying geometry gave to all he painted the rare virtue of being truly French" [1].

Although Henri Matisse appears as a passing reference in Miller’s Crazy Cock (which he’d begun in 1927), the true impact of the painter’s work on Miller becomes obvious in Henry’s writings of 1931. In the long-unpublished The New Instinctivism—which was written by early summer, 1931 [2] — Miller gives over a page of high praise for Matisse, of whom he states “touches me profoundly.” “Matisse is the sum of modern painting. Matisse is the epiphenomenona of the new phenomenology. Matisse is the wobbly axis which gives core to the revolutions in plastic, the hub of the wheel which is falling apart, which will keep rolling when all that has gone to make up the wheel has disintegrated.” He doesn’t see beauty in the women Matisse paints, but instead sees “women of the boulevards.”

In June or July 1931, Henry went to the Galerie Georges Petit at 8, rue de Seze to see a Matisse exhibit that included “Reclinging Nude” (c.1925). The exhibit ran from June 16 – July 25, 1931 [3]. In August, Henry began writing Tropic Of Cancer, which would eventually include a lengthy reference to his 1931 visit to the Matisse exhibit. Much of the reverent language used in this passage has been clearly re-crafted from his New Instinctivism draft. “On the threshold of that big hall whose walls are now ablaze, I pause a moment to recover from the shock which one experiences when the habitual gray of the world is rent asunder and the color of life splashes forth in song and poem” (p. 162); “He it is, if any man today possesses the gift, who knows where to dissolve the human figure, who has the courage to sacrifice an harmonious line in order to detect the rhythm and murmur of the blood, who takes the light that has been refracted inside him and lets it flood the keyboard of color” (p. 164) [4]. (see Raoul Ibarguen’s critique of this passage in Narrative Detours).

Henri Matisse (left) at the 1931 Galerie Geroges Petit exhibit in Paris, which Miller attended. (Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images; this is cropped from the larger original found here).

With this level of enthusiasm, it’s not surprising that an early edition of Tropic Of Cancer—a Czech translation published in 1938—should feature an image of a naked woman “specially drawn” by Matisse (at left) [5]. According to Ferguson’s Henry Miller: A Life, Miller eventually met Matisse and got into an argument with him about the work of Miró, which Miller thought was intellectual, but Matisse found was the work of a “peasant” (p. 241).

Henri Matisse would continue to be casually referenced in Miller’s later works, as an example of an accomplished artist (often in lists of names like Picasso and Proust).

PIERRE MATISSE

Henri Matisse’s son Pierre Matisse (1900-1989) did not become a painter like his father, but instead took a different angle on the family legacy and became an art dealer. In 1931, he opened the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York City, which remained operative until his death in 1989.

In 1936, Henry had befriended Pierre Matisse, although I can’t say anything about the origin or nature of this relationship at that time. They were friendly enough that Pierre shipped a copy of Black Spring to James Laughlin on Henry’s behalf, then wrote to tell him he’d done so [6].

In 1947, Henry published a limited run of Into The Nightlife, which showcased the artwork of Bezalel Schatz. Henry’s ledger book shows that Pierre bought a copy (as referenced in the PBA Gallery archive—see item 33). Late in 1958, Miller needed money and sought to sell some Fernand Léger artwork that he had acquired for The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder. Pierre Matisse bought them for $3500. Henry was happy about the sale, writing to Matisse that “there is indeed a Santa Claus!” In a letter to Bob MacGregor, Henry described Matisse as “a brick” who could be counted on for a favour [7].

ALEXINA SATTLER

Finally we come to the anecdote about the daughter-in-law of Henri Matisse, whose birth name was Alexina Sattler. The brief reference is made by Alexina’s daughter, Jacquline Matisse Monnier on the website for the Tate Museum, and in relation to artist Marcel Duchamp:

“There was something about Marcel Duchamp that people found attractive. My mother thought he had a charismatic allure. She told me a story that at one point Henry Miller had a crush on her, but he was rather vulgar and had no grace in what he was proposing, whereas Marcel just knew how to say and do things. He had a very light touch.”

Yes, this is the minor, paltry piece of gossip that inspired this entire post. I soon found myself on a personal mission to flesh it out with something more substantial. Let me say this: there is no more, other than the context and conjecture I’ll attempt to bring to it.

Alexina Sattler (1906-1995) entered into the Matisse family through her marriage to Pierre Matisse [8]. The American-born artist—nicknamed “teeny” because of her petite stature—went to Paris in 1921 to pursue her artistic vocation. She married Pierre in 1929. In 1939, Pierre went into service for WWII; in his absence, Alexina took over duty at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. She divorced Pierre in 1949, and later married Marcel Duchamp in 1954, although she had originally met him in 1923.

At right: A illustrated portrai of Alexina made by Henri Matisse in 1938. (Source: Herbert F Johnson Museum of Art)

Henry did not arrive in Paris for his extended stay until March 1930, at which time Alexina was newly married as Alexina Matisse. The Matisses then opened Pierre’s gallery in New York in 1931.That leaves a window of opportunity for Henry meeting Alexina in 1930-31. Henry was familiar with NY-based Pierre in 1936, so possibly they’d all met during one of Pierre’s return visits to Paris in the 30s. Alexina was unmarried from 1949 to 1953, but Henry was in Big Sur most of that time, and married to two different women in that period. As well, I don’t have any impression that he really knew Alexina outside of her relation to Pierre. Bottom line: if this anecdote is accurate, then Henry seems to have made a crude proposition to a married woman, whether she was Alexina Matisse or Alexina Duchamp.

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REFERENCES

[1] NYTimes.com (New York Times). 1954. On This Day. “Obituary-Art World Mourns Henri Matisse, Dead at Home in Nice at Age of 84:” November 4, 1954. LINK; [2] The New Instinctivism was published only recently in Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal, Vol. 4. Matisse refs on pages 22-24. With acknowledgement to Karl Orend who had previously explored the Henri Matisse connection in footnote 107 of this published Instinctivism essay; [3] I found the dates for this exhibition in several on-line sources, including a reference to a 1931 commemorative book from the exhibit. See listing at Antiqbook; [4] Miller, Henry. 1987 [1934]. Tropic Of Cancer. NY: Grove Press; [5] Ferguson, Robert. 1991. Henry Miller: A Life. NY: WW Norton, p. 346. I’ve found no other references to this be specially drawn, or simply acquired-- Ferguson does not list his source; [6] Wickes, George, ed. 1996. Henry Miller And James Laughlin: Selected Letters. New York: Norton, p. 7; [7] Wickes, George, ed. 1996. Henry Miller And James Laughlin: Selected Letters. New York: Norton, pp. 147-154; [8] Sattler's bio was sourced with Wikipedia, Kubisme.info (in Dutch), Geneall, and a couple fo other minor references elsewhere. Her photo was found here, as part of a group shot from the 1940s.