The Leonard Bernstein Letters (14 page)

Dear heart,

You're full of shit. You're full of shit because you're exuberant, and exuberance is not especially welcome at this moment. The world and I don't need exuberance, what we need is revolution. Especially the world. Especially me. Especially me. And the world too.

First, I have to say, and not with any obligation, but with sincere co-jubilation, that I'm glad for you and all the successes you mentioned. I'm glad for every every weentzy one of 'em. You're doing the right things in a big way. (Funny, that's what you always told me.) And you're making money too.
’Sis dir gut!

Walter
⁸⁴
thinks Diamond stinks, and what's good enough for Walter is good enough for me. It's always been a mystery to me (on the basis of the stuff I've
seen, and I've seen enough to get an indication) how the hell Diamond's gotten as far as he's gotten. Honest to God, Lenny dear, David Diamond is a bust as far as I'm concerned. For his own sake I hope he's better than I think he is.

Tell me about how Charlie Demuth was a tragic figger.
⁸⁵
I don't really know his biography. Nobody seems to.

What was your draft number? 8000
⁸⁶
I hope I hope I hope.

I saw a Georges Rouault show at Boston's hoi polloi Institute of Modern Art. The guy's a great, awfully great, painter, even though he believes in God, and is fanatic about it. To be corny, the sheer magic of the man's textures (great gobs of paint) and the magic of the man's facility for expressionism, Jeez, terrific.

The curious tone at the beginning of this letter wasn't for nothing. I will now list mes calamités:

1) Do you remember the slow movement of the quartet? Well Walter, and finally I, agreed that it stunk. So, with Walter egging me on I kept going. It still stunk. It has now been thrown away.

2) I had to copy my Overture (why, I don't know) and as I copied I got an awful feeling. You, Bernstein, don't realize how silly and false that piece is.
⁸⁷

3) I started a fast quartet movement that was gonna be great stuff. I took a look at it two weeks ago: the sterilest, lousiest, beatest, etc.

4) Since I passed in my thesis title one (1) day late the Committee on Honors of Harvard Univ. has refused to let me write a thesis. So: I can't get honors. So: I can't get a fellowship.
⁸⁸
So: I have not written a note (except harmony & strict cpt. exercises) for a month and I'm not going to for at least a year. Probably more. So: I'm enrolling in the Museum School after graduation and I'm gonna learn how to paint & draw. At least if I can't use my head I can use my hands.

5) I'm in love with a New Yorker who's in love with someone else. And I fell in love with her because she said things like “Jeez, this guy's (me) got the terrificest vocabulary, all the way from A to Beat.”

6) I could go on forever, I got millions of 'em.

Goodbye, be good, have a Scotch on me.

Sonny

Dear Lennie, mon vieux, mon vieux,

At long last opportunity offers itself to look up from this verdammter desk and inform the friends de ma jeunesse that I am definitely not dead. Have been working day and night and night and day on a yarn scheduled for Bob Montgomery having to do with the Jack the Ripper slashings and a guy who achieves a change of personality as a result of suspicion accidentally falling his way: a very choice assignment and the first story I have anything to do with that excited me at all. Picture to be produced by one [Seymour] Nebenzal, a refugee cinemateer who did
M
and
Mayerling
among others. A very intelligent gimmick and we have an orgy making ourselves understood in mangled English, French and German. Believe it or not, progress manifests. Neby is of the old German school of thought that reasons something like this: if I can work 20 hours a day, why, please tell me why you can't work 15? So you work 15 or better. I whacked out an 85 page treatment in exactly four days and nights, severing myself from all matters earthly and living the life of a hermit, yea, a veritable anchorite. Maybe this one will pay off. Please God.

Item: have a new car, a most spectacular 1933 Plymouth convertible coupe that is doing its very able best to bleed me to death. To date: new brake re-line, clutch plates, oil filter, new floormat, motor tuneup – and I've had the car only about a month. Really, it's in grand shape and a swell buy and I drive it all over hell and gone desertward, seaward, and mountainward. Eisner discovering California. However, I borrowed dough from the studio to pay for the car and they nick me every week for a payment, bills, expenses, so for a change I'm eternally broke. But I live, and not too badly. At long last beginning to make friends, good people, and I don't go as batty from loneliness as I did. Getting quite a lot of work done of all descriptions. Have a new girl: a rabbi's daughter, praise Gawd. Hi-ho-methusalem, etc. Fucks like a jackrabbit, and cooks wonderful goulash, a duality of accomplishment not nearly as unimportant as it sounds.

Of else, but little. Time and tide and flux. Much rain: the Pacific in perpendicular lines, hills washing down, flood. California. Write of yourself and that without delay.

Ewig,

Al

Dear Pupil,

What terrifying letters you write: fit for the flames is what they are. Just imagine how much you would have to pay to retrieve such a letter forty years from now when you are conductor of the Philharmonic. Well it all comes from the recklessness of youth, that's what it is. Of course I don't mean that you mustn't write such letters (to me, that is), but I mustn't forget to burn them.

You were right about the chuckle – but it was a very sympathetic one. Actually, when I opened your letter I was worried that something had gone wrong. If it's any consolation, things like that incident can sometimes turn out very wrong indeed. (That's Lecture No. VI.) However, I reluctantly admit that they sometimes turn out very well. You takes yer chances – but I'm not sure you're in the proper mood. Anyway, I should have liked to have taken the first train down there to investigate the “situation”, but I controlled myself. […]

I'm a little busy with the new loft – fixing it up, etc. When are you going to find a pretext for another visit. The last one made a deep impression.

Regards to the blue hat. But be careful!

A

Dear L,

Glad you're settled OK. I'll remember the invitation!

Nothing new here – except Virgil was made critic of the
Tribune
which is positively flabbergastious.
⁸⁹

Saw Paul Bowles. He says he is going to Phillie for 2 weeks when
12th Night
goes there, which should be in another few weeks. So look him up. Added 2 more ink pages to the Sonata.

[Robert] Weatherly
⁹⁰
came over to try out
Quiet City
. He played it OK but it still should be changed.

I'm lecturing in Boston on Dec 12. Will you be there then or is that too soon for Xmas Holydays?

I dream about you frequently.

A

Dear Aaron,

Chi[cago] is vergangen! Wieder zu Hause, & a little bit glad to get back to even a semi-normal life. All-night vigils both ways on Chicago trains are not my speed. But the week was fine. Thompson A-1, expenses almost nil, much opera, rehearsals & performances, ballet. […] I missed
Billy
[
the Kid
] by a week. The Kurt Weill was really exciting.
Rosenkavalier
is puffed up, but has extraordinarily beautiful passages. Reiner is a genius. Music is a hard profession. All this have I gleaned, O richer I, from a week in Chicago! […]

To work aussitôt que possible on the
Saloon
. I reel at the thought of royalties. (Isn't that split, by the way, another typical gesture?) I accept $25 of course, beggars can't etcetera, but should they know about the royalties? If not I'll shut up. Am I being a pig in taking them (assuming there will be any?).

I'm afraid I'll still be in Philly on the 12th, but my love to Koussy

& to you,

Lenny

[…]

Dear Aaron,

Shipped off the
Saloon
to you today to dispose of at your convenience to Heinsheimer (sorry, but I'd lost the Boo[sey] & Haw[kes] address). Hope it's good enough. Look especially at the rather turgid & theatrical
ossia
at the end of the slow middle section, & if it gives pain simply cross it out. I did it only because there had to be some theatrical interest at that point (which is, I'm afraid, a bit dull even in the orch.) Don't take it too hard.

I'm desolated that I can't be in Boston with you, but I'll ring up en passant through NYC.

At a cute performance of
Bohème
tonight I ran upon my painter friend Zeil (recall?) who, it seems, has been sick with a housemaid's knee variety of arthritis. Gruesome. I am to see him this week. I quail; I suspect syphilis.

How do you do these days? It seems aeons since I heard from you. Literally. Write soon, very.

Love,

Lenny

Volevi dire, bella come un tramonto …
⁹¹
very nice libretto.

Dear Lennypenny,

I suppose we'll be crossing letters. But anyway –

The piece came and I've been sweating my whatchacallits off ever since trying to put it in shape. Your idea of a manuscript “ready for the printer” is to weep. I'm preparing one of my best lectures for you on said subject. But when are you coming through?? We need a couple of hours to talk over several points. What I'm doing now is mostly crossing the T's and dotting the I's. But I don't want to hand it over the Heins[heimer] until I've seen you.

Was up Boston way and saw that screwball Shapero. Also met John Lessard
⁹²
there, who turns out to be as nice as his Piano Sonata.

Plan to stay over a day or two so that I can get a good look at you.

It just occurs to me –
of course
you'll be coming for Dimitri's debut on Thursday.
⁹³
Or do I err? […] If I guess right, let's have supper zusammen, just to start things properly.

A

Aaron Excelsus,

No, our letters didn't cross, because I couldn't decide whether to cut the President's (Mrs. Bok's) Christmas Party on Friday night, plus a class or two, to be in New York Thurs. night. Lord knows I would have loved to. I had planned so hard on it. But I've been persuaded, & duties is duties, and I must stay. I'll be in NYC Saturday afternoon, probably around 2 or 3 o'clock. I'll call immediately (if not OK let me know like mad) – we can operate on
Saloon
on Saturday & I can hear Dimitri on Sunday, & be home Monday. Damn the Christmas Party anyway.

You sadden me infinitely about the
Saloon
. I thought I had it done. Heinsheimer has been clamoring. I tremble at the thought of your lecture. See you Sat.

Love,

Lenny

Mon pauvre petit chou,

I was so sorry to receive such a sad letter from you – and I wish I could come to Philly for a few days to cheer you up. However this is impossible as I have very recently come back from New York. I went with the B.S.O. and had a simply wonderful time. I saw your sweet friend Dimitri (what a marvelous person). Also Aaron, Chasins, Hindemith, Szigeti etc. I was wined and dined to my heart's content and came back to Boston no longer quite so depressed. Friend Stresemann
⁹⁵
I also saw quite often!!

What a shame you are unable to go off on a “toot”. You need it, Leonard dear, and I mean it seriously when I say that you drive yourself too hard. At least if you keep yourself as busy as you did in Tanglewood and here when you were on “vacation”. Do be careful – you've had one bad cold and now la grippe est everywhere, so button up your stunning new overcoat!

There is little news – concerts, rehearsal, lessons and practising keep me fairly well occupied. A few dates sprinkled in add zest – yet like you I am sad, and, my pet, it is the war. I think of it so often although to what avail??

Kouss is on vacation for three weeks in the Berkshires. He had a cold (yours no doubt!!) and felt rotten in New York. His Shostakovitch had a marvelous ovation in Carnegie.
⁹⁶
Even I was so thrilled when I heard it – the chills ran up and down my spine! And Haydn…

Words of sympathy come to my pen with difficulty but be advised that I fully realize your loss.
⁹⁷
I often think of you and hope that we will see you soon. Mother sends her love and a big kiss. Dad and André also send their best.

Love,

Kiki

Aaron,

I don't know quite what I'm saying – but just a word to tell you I didn't elope or get killed last night – just drunk. In fact, I slept in the Empire from 7:00 to 10:00. Didn't you get a message to call me?

I missed the funeral & spent all day chez les Eisner.
⁹⁸
I am at the moment a half-crazed mystic. Forgive last night's disappearance act.

Expecting you in Philly. Write exactly when.

Love,

Lenny