New York 18/Vll/[47]
Dear Chalupecký,
I’m sending along a few baked cakes again. Choose whichever ones you like: they’re with cottage cheese, poppy seeds, cherries or jam. But don’t force yourself if it doesn’t taste good. I can’t emphasize enough: only choose those which you consider to be first class. I’ve had it up to my neck with those approximate assessments, both mine and other people’s.
I will send an article by Anais Nin and Richard Wright’s Black Boy to Hauková. It’s not a masterpiece, but one of the best pieces of prose that I’ve read here. Perhaps it would be worth translating. It’s true and not literature and that’s what’s nice about it. The author is a black man. I think readers would like it. Both books are my private property. It’s not official.
I intend to write an “epic” that is neither poetry nor prose and that would speak only about human life. It keeps going through my head, but we’ll see once I get to it. But when will that be? If existence does not keep me from it, i.e. concerns over food or death, which is a variation on Stendhal’s statement: if laziness or death does not prevent me from doing so. The decline of literature is apparent in this variation.
But first I would like to make that great “Artist’s Head”, which would be called quite differently if it were not just a theory. And first of all, as part of this: the American novel. Mr. Chalupecký, it will be delightful, something for your publication Listy or for your private needs. All in all, you’re right that it doesn’t matter, it matters less and less. But it’s depressing at times.
Now we’re experiencing that legendary New York heat – it’s not overly hot, just humid, like a greenhouse or like the tropics and so on. I never believed it the way I never believe anything I’m told, but it’s true. I’m still able to bear it quite well, since everyone moans a lot, but it still makes life harder and I’m not feeling well. But this will pass with God’s help. It doesn’t affect my brain, though other things do.
I might also go away for a fortnight, to Cape Cod, where the ship the Mayflower landed. Not exactly there, but close.
Mr. Chalupecký, I would like to talk with you about so much, but as you know the letter has its limits, both external and internal. So, I send you my best wishes and please write me, write me soon, or once again I will not write.
Cordially yours,
M. Součková