inter15.txt.htm -
13 >
Pale Fire as a "Faberge gem. " Are these analogies just?
I was never much interested in the ballet. "Faberge gems"
I have dealt with in Speak, Memory (Chapter Five, p.
III). Balanshin, not Balanchine (note the other
mistransliterations). I am at a loss to understand why the
names of most of the people with whom I am paired begin with a
B.
All of which brings to mind another outspoken emigre,
Mr. Stravinsky. Have you had any associations with him?
I know Mr. Stravinski very slightly and have never seen
any genuine sample of his outspokenness in print.
Whom in Parisian literary circles did you meet in the
thirties, in addition to Joyce and the editorial board of
Mesures?
I was on friendly terms with the poet Jules Supervielle.
Him and Jean Pauhan (editor of Nouvelle revue franзaise)
I especially remember.
Did you know Samuel Beckett in Paris?
No, I did not. Beckett is the author of lovely novellas
and wretched plays in the Maeterlinck tradition. The trilogy is
my favorite, expecially Molloy. There is an
extraordinary scene in which he is crawling through a forest by
dragging himself, 'by catching the crook of his walking stick,
his crutch, in the vegetation before him, and pulling himself
up, wearing three overcoats and newspaper underneath them. Then
there are those pebbles, which he is busily transferring from
pocket to pocket. Everything is so gray, so uncomfortable, you
feel that he is in constant bladder discomfort, as old people
sometimes are in their dreams. In this abject condition there
is no doubt some likeness with Kafka's physically uncomfortable
and dingy men. It is that limpness that is so interesting in