Letters: Erna Ķikure, Jānis Sarma
Published: Inese Birstins, Canada, 1991
Cover Design: Nelson Vigneault
Endsheet Linocuts: Jānis Sarma
ISBN: 0-9693766-5-0
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1958. 2. 5. [?]
…Hesse’s poem that you’ve translated, is beautiful. I think the translation suits the idea in a musical sense. I will soon know it by heart.
This last year has taught me something of the dark side. Awful, but I think – it’s just the beginning.
You once described your daily routine – there was so much time for music. Two composers, whom I sometimes open, are Chopin and Mozart. I don’t have many of the others here. And I think I don’t love anyone more than Chopin. Only I do tire of him, and then I want something different. I was so engrossed in Beethoven’s symphony (in Riga) I started drawing only to his music (9th symph. adagio). From that time on, it stayed like that. When I’m drawing, I’m always thinking of some piece of music. Sometimes I feel it, hear it, sometimes not, and I surface only at the end, with the feeling of the rhythm that’s been guiding me.
Sometimes Professor Vippers (whom we had for Art History at the academy) had picked that up in my sketches. He asked whether I was also involved with music, that you could see it (hear it?) in my drawings. How much, after all, it is all one. Well at last this letter better finish. It’s only excuse is this diaspora existence.
Yours, E. Dz.
I can’t finish yet. I don’t know why. I wish I could talk out everything that’s getting me down, and then I’d be able to start working. But that’s not the way. I should work everything out of me. From Sydney, I got about 5 copies of the presentations that they have been having every month. I read those till my head was spinning from all the “lofty ambitions”, “eternity”, “battle spirit”, ”restlessness”, “superhuman” and so on.
It’s the third day already, of awful, relentless rain. It’s already washing away the plants. Maybe there will be floods. Extreme weather.
I haven’t read all your works yet. I’ll send them back when I have. I had to laugh when you said – first I ought to publish something, then I’d get more respect. Yes, that’s how it is. In Sydney I also saw some quite doubled over with respect. But I also saw a young face, respectful, but quite delightful. And then for the first time I thought of my girls in this context… Sometimes it has been hard seeing Inese, my older one, throwing herself so into her studies, ballet, reading (she reads a huge amount) – and I thought about how all this youthful effort would end up being given to some Australian. Of course – he’ll be very nice. Seeing that young Latvian face, I felt better. We are still together. But we are losing so much. We need young people’s literature too. Will you write some?
Cheers, E. Dz.
24.11.59.(Wyong)
Your letter had been waiting for a long time in Wyong. Dzidra hasn’t been assigned the job of postman yet. She’s still a bit afraid of staying back in town by herself, because even though it’s a small town, what makes it scary is the big Sydney highway going through it, where cars speed like crazy.
I understand very well your relationship to your work and to the characters you live with in the work. Only I’ve not experienced it fully myself, because for the moment I can really devote myself only to minor works… Hopefully you will soon create a new world for yourself again – another bigger work.
The work you’re having to take on socially will perhaps feel more onerous at the beginning than it will later. You’ll meet new people, with new thoughts. That’s a big thing. There isn’t really anything bigger than that.
About the Sydney Latvian Culture Festival Writers’ Evening I only know that, no, I don’t know – I heard, that it will be a parade of new poetry. But whether that means young poets, or poets with new works, I don’t know. Didn’t Šmugajs say in one of his reviews that Lācis will have to read his poetry? If so, then that would mean that the poet’s age has nothing to do with it, just the age of the poems.
I don’t think I’ll take part in any of it – I haven’t turned into a poet and I haven’t printed my etchings for the art exhibition… I don’t know whether I’ll be able to get to this festival myself. Everything always depends on the chooks! The everyday will determine what festivity is to be had.
But the girls are very keen, especially Inese, and she wants the family to come too…
Dzidra is learning thoroughly, day in, day out, drawing little figures (faces and body movements), and she does sport, jumps high. But her participation in the State sports carnival was disrupted by her getting a cold. Inese doesn’t seem to be throwing the discus at all any more, because she has no time. She is very busy at University. Has to read so much that she can’t get through it all. Already at the start, she was wondering whether three languages and psychology might not be too much, time-wise. And so it is. She likes French best at the moment. Dzidra too.
I read as many of Inese’s books as I can, and then we sometimes discuss them, and we both like that. She also has to write something about Virginia Woolf. We just both read Mrs Dalloway. Inese was home for a week between finishing lectures and starting exams. She wanted to lie under the trees and study, but it rained all week, and not one day could be spent under the trees. At the moment she’s doing exams… Inese left me Anouilh‘s plays (in French) – I read those in one sitting… But Mauriac and Aymé I just can’t get into. Whereas two books by Camus were delectable. I don’t even know why. The language is no longer what gets in the way. Or perhaps still a little…
I’m writing my journal again… Taking the risk at last, should I lose that too… I’ll give the written pages to Inese. She is my good little angel. She is a dear girl. All winter she went around in long pants – would that she could show that nasty anti “pants princesses” fellow (in the Latvian paper) just how sweet and gentle she looks in pants – like a little gnome, others said so too – slim, feminine. Yes, femininity is such that, do what you may, it always shines through. I showed Inese the letter about “pants princesses”. Do you know what she said? “I look most feminine – when I’ve got nothing on. But one does have to wear something after all, and I’ve decided, that as in winter, so in summer – something warmer in winter, and what’s cooler in summer…”
Of course she’s a corrupted girl, and I’m the one who corrupted her. The first thing I said, when she was packing her clothes to go to Sydney, to winter at the University – “buy yourself some warm, long pants.” and she listened to me.
“Ah, the times, the times, like water, blue,
over, over my head – flow…”
(or was it “thrust”?)
So the times flow also over traditions, opinions, virtues and vices, and that’s how it should be.
Come to the Culture festival. You should still come and mingle amid this world. It is actually quite lovely and good.
As to your dealings with H. Rudzītis, it doesn’t surprise me. It probably happens quite readily, that big wigs behave like that. So, please send me “Neighbour” and the address for “Laiks”. I’ll send it myself. (I don’t have a single copy of Neighbour). Have you any advice on what I should put in the accompanying letter? I know Rudzītis a little, I mean in as much as in Germany I brought him a few or my stories, and he replied that he had read them, and that – the writing was good, the depictions interesting. He kept one to publish in his magazine “Laiks”, but it never happened because immediately he got permission to go to America. Of course he wouldn’t remember me. And that doesn’t matter.
How lovely that I will get a prize. I need the money – for a swimming costume and a fountain pen. I write with the ones discarded by the children. As you can see, this very one makes ink blots.
My student is here. I saw a bike whiz past the window. Now the radio music will go on relentlessly till evening. Hit songs. The only good thing is that I’ve played good music to them, even if not played brilliantly, and so that will have somewhere entered their souls. They at least respond to the classical music that I have played.
Yours, E. Dz.
P.S. Sad, that your cousin has parted ways with you and everything has been left unclear between you, not smoothed out. But it often happens like that, and it sort of shows that nothing really ends, everything keeps going. ditto.
Wyong, 8.1.60.
How to find, for this day
a place among the rest?
A stone does – as it falls,
catching, rumbling sharply.
Then lying still lifeless,
among the rest.
So this day falls,
catching, rumbling sharply.
Then falling silent,
not living further.
So this day falls,
which makes me sad,
which make me want to save it.
Thank you for the lovely Christmas gift – a book. Don’t be surprised at this paper. It’s Dzidra’s (some Christmas present, and so I also had to take one such pink and scented page and write on it).
I went to the Culture Festival concert, and briefly met with Bārda. He will have already told you. I received my prize – now I’ll have to send something to you, to prove that I’ve earned the prize. I say – have to send to you, because even if others were also prize givers, still the stories pass through your hands.
Happy New Year! Yours, E. Dz.
Wyong, 14.3.60.
…I’m reading Anouilh’s plays, one volume after another. We would love to have the Racine. I say ‘we’ – Inese will take part in this. Also in German, we will love receiving any book you can spare. Inese just finished a German exam. She was studying for it like crazy. French will remain her main, final subject…
I’m writing only my journal… I don’t have time for stories, just fragments, fragments. Rabacis sent back “My Neighbour” with just one comment – “Unfortunately that in the immediate future we will not be able to use it”. I sent the manuscript to Rudzītis even though Rabacis is the editor. I almost had the feeling that Rabacis had felt hurt. Doesn’t matter. What good can it do me anyway. I need to work, write, and I need money…
Yours, E. Dz.
23. August, 1960.
I cloak myself with my woes
as with warm earth,
I dig in still deeper, deeper.
Like a mole in its blindness
lying there for a long time,
I listen life’s pulse still beats.
Once more the earth will open
when a strong hand knocks,
will watch the day with new shoots.
I’m reading in the paper about your pleasant, successful writers’ evening. I want to write (it’s probably becoming risky to write to you – you have been reading from my letters at the writers’ evening…) but there’s no time, no time. While I’m doing my chores, one word at a time I think out my stories and then when there’s a spare moment, I don’t feel like thinking back through it from the beginning. There’s the feeling that that’s already been done, and I want to think something different. But not a line has been written.
I briefly rushed in to see the (Latvian) Writers’ Festival in Sydney. If I hadn’t read in the paper, that you and all the other seniors would be there – I wouldn’t have done it, but for that I made the effort. And yet – you weren’t there. And I really thought you would be. I rang Inese to hurry with flowers to the poetry evening. I don’t know who got given her ‘shocking pink’ carnations, but it wasn’t you. For a moment I saw the other writers – Ābele, Neboise, Blicava, Leja. But there wasn’t time to talk longer. In the evening, both Inese and I were thinking of going to the ball, but there were two things missing, so I said to the girl – just take your book in your hand and I will go back home.
I’m sending you the story that was read at the (Latvian) Writers’ Festival. It’s rather rushed, but that’s how it will have to be. I wrote it in three hours sitting in a milk bar in Wyong, where I’d escaped to from home. Even though I can think here (sometimes), but I can’t put thoughts on paper. My nerves can no longer tolerate the endless anxiety having to battle against the opposition here. Inese too, in these holidays, was here at home only one week out of the four, because she can’t work here. So it goes. I’m waiting for summer. Summer is generally a little better. Dad is not so nervous, everyone is not so cramped together, the nights are warmer, and I’ll be able to write sitting near the window.
Well I’ve just about done with my own complaints. It wouldn’t be like that in an actual meeting – then life is real, alive and one doesn’t have to think about one’s woes, everything then feels easy, but when writing a letter, one first has to air all the grievances, only then can one start writing.
Thank you for publishing the poem in the paper. I always feel awkward when my poems are published. As though embarrassed, bad – too revealing. But what can be done, everything has to be revealed, only then is it worthwhile to one and all, and they can then say yea or nay.
[poem included]
It feels like a year since you wrote.
Yours, E. Dz.
P.S. In K. Freimanis‘ presentation, I was given recognition for my work, similar to what you have said. So then, I should get to work.
Wyong, 23. Nov.1960.
Your letter was so good, with pleasant thoughts, acknowledgements, assessments, that I answered it as soon as I got it in the evening. My reply grew so long, that I couldn’t finish it, and when I read over what I’d written a few days later, you know what happens. It feels like I’ve written too much. And perhaps I have. Who knows the right amount? But now for ages already I’ve been thinking – I wish there was a letter from you. I know – there won’t be, as I haven’t replied. So it goes.
I’m sending you two stories that I’ve recently finished. One straight, the other cheeky. If it comes my turn to have something in the paper, if it survives the critique, you can publish it. If not – I’ll try quickly to finish something else. Even though I’ve already taken on too much. I promised to go to Melbourne! Maybe you know that already? And I agreed to have them organise an evening for me in Sydney. (At the end of January – a presentation by K. Freimanis and I don’t know what else I’ll manage.) There’s only a month left till Christmas and also till the trip your way. I can feel that again it’s going to be head over heels for me, to try to keep my promises.
I went to Ābele’s evening, but didn’t get there for the beginning, and really didn’t see much. Just a bit of socialising ‘over coffee’. And there that is different to what someone from the country could imagine…
Endless bits and pieces to do here, eating up time, as it’s always been. I haven’t written any new poems, but I still have some that I haven’t sent you. If I have time tomorrow, I’ll copy some out and add them.
Right now it’s evening, and even though I’ve drunk a cup of coffee, I can’t do anything more productive. I’m reading some Camus. I like him, even though it’s a while since I’ve read in French, and I’m having to use the dictionary more often. But no matter.
I hope that you are feeling spring (though I can’t feel it much). I hope to get to Melbourne in summer, and that will be good.
What you said about my poems was, I think, the truest thing you’ve ever said about my writing. That sort of short, little poem is always for me so closely tied to that creative impulse. If such a moment doesn’t occur, that small moment when the incident opens up and flows out into words, then the poem doesn’t happen. Still, if I’d been thinking about poetry lately, some such incident would have occurred and I would have something to send you. Please write again before I have to arrive in Melbourne.
Yours, E. Dz.
Wyong, 7.1.61.
And now I have to write to you, who aren’t exactly what you used to be. You’re something alive, more elusive, more mysterious. After all, it has been only thoughts, not the person themselves, which we have corresponded with all these years. Something more like an inanimate image, object or – robot. And now, knowing the actual person to whom I am writing, it is somewhat harder to write, to not become monotonous, to not talk only about oneself, as I’ve done in the past. I wanted to talk, and I did. Now I think – I should carry on a conversation, not a monologue, should be talking about something that would also interest you, would be worth something to you, not just what I need to “get out of my system”. But, if letters do continue back and forth, I will nevertheless have to talk about myself…
Tonight, for the first time after coming home, I am by myself. The others went to the movies. I’ve got three hours. One I already spent banging on the piano, (it got a good hiding, and it doesn’t sound like Mrs. Kreišman’s piano, or the way a piano should sound).
Dzidra had stood in for me well. The ducklings are all healthy, everything is in order, only Dzidra herself is looking paler, having done battle with egg cleaning. And here it has been raining and raining, the grass has grown up over our heads. I think it’s never before been so overgrown.
After Melbourne, after the city, here it’s really jungle, but wild and beautiful. If only one could create something from it all, the hills, the forest, the clouds, the live human beings, the live birds and animals, which burn out here.
Tonight you are all at Mrs. Kreišman’s place. I must say – I don’t wish to be there, chatting, assessing. I should work now. The trip to your city, those few days, the people – are quite enough for me for a while… Everything, everything was really very good, better than I could have expected, but it’s hard to maintain “very good”. Things must slide down again. So that that doesn’t happen, it’s good that I am alone and can gather strength, so that next time, when I’m again in your midst, I will have grown…
Perhaps tonight, you will also mention me. Will you then say, “I thought she was a tall, slim young woman, but she isn’t. I was disappointed.”
I always feel that others are living life, but for me, for a long time already, it flies by, I can’t grasp it, it whizzes past my eyes. Rare are the moments when it pauses. In the evening before my trip, and I can say for the whole time I was there, I felt I was living life. I am very happy with my visit to Melbourne. I would have felt even better, if Mrs. Kreišmane hadn’t tried so hard to work me out, understand me, see me, judge me… But she was very sweet and gave one or two useful observations about others. I usually take a long time to get to know people, and often probably err in my assessments. But I don’t fuss too much with that. That’s why Mrs. Kreišmane’s rapid probing of me sort of frightened me, and I was perhaps more reserved with her than I would have wanted.
I’m writing out (on a separate page) the programme for my Sydney evening, as has been compiled by Mr. Freimanis. He writes that he will divide his presentation into sections and will talk before each story and poem. The last story is to be read by me. The first two stories and poems will be read by actors from the Sydney Latvian theatre group.
Please find a spot in the programme where it would be good to add your poem. I would be very happy about that.
Yours, E. Dz.
Presentation of E. Ķikure’s works. 29.1.1961.
Sp.Klauverts – on newly published books. (5 mins)
K. Freimanis (20):
Short story: “Sunday in the middle of the week” (20mins)
Poems: Cracked fibre wall
Such a gentle night
Stay for a moment under the stars
Talk calmly to me
No words to say
2 or 3 solo songs sung by E. Arone-Freimane
Interval
Poems: Day dawns like in Versaille’s park
Chop snappily, so that splinters fly
I want to wake, wake
I run from place to place
Short story: “Our Neighbour” (25mins)
Poems: I toss a word
The big silence
I’m asking for a word from you
I call the word from afar
I cloak myself in my woes
The hour of loneliness
Short story: “With the trees” (read by the author).
Wyong, 1961, 16 Jan.
Evening. And the heaviness of the day presses down so much, that I want to stretch out in peace. But as for writing – nothing has been done.
On Thursday, before 6 in the morning, the telephone rang (we have one now at home, Tumbi Umbi 124. I had slept in, because I had twice as much work as usual yesterday, and still half asleep I couldn’t understand much. Inese is in Sydney, and I thought she must be ringing. But an unfamiliar woman’s voice was slowly saying: “Inese got a distinction…” I thought, O God, what’s happened now, what must I brace myself for, and what is it that she’s got? The voice continued “…in French, and a credit in German…” And then I started to realise what they were talking about. Inese’s faculty results had just been in the paper. Her friend was ringing me. Then it was Inese at the phone! Her friend’s mother had the paper already at five-thirty in the morning and woken the “children” and they were ringing me. Of course it was good news, because Inese had been scared whether she would pass the exams. Tomorrow there’s still the English exam results, but she’s not so worried about those, because she thinks she did better in those. I hope tomorrow’s news will be as good as today’s. Then Inese will be able to relax. With all sorts of romance battles at exam time, she was struggling a bit.
Later I got a letter from K. Freimanis, and then one from you. There was also good news in both those letters. A good day. With good news.
But now it’s evening, and I can’t even answer letters because I’m so tired. Only on one day did I work on my story since getting back from Melbourne, (I escaped from home, hid in a milk bar, the same place I wrote “Lalaila Street Hotel”).
It was lovely at Mrs. Kreišmane’s and I couldn’t have wished to be anywhere better, only she started to scare me a little and I didn’t feel so relaxed every time she tried to discover me, instead of her lost, imagined, Mrs. Ķikure.
I usually approach people without pretending I’ll suss them out. Usually also I’m without masks, thinking the best of people. And it can happen that I’m taken for being naive, but it’s not worth trying to fight it. It seems I can get along with intelligent people, and there are the same number of those among ordinary folk, as among educated ones.
It was good to see Mrs. Tamuža together with Lācis. I liked that evening very much, only it was a bit uncomfortable when Mrs. Tamuža ripped into Lācis so much, and me, hardly at all… Thank you for the poem you sent for my evening. I hope it won’t be too nasty.
Yours, E. Dz.
20.Jan.
Paper as white as snow, so bright, that I have to squint and I don’t know what I could say, so white, but I feel like writing.
I’m rereading “The Sorrows of Young Werther” (Inese’s book. She now has to read Goethe), and reading it is like being 18 again, with the Aiviekste flowing beyond the garden… What forgotten things are mentioned there: Frühling, Brunnen, Tahle…
Yes, Inese has happily begun 3rd year Uni, and is busy buying books for the coming year. She said – the [Latvian] Culture Days are ordinary, now she’s interested in the Writer’s Days. [Latvian Writer’s festival in Sydney].
There in Melbourne, that church space where the writers were reading their works, was in a way beneficial for them – it made them look some how serious in their endeavours, even if you couldn’t hear as well, what they wanted to say. It was good that you had got me a space at the table.
“My Evening” is getting closer. My delight about that is somewhat dampened by the fact that they will be reading from “Our Neighbour” because it includes some of my life, mainly – mentions a name that should be left out. Before you publish it in the paper, I will send you another copy with some items crossed out, to leave out the words – my husband. This will be a typed copy, and so that will also be easier for Zigurds Bārda to work with.
I think I’m writing to you now because I would like to write something. Maybe that’s the influence of Goethe. Pity the lives that don’t get well examined, neither in their works, nor in real life, nor in the work of others. Till now, I had hoped to get free and for once, live differently, but it doesn’t happen, and doesn’t happen. Dzidra wants to finish school here. OK – three years. I won’t survive three years, the way I survived so far.
I live on some sort of illusion, that once more I will have something free, beautiful – I don’t know what, something like what I feel reading the words of Frühling, Brunnen, Tahle… Now I have to understand that I won’t be able to find anything like that. Despite how lovely it was to go to Melbourne, and how welcoming and kindly people were, as though life was still so rich. It will all depend also on how I’ll manage to hold on to my physical strength, vitality and youthfulness. I’ve some sort of malady, upset in my body, which was bothering me a few months ago already. But I don’t want to give in to it – my body has to serve me properly, without complaint.
The same as I serve.
E. Dz.
23. 1. 61.
Oddly, this letter was reread but didn’t get destroyed. I went blackberry picking today, and I can forgive the whole world, not just such a letter. Yes, I thought about my passion for racing off into the bush – the passion is big. Like those of fishermen and hunters. Forgive that my pen starts spilling tears, where there’s no need to cry.
Yes, going out onto the road this morning, seeing how it races downhill and then climbs up the other hill, twice as high as where I’m standing; seeing the swallows up in the tree tops, so green, so green, lush and alive; knowing there are cliffs, vines, rocks with aboriginal carvings on them, knowing there are creatures, snakes, hearing in the stillness of the morning a hundred faint bird calls, (the strongest this morning was the pigeon), then I wish that you would be coming down to the crossroad to meet me and somewhere further would come Mrs. Kreišmane – and then you would both know why Melbourne’s botanical garden didn’t do much for me. Here nature is fierce, gentle, wild, good and evil all at once, and it’s not – child’s play. Some farmers here clear a piece of land, wrest it from nature, and think – that they are ruler over it, but if the farmer happens to look away for a longer while – nature will grab back what was taken. Blackberries, Tea Trees, other bushes, trees – they flow in like floods, grab you with a thousand arms. That same farmer, or some other, can start the struggle all over again. Of course, nature has to submit. The forest on the other side of the hill has already all been flattened and that won’t come back, and from that side, the built-up area is encroaching. Cities are just as strong as forests and nature, even stronger. Much stronger. And the city – is also beautiful. That’s why I will go again to Melbourne, if I can get away from my chores.
When I get back from the bush, I look after the ducks, the cow, get breakfast ready. Right now in the oven there’s a huge loaf baking with blackberries on top, something in the German style. Then my dear fräulines will arise and drink coffee. I wished they would also come blackberrying, but – school! And anyway, I can’t get them to be so enthused as I am. These age-old passions are probably going to end with me. But – you can never tell.
You would straight away tell me off, if you were here, for wasting time racing off into the bush.
I need it. I sometimes have to be amid something free and strong, so that it wakes up my own strength in me. Now I could write. But the morning is over, and the day isn’t going to let me write. And yet, and yet, if I have the strength, maybe I will wrest something from it. If not, then nothing. It all depends on my strength.
This morning after blackberrying, and before baking, I read a bit of Werther. Perhaps you can hear it in my words. Sometime I have hovered in the middle of one of my short sentences, thinking to insert something metres long. On such a morning, reading Werther, perhaps I could do it. He had some the length of the whole page. They could be good weapons for a writer.
K. Freimanis asked whether sometimes use of the “stream of consciousness” technique in my writing is deliberate, when it is noticeable, when I’m trying to capture the atmosphere of the moment. I said – no. Of course I will have to start using everything more consciously, even though that can never replace that which comes unconsciously. That’s why I had to run off to the bush to pick blackberries.
The children right now are eating, praising the “blackberry strūdel”.
Nothing can replace real life. However hard one has to battle to get a moment for art, it nevertheless is the life of (my) art. I don’t know whether characters such as Peter, the horse, or Joe have actually lived the way I feel them, but that’s the way I saw them, loved them and without that I would not have been able to write about them.
Yours, E. Dz.
Wyong, 30.1.61.
I’m back home again.
Firstly a great big thank you for the “Aiviekste” poem. How could you think that it could be a nasty surprise? With that you only revealed what otherwise wouldn’t have been known – ie, that in that river lives one whiskered Neptune. The poem was read very well, and with prior, well considered preparation, by Lita Zemgale (in a blueish, translucent, woollen dress, standing in semi-shadow) such that every now and again I got shivers up my spine. That was perhaps the most memorable moment of the evening. I was, if not jealous of you, then as least with my head humbly bowed. Thank you!
Otherwise, the program was shortened by the dreadful heatwave. There was no-one to read “Neighbour”, and Freimane-Arone couldn’t sing the planned songs. Only one story was read – “Near Trees” – and that had to be read by me. I didn’t like reading it, because I was so anxious, but that story doesn’t contain tension where one could pour it all out. I was holding myself back, like a horse that doesn’t want to be restrained. I read really badly, getting words wrong, almost whole sentences, without expression, sometimes not hearing myself what I was reading, but perhaps loud enough for others to hear, which was maybe the only good thing. And once I publicly apologised when I wanted to shorten something and it didn’t work, and patiently I had to keep reading as it was written. At least they enjoyed that. Inese said that it was one of those small such moments that happen for me sometimes, and with my characteristic grace, I “save” them more than by striving to be perfect.
Freimanis spoke flatteringly enough. Said that what I write is literature; it has a strange freshness, individuality, vitality. He found a similarity between my poems and those of the ‘big guys’. The only bit that wasn’t praise was perhaps the statement that if I don’t find the right word to exactly describe my experience, my poem can be weak. He said that I’ve already taken my place in Latvian literature, but that I’m still at the stage of growing and creating. (approximately like that).
Lija Gailīte read the poem “I want to wake, to wake” very well, under truly appalling light. I don’t know why I, and also Freiman, had to read under such a light, like under a spotlight for criminals… But for the mentioned poem, it was good.
Some young girl, whose name I have forgotten, read the poem “I called the word from afar” very sincerely and beautifully. Into that small poem was encapsulated one of my real, profound moments – that is – I had wanted it to. And I was almost embarrassed that my words were unable to do it. But the young girls reading put into it, and added to it, exactly what words hadn’t been able to say. I’d already beforehand, been curious – how would that poem be read? She read all the rest of the poems well too, a little softly, but sincerely and expressively.
Both in my conversations and my readings I think I came across like some little puppet, with something outside me pulling the strings. Oh well.
Wyong, 5. Feb. 1961.
I’m sending you “Neighbour”… I just crossed out the end a bit… I would like the paper not to publish it in too many instalments, as it’s a story that should be read in one go. Also Kreišmane’s “Boarder” doesn’t benefit from the many instalments. I liked the last few better. How the boarder rejects Mrs. Kaktin’s Christmas visit I think was very well written. Otherwise, all of it could be more concise, but maybe it’s her characteristic to have a slow, gradual depiction in long sentences.
You said that your feet had suffered from walking… You should sleep with feet up higher. Good for resting the legs. There will be lots of walking again at the Writer’s Days.
See now – Ābele’s predictions and preparations are over with, and the talk about it after all wasn’t without reason.
And life goes on.
At the moment I can’t write anything, not even poems. That evening has knocked me off my rails a bit. Even with the best intentions and wishes, I can’t get started. It’s better without telling anyone, on one’s own, to make some notes. At the moment it’s worse than ever with regard to the same old lack of time. Every week has something going on, which takes up an unexpected amount of time such that even the usual chores can’t get done. I’m sick of whining. Best would be to crawl into the forest, under some rock, with the natives…
Yours, E. Dz.
Wyong, 19.2.61.
I’m sending you a couple of poems. Nothing is happening at the moment. Thank you for “Jauna Gaita”. And thanks to your son for his comments (on Dz. Freimanis’ poem). First I happened to read Ieva Primane’s open letter to Dz. Freimanis and that left a very bad impression on me. She seemed to me full of bravado, empty and not refined. I put the paper aside, upset. Someone writes, and the next person picks through it and shreds it. (I don’t know Dz. Freimanis’ poem). Then I read Vitaut Kalve’s piece about the same Freimanis’ poem, which I’m not familiar with, and I felt quite uplifted. It’s a valuable, clear, calm piece writing that says something, doesn’t put anything down, even if it doesn’t praise much. Reading such a piece makes one feel like living and working.
I had forgotten your painful remembrance day this month. I was so stuck in my own battles, that I didn’t remember anything.
Coming back from Sydney, I started to suffer the repercussions – about “Neighbour”. I know that not everyone thinks like that woman who, when she saw me, immediately said: “I’m amazed at your courage. I’m amazed at your courage. About that Joe…” But perhaps that will be a thorn in many people’s eyes, and my whole hope of entering that society will be over. It’s hard here in my bush, too, so that for a while I didn’t know myself where I’d rather be. Or whether, anymore, I could find a place for myself, where I’d want to be. All the time I had been sort of saving myself for a kind of hope for something in the future. Now I see how baseless that is. Where and how could I be? I have grown into what is, and also what never has been, my life. I have lived life without living. It’s not worth talking about it.
I won’t go to Sydney for a while. I go there about once a year. Now even less. Is that possible? But to Eglītis’ evening, where I would like to go, I won’t go. Perhaps I’ll go to Melbourne.
I just got a letter from the musician E. Freimanis’ wife, to please send E. Freimanis my poems, for maybe some new composition. Her letter was very sweet. Well, that would be good, if something from what I’ve said is useful and stays behind, and which doesn’t get stuck with those everyday gossipy judgements with which I’ve been being judged since “Neighbour”. A shame that that “Neighbour” had to be read in the paper. In a book, it would show a different face, because it does have this different side, which doesn’t have anything to do with my life, nor some morality (meaning whether one has the courage to show it and talk about it…)
Yours, E. Dz.
Wyong, 9.3.61.
I don’t know why I copied these verses out of my journal.
They are – my days. A full page of them. But not much time for anything else. Neboise asked for an essay for the Writers’ Days, and I promised one. I have written a few lines. What will you read at the Writers’ days? A poem?
The play waits. A couple of pages written down…
Freimanis said, he’d be fine with organising an evening for me somewhere. Maybe he himself would go and give a paper and the locals could provide the readings. But where? Have you any advice? I don’t know anyone anywhere.
Well then, it seems your Damberg evening went well.
…It’s a strange evening outside, with a warm, dry wind, with stars jumping about in the black eucalypt branches. Lovely.
And isn’t it funny – Erdmanis knows my name. I’m out there in the world.
Yours, E. Dz.
Wyong, 19.4.61.
I received the manuscripts you sent. Thank you for experimenting with organising the Journal Pages. They work better that way. There’s more distance, not so personal. Even though everything I write is. Just now I had a look at all those pages, and I feel revolted. But I don’t know what I could have said differently.
People, who are so horribly tied to an incompatible other, within such a close bond as is a marriage, probably have no other option than to talk, to scream and shout it all out of their system. To go over and over it, to blame oneself, to blame everything else, and to work it through and out of themselves, every day. That’s what Strindberg did in his “The Defence of a Fool”, as did Jaunsudrabiņš in “Don’t Look at the Sun”, and countless others, both big and small souls. But if you can’t do it well enough, powerfully enough and so on, then it is a pitiable thing. And I have not gotten very far with it. I can’t pull it all together and haven’t got a climax. It’s as though I’m subdued in the face of it, as though pacified, but I will have to try to conquer it. I’ll be forced to do it. But for now I’ll escape into small poems. They are cleaner, have more sun in them. But will they help me? Who knows.
Now I ought to be doing more, not just writing a letter and doing mending for winter. But one can’t reject that either, one must needs write a letter and mend stuff for winter. In the last few days, autumn has been noticeable. To feel it is fine, but soon enough it will cause me much grief.
In the end, I also sent Freimanis that “Farmer” (character sketch, you said), but maybe he will already have sent all the work to “Tilts”. He hasn’t said any more about repeating my evening, perhaps because his presentation, along with some more of my pieces, will be published in the magazine, and that might be the end of the matter for the time being.
What’s happening at your end? Has your desire to work returned? Won’t you write another novel? Why not? Perhaps about these diaspora times? Or – something timeless?
I’m only receiving your letters rarely now. Perhaps you could write them again to Berkeley Vale, via Wyong. I’m receiving my mail without disturbance now.
Evening.
I ought to write some poem and then go to bed. But I can do neither. I’m just sitting and waiting to see what will happen. Nothing will happen. It’s already late at night, and nothing can happen. And then when it isn’t late, nothing happens because it’s not late yet. That’s about how the days go. Of course, I fight, fight, fight. Where I’m at, how I’m doing – no-one has any idea. Me myself, neither. And when I realise that, I get awfully scared, but there’s also a strange curiosity – what will come next?
I shouldn’t send this letter. I don’t know whether I will. Yours, E. Dz.
26.4.61.
I received “Song of the Magpie”. I reread it and I thought it seemed much, much weaker than I once thought, when I first sent it. …Maybe I’ll be able to re-do it, so that I would be more or less satisfied, but I don’t know when I’ll manage to do it. A big blackness has descended, I can’t settle down to single thing, that ought to be done calmly and on-goingly. As soon as I start something, I think I’m missing out on something else, something bigger and more important. Then I start meditating, and thrust some poem out onto the page. Last night I woke – it was raining steadily and loudly, and it sounded like voices. A long poem formed, but I wasn’t able to get up out of bed, put on the light and write. I thought I would remember it. But at such times, I generally lose the rhythm. I remember the idea, even some of the words, but the rhythm of how it went is gone, and so most of it is lost. Next time I’ll have to get up and write. Sometimes thoughts in the night have a lot of strength and freshness. Other times, they look weak in the light of day.
I quite understand, that sometime you have something else in mind rather than just smiles. But that’s how it goes – whom else could you tell? Sometimes it’s better to save oneself by smiling and holding one’s tongue.
Right now there’s blue sky among the clouds, a peaceful afternoon, and I could sleep, looking up at the sky. But the day goes on.
E. Dz.
Wyong, 11.June.61.
Your letter did me good. Made me feel happy, and strong. But life is so hard that that dissipates rather fast. So fast, that a reply doesn’t even manage to get written in that moment of strength. Now that’s already gone. It did help me live, but nothing ‘eternal’ remains of it. Not even lines in my journal. When willI feel stronger, I don’t know. I’m tired of struggling.
It’s night time. I haven’t got your letter with me here where I’m writing. I don’t want to go into the other room and make a noise and perhaps wake Dzidra, so I’ll write a reply just from what I remember of your words. I think you said that you don’t have a lot of things you need. That’s how it is, that’s how it is, that’s how it is here, and there, and in many places – we don’t have what we need.
I knitted a jacket, or something like a jacket, for Inese, from very thick wool, which you can’t use on the knitting machine. I knitted by hand, and so I wanted to sit, and knit, and knit and not do anything else for a long, long time, day and night. Just keep making stitches and thinking about something unimportant, thinking my way back in time to something good from old times and somehow to give that, put it, knit it into the jacket, not really knowing, not being able to tell whether that is now, or was then, or will be? Am I who I once was? etcetera.
It seems like there’s less and less time for myself. Reading has long gone. For a month I haven’t written poems, don’t even try. But I still look at the sky.
…Under the green trees, to hang out clean washing and look up at the sky, is an everyday moment, that brings enlightenment…
I don’t know whether this letter will find its way to you. Letters written in the night get subjected to the next day’s censorship.
All I want is to be relieved of my daily obligations for one month. I’m like a horse that’s never unbridled. I’m staying up late at nights now, otherwise I have no time at all to myself. But I don’t get anything done. But I’m still alive. I suffer, and to suffer is to live. I also loathe my shackles, and that also is to live. I’m still gathering my strength. I believe that I am.
E. Dz.
26.7.61
Yesterday I wrote you a long (probably tearful) letter, but today I got a letter from Mrs. Neboise, sent her a reply, and so let go some of my talk with you. For example, about the essay. So I’m writing you a new letter – hopefully, not so lengthy.
I’ve developed some kind of inflammation of the lungs, which is giving me a high temperature. And what with walking around with that in the wind and cold, I’ve got some sort of inflammation in the forehead. Now I’m doing the jobs that can’t be put off, and am lying down. That’s how it will be till the warmer weather comes. If it doesn’t get worse, then if Inese comes home in the second week of August, and I can have a few days where I don’t have to go out in the wind, maybe I’ll get to the Writers’ Days, but – maybe not. I’m feeling very sick. I rewrote the essay and will send it to Neboise. I started the essay in a good mood, and now it’s hard to get it finished – but I’ll have to do it this weekend.
For Silkalns (in case he has rung again) I can’t say anything. Better say that nothing will come of me there, because the chances that I will get there are slim. I hope that your ear is taking note, and that you will finish writing your essay.
Yours, E. Dz.
2.8.61
I’m in Sydney. I’ve got yet some other sort of fever, and that has taken its toll on my heart. One illness after another, or one causing the next, nothing is left of me. I half escaped from home, when I just couldn’t go on. I’m at Inese’s. The doctor thinks that I should stay at least two weeks with Inese, or in some sort of rest home. How it will all go – I don’t know. Tomorrow Inese will ring home to see how Dzidra is managing the housework. Inese at the moment is in the middle of essay writing, and I’m getting in her way. Though all day she’s actually at lectures, and in the evening she studies in the University library till 10 p.m. – so I’m not really disturbing her all that much. I arrived yesterday. This morning I went to the doctor, and in the afternoon I’ve been reading a bit, and looking at reproductions of French paintings, and in between battling all kinds of illnesses. It’s quite amazing, that suddenly everything has come down on me, perhaps just because for 10 years I didn’t have a single day in bed being sick. Just had to control it and carry on. And it’s better like that. But right now, I have to give in. I don’t know whether the medicine the doctor gave me has also caused gastric ‘flu. I couldn’t hold down anything I ate. I thought – now I’ll have gone through enough. Yet the heart is apparently “not too bad”, only the blood pressure is up (which I’ve never had before). The doctor thinks it’s from the all the battling with the various illnesses, and from not wanting to give in to them.
There. It feels better to have complained about it all.
Today I read some Australian University’s art faculty publication, a small volume with modern poetry, a couple of drawings, not worth taking very seriously, and a few reflections about some poet, Laura Riding.
Then, after 20 years, I had a look Heine’s songs. Strange, how they sound now.
Here, in Inese’s little room, surrounded by books, small as a little nest, one could pore and pore over the pages, if only one could hold it together… I wish I wasn’t scared of the thought – how is it back home? But as it was, I was no longer of any use there.
Tomorrow I will try to rewrite the essay about hunting, but I’m worried about how that will turn out. Well – I’ll just have to manage, so that it doesn’t make too much trouble for Mrs. Neboise. I promised to send it to her yesterday or today, but I couldn’t manage it.
Looking at reproductions of seen and unseen French art works – it seems that a person cannot learn how to look at art through theory, not even so much from constantly seeing it, as from inner preparedness – from life. Of course, some could live 3 lives and never get close to art. But each one can only get near, discover, see another’s work only through what they have themselves come to through some personal experience. And even that takes time.
I want someone to replace me at home for a longer time, and then, if only like Diogenes, to live in some barrel, to have a look at what others have done (for inspiration) – and then to do my own work. Without preconditions, without demands one was once taught to comply with – just for the glory of God.
But women are rather too well bred, to dare to do it. Too obedient every where and in everything to traditions and being decent. But those are thing that are useful only – when ignoring them for the sake of art.
Yours, E. Dz.
P.S. It’s evening. Things are not getting better. Though I am writing the essay, but it’s not finished.
6.8.61.
It’s my fourth day in bed. The gastric ‘flu is really bad, (if it’s not something else). I went to the doctor again, but I didn’t see the doctor who examined me last time and knows my problems. The other doctor just looked at my chart and assessed my “new illness”. Today – it seems a bit better. Tomorrow I have to go to the doctor again, and then perhaps I’ll see – whether it’s homeward, or staying here. I have to lie peacefully, I can’t read much. Yesterday I thought – maybe I have to die. Today it feels like – not quite yet. I haven’t been ill for a long time, and so, I don’t know how illnesses go. (It feels like my atoms aren’t holding together any more…)
Inese handed in one of her essays (she didn’t go to bed at all last night), now she’s writing another essay. She’s looking quite green and her eyes are sticking out like a little frog’s. She’s wondering, whether, in order to calm her down, she should start smoking…
E. Dz.
7.8.61.
My ‘flu is more or less over, but the rest isn’t. The doctor had another look and said that I can’t rush off anywhere yet (he wants to see me again and again…)
Inese has had a good sleep since the essays (and parties) and got her colour back. Dzidra has gotten, from a neighbour’s girl, a simpler cookbook than mine – and is doing the housekeeping with gusto. Thus, somehow, everything is moving ahead, the world doesn’t collapse (the way it felt) when I step out of my position.
I had a chat with Inese today about literature and my head started to ache just from fear – about how it will go with my essay. I still haven’t sorted it out. But I will.
Will Mrs. Kreišmane go to America? Buy her house. It’s a lovely house. A real house, not just a cramped little box. I think I must have offended her after all, or pissed her off – she doesn’t write to me.
Yours, E. Dz.
P.S. The doctor thinks that the cause of all my problems – is allergy. “You are allergic to your circumstances…”
10.8.61.
I went home. I shouldn’t have gone yet. But how long can I wait? I can’t manage to do it the way I’d like to, and the way I ought to. Dzidra did the housekeeping, and somehow it all carried on. I will keep away from work to do with eggs, and hens. (How -?) I still have to show up at the doctor’s. He seems to want to see what’s happening in the lungs, and how the blood pressure is. I don’t know what I’m waiting and hoping for – but next year there ought to be some sort of change. In general, I don’t know how strong I will be after this crisis. I think that’s why I was afraid when the winter started. Inese went off, Dzidra started school – everything was back to like it was, and I was scared that I was no longer strong enough. But there’s no way out. Full stop.
Today, head over heels, I rewrote the essay. I didn’t have time to read over what I had rewritten, I was in such a hurry to get it sent so that Mrs. Neboise can read it.
Perhaps with my escape from home, I will have gained a little bit more independence, but I know – soon it will be back to the old way. My husband himself should long since have been in some sort of health institution. Utterly imperative would be for him to have the aid of a doctor, or psychiatrist, to try to sort out his shredded nerves, but that is also impossible – no-one could talk him into it, before he gets put into some sort of government welfare institution. That’s how it is, and that’s how it will stay.
E. Dz.
Wyong, 12. August, 1961.
It is the most beautiful spring day. Serenity, softness, sun. The hills are being ploughed, and seed being sown. So, the winter is over. And I’ve had a cold (for almost the whole month).
Thank you for sending my poems to “Laiks”. If was very kind of you to do that. I myself haven’t sent anything to “Jauna Gaita” even though I wanted to.
No winter has ever been as hard as this one. At first I was battling depression. While cleaning eggs, I was crying and wailing. I felt that every egg was burying me, and it was. There are so many to do at the moment, and everything else to be done in between, and, yes, – nothing else. Have to wait till I’m buried completely. Then, I came down with a cold. I ignored the raised temperature, I wanted to plant some strawberries. I broke out in a sweat while hoeing and carrying on, and then it just got worse and worse, cough, teeth, ears, everything rose up in rebellion against my chores. I didn’t listen, went on as if everything was o.k. Now I have to lose some teeth, have to put heat lamps on my forehead, which I never have time to do. The ear? It seems blocked. What’s left? Nothing. I don’t believe I’ll get to the Writer’s Days. I don’t want to think about it. I’m still wanting to take on achieving something in the future. I’ll tell you later. I have to crawl up the wall, upwards, otherwise I will sink. And maybe if I take on more and more – maybe I’ll get something done.
I’m sending you a few poems. And if I get better, it will eventually be spring again. Or – just till 17 August?
13.Aug.
You will go mad at me, for not accepting that I am sick. But if I have to do everything else here as though I wasn’t ill, so too then the things I want to do. As though I wasn’t ill.
I’m going to the doctor…
Yours, E. Dz.
Wyong, 5.9.61.
Your letter tells me that you were happy at the Writer’s Days. That’s lovely. Ilze was there too, and she is sweet and beautiful. But you would have done better if you had danced a bit. Dancing isn’t some sort of jumping about. The spirit mustn’t make fun of its closest companion – the body, when it wants to have fun – along with the spirit. Whether it always turns out – that’s another matter. There’s a saying – “he who doesn’t know how to dance, feels angry at the drums”, but you didn’t really have an excuse for being angry, as I think – you know how to dance, you just didn’t want to.
It seems that Mrs. Neboise was also happy at the Writer’s Days, because she says that she’s sad, now they are over.
Good, very good, that the writers have thrived. Only not so good that they have gone down financially. I was hoping that profits would go into the Writer’s Help fund, and that I’d be able to apply for assistance.
Yes, I’m just joking, and it has to stay just a joke, but how I’m going to get out of my problems, I do not know… The doctor is now convinced that all my ailments are due to my being allergic to chooks. That is – everything that a poultry farmer has to put up with – dust, smells, dirt. There are apparently many people who cannot put up with it, and get sick and have to leave the farm. At the moment I’m staying on my feet because of some sort of tablets, that keep me from throwing up, but suddenly I have facial swellings, headaches, cough, fever and so on, endlessly. I’m walking around like an invalid. I want to somehow last till Christmas, and then perhaps work out how I can leave this place. At the moment, I can’t see it. Children shouldn’t be pulled out of school.
Zeltiņš wrote (from America?) asking me to send a few poems. I sent those, but I didn’t have a photo of myself, and with my current facial expression and swollen form, the way it is at the moment, I didn’t want to get a photograph taken. I also haven’t sent in my C.V. but hope to do that this week. Inese went back to Sydney yesterday, as the holidays are over. She cleaned the house for me, so that for a while it would be easier for me. I prepared a meal for her friends who came to pick her up and take her back to all the traumas of last semester exams… So life goes forward, and has to go forward, even if it feels – like the wheels are rolling right over you. But I can’t complain, for the last 20 years, I haven’t had to complain about illness.
Now I’ll have to gather together some poems to send to Jauna Gaita. What do you think about the essay about hunting? Can I send that too, or is it too shoddy?
The days have already started to be lovely, only the cold in our hovel is not over, for there’s no place here where there isn’t a draught. That’s why again I’m putting all my hopes into spring.
Yours, E. Dz.
Wyong, 8.10.1961.
I read your “Secret Judgment” in “Ceļa Zīmes”. It should be translated into English. Firstly – you could send it to J.F. Kennedy.
I haven’t written anything new, hardly even any poems. A few weak ones. Maybe there will still come a flood of creativity in spring. I’m still struggling with my ailments and their causes, and have no energy…
Your little lino prints seemed very lively to me. Didn’t see much reservedness there.
Yes, I don’t think any evil forces are pulling me down. They are quite clearly the visible circumstances. They clutch, one after the other, like hooks, and I can’t untangle them. But – I am still hopeful. Actually, nor do I let myself get pulled down to some bottom. I battle on. What I experience makes me richer than any good circumstances that I might escape into. It’s like Anšlavs Eglītis said (though I think they were not originally his words) – everything that doesn’t break us, makes us stronger. That doesn’t break us…
However it has gone, the children have been given a taste of what is the human being’s lot. I think that’s very important. Our lot is not just the good times (though there are also those), but also the hard times. If I was a heroine in one of your novels, you wouldn’t let me desert the battle field. Of course, if you had to create a heroine, you also couldn’t let me be destroyed without any reason.
Gunārs Saliņš wrote that he read my poems at T. Zeltiņ’s place, and he had liked them very much, and asked for them for “Jauna Gaita”. I sent him a few more. That – makes me feel calmer.
Yours, E. Dz.
16.10.61.
Today your letter, and one from Mrs. Kreišmane from New York. Apparently there, there’s a beautiful gentleness in the sun, and the whole world. She is picking flowers (red clover) in some wide, lonely and uninhabited field and singing – “Two fields I mowed” [folk song]. So, in its way, New York is fabulous. In Rita Liepa’s novel, “Strange Summer” one can also see that there are such wonderful, remote places there.
So – I’ll have to write to Mrs. Kreišmane and perhaps I’ll find out from her about the American Latvian writers.
If I’m going to continue with poetry, and as that’s going to happen, it will probably also be, that I won’t write quite so personally, ‘privately’, as Freimanis put it, in future. Perhaps I’ll also learn to use well established forms, will accommodate them, discover them etc. But perhaps then those poems will no longer be so completely mine, nor as sincere, naive, as in the first group. Till now, I’ve been getting used to using language as a means of expression, with more of an everyday language. And that I will continue to do.
I’ve decided to go to Sydney the day after tomorrow to stay with Inese, and afterwards stay with one of her University colleagues, an Australian woman. She has two children, and her exams are approaching, and she really could do with some help, someone who could occasionally make tea. A room there is being prepared for me, freshly painted. That family visited here one day in summer, and we got on well – a mutual attraction. I hope I will get rested there, and relief from my allergies, and still will be able to earn my board and keep. I’ll stay there for 10-14 days. Then Inese will have one week free and will go home. Then I’ll also have to go home to prepare dinner for my lot. Dzidra will start exams soon (to try to get a scholarship). I won’t get free of my allergies while I have to work with so many eggs here.
Why, in the Australian Latvian paper, in the Literature page, is there so little literature lately? Hardly one poem each. Where are the stories that were read at the Writers’ Days, where, the wide range of poems?
Your little tree (in the woodcut) does have leaves falling, but you can also imagine that they are not falling, and are just some sort of – tree dreams, birds, shadows of leaves, lights, that are flying around, waving, living… The drawings are beautiful, like Japanese woodcuts, and no doubt will look good on the book. One of the drawings looks sadder, the other more happy – I don’t know why.
It’s raining outside. I’m the only one still up. It’s also spring outside, only I can’t take delight in it much. Only with the eyes.
Yours, E. Dz.
[No date]
I’m still in Sydney. I’m going home in a couple of hours. These couple of hours – for meditation. Thinking over what was gained, being here. Not a single poem has been written (just a few ideas, that don’t seem to have the courage to become the finished article).
But they were good days. After years, I was once again spoilt, lived just browsing through books, playing (Bach) and talking with student people. At first, they listened more than talked. That must have been all my stored-up, un-talked-out everything that had to be talked out. And then, one after the other, they started speaking about their problems, their difficulties – and they were exactly the same issues that I have at home, and that were at Kreišmane’s, and that, with rare exceptions, are in everyone’s homes: that people destroy each other, relatives beget devils, the Latvians used to say, though they meant wider family tree problems, but what firstly is there in the midst of those that ought to be as one, and moreover, whom God has joined together etc.
Yes, I saw again a very beautiful house, very lovely people, who are suffering. Suffering, because people are not the same, and because – people are greedy, and are never satisfied. Always, they are like fish, that swallow one another.
But it was good for me. There was a woman who is studying, a 9 year old girl and an 11 year old boy, and a husband from a good family, who earns good money. At first I was just lazy and read, but then I started taking on all sorts of small ways to do things for others (for there they all cooked for themselves, did gardening together etc) and so, even though I was pampered, I started to do some housework, though not as much as I had hoped when I went there.
I couldn’t stay longer. Dzidra’s exams are about to start, but she’s there now, cooking, washing dishes, cleaning eggs and so can’t study.
I’ve had a good rest, and my allergies have subsided. (I’m just feeling down because of my own unspent energy). I will go home, and will start everything all over again. Inese will come after a week, and then I will have this exam-preparing pair – to feed and pamper.
Yesterday I was at the Latvian Centre. There was the concert. E. Freimanis and wife, and their students. E. Freimanis played well. K. Freimanis had organised a social gathering for me. I had invited him and friends to come to where I have been staying, but he wanted to organise something bigger. To read my work there, and other’s poetry – have debates. Of course not much happened there. Freimanis read poems by me and Pļavkains, Lācis didn’t want to read, nor have his work read, Tomsons questioned Pļavkains’ sonnet, not only questioned it, but attacked it quite sharply. But nothing important was discussed, really. I added my bit, and that also wasn’t much. Maybe A. Zariņš’ proposal for starting a poetry lovers (approximately) club could work, where everyone pays a couple of pounds yearly, and for that money they could publish a couple of books, and those would go to club members. The edition would be very small, but it wouldn’t run at a loss, as currently is the holdup with “Quintet”.
Some thought this a good idea, others doubted it could work. It was decided that those gatherings, that would be the club, should be held before the literary evenings. Then they started to worry, whether those wouldn’t compete with the literary evenings, and so nothing good would come of it, and so it was all left undecided.
I saw those people, and for a moment I though – they are cleverer than I, they are so polished, they know how to fall on their feet all the time, like cats. But that, then, is all. What people really need, is a warm, vital grit (an assured strong pulse, like in a mother’s body, soul). If, during these days, there in that house where I was staying, and also at the Latvian Centre, I was able to make myself visible to a greater or lesser degree, then it’s because – maybe childishly – I still contain a bit of that grit.
But it was lovely to have a holiday.
Yours, E. Dz.
Wyong, 14.12.61.
Thank you for the “birthstone”. (Though I do have to mention that it wasn’t my real month, nor my real birthstone – mine was October, and whether blue or brindle, a gemstone is always favoured by women…)
I have the feeling that you are quite happy at the moment, as was your poem in the paper, and as I had nothing new to contribute to your days, I felt it better to keep quiet. I’ve got my usual struggle for breath. I think I’ll go to Sydney again in January, and then stay there for life. It has to happen, because I can no longer be healthy here, but in Sydney, (or somewhere else) I feel ok. Inese will come tomorrow. She survived the exams – how well she doesn’t know yet, but we’re hoping for the best. Just yesterday, Dzidra finished her Intermediate (3rd year), finished very satisfied – in third year, 1st out of the girls. She also sat for a scholarship – we don’t know that result yet. So, the children have been battling on, and I have to stick it out here till Christmas, to have a little celebration, like we once used to. Then I will go to that same woman where I was before, and start looking for a place.
There, that’s my report. And you? Happily gadding about, strong coffee and wine? Happy Christmas!
Yours, E. Dz.