|
The Charles Henri Ford papers consist of typescript and holograph manuscripts,
correspondence, postcards, clippings, photographs, financial documents, contracts,
invitations, page proofs, prospectuses, journals, and diaries. The collection
is
organized in four series: I. Works, 1930-ca. 1965 (6.5 boxes); II. Correspondence,
1928-1972 (8.5 boxes); III. Miscellaneous, 1930-1965 (4 boxes); and IV.
Journals/Diaries, 1932-1981 (10 boxes). The arrangement of the first three series
reflects the earlier cataloguing of these materials. Additional information
concerning materials in the first three series, which are cataloged at item level,
may be found by consulting the card catalog. |
|
The Works series consists of typescript and holograph manuscripts, notes, and page
proofs of Ford's literary work, including both published and unpublished material,
arranged alphabetically by title. There are poems in English and French, theatrical
work, and prose. Of special interest, there are holograph and typescript fragments
of The Young and Evil, including a holograph fragment
of the novel under its working title, "Love and Jump
Back," and articles for an unpublished issue of View, devoted to theater. |
|
The Correspondence series contains both outgoing and incoming correspondence
(arranged in two subseries, each arranged alphabetically), including postcards
and
clippings. The outgoing correspondence touches on subjects such as Rome; Paris;
Vienna; Morocco; poster poems; Pavel Tchelitchew's designs for the theater; Sleep in a Nest of Flames; a project proposed to the
Ingram Merrill Foundation that would document View's
influence on the arts; assessments of Ford's contemporaries, including one in
which
he calls Henry Miller a fake; Paul Eluard; and Om
Krishna. There is also a large group of letters to Ford's sister Ruth, his
mother Gertrude, and his father Charles L., in which Charles Henri discusses the
various places where he lived, friends and acquaintances, professional associates,
and his work, with specific subjects that include Paris, New York City, Gertrude
Stein, Djuna Barnes, Pavel Tchelitchew, and The Young and
Evil. |
|
The incoming correspondence includes among its significant correspondents Conrad
Aiken, W. H. Auden, Djuna Barnes, Sir Cecil Beaton, Karen Blixen, Paul Bowles,
Kay
Boyle, Ronnie Burk, William S. Burroughs, Jean Cocteau, Joseph Cornell, Leonardo
Cremonini, E. E. Cummings, Leonor Fini, Gertrude Ford, Ruth Ford, Allen Ginsberg,
Ted Joans, Ray Johnson, Philip Lamantia, James Laughlin, Mary McCarthy, Gerard
Malanga, Carmen Mariño, Henry Miller, Marianne Moore, Edouard Roditi, Dame Edith
Sitwell, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, Allen Tate, Pavel Tchelitchew, Parker
Tyler, Carl Van Vechten, William Carlos Williams, Donald Windham, Bill Wolak,
Kathleen Tankersley Young, and Stark Young. The correspondence covers subjects
such
as poetry, with special reference to prose poems; theater; New York City; France
during World War II; Ford's "Life of a Child";
Allen Ginsberg; Athens; Giorgio Strehler; the influence of a Eugene Berman painting
on Wallace Stevens's poem, "The Man with the Blue
Guitar"; Andy Warhol; American idealism in the sixties; art collecting; Dylan
Thomas's disparagement of collaborative poetry; the demerits of "Auden & Co.
Limited"; and Tennessee Williams. A complete index of correspondents may be found
at
the end of this inventory. |
|
Deserving special mention are large groups of letters from Djuna Barnes, Sir Cecil
Beaton, Paul Bowles, Dame Edith Sitwell, and Pavel Tchelitchew, in which these
correspondents discuss their professional and artistic aspirations and projects,
friends and associates, frustrations, daily routines, and romantic concerns.
Specific subjects include Djuna Barnes's novel Nightwood, Gertrude Stein, contemporary painting, theater design, poetry,
and contemporary music, just to name a few. |
|
The Miscellaneous series includes correspondence to Charles L. Ford, Gertrude Ford,
Ruth Ford, Pavel Tchelitchew, and Parker Tyler from various correspondents,
including a large group of letters from Ruth Ford to Gertrude Ford. Among the
highlights are a typescript of Djuna Barnes's story, "Behind the Heart"; typescript poems by Paul Bowles; a typescript of Jean
Genet's "Chants secrets"; a typescript of Dame
Edith Sitwell's preface for Sleep in a Nest of
Flames; and typescript poems by Parker Tyler. The Miscellaneous series is
arranged alphabetically by author, except the View
materials, which are filed by title. |
|
Series IV, Journals/Diaries, consists almost exclusively of the journals and diaries
of Charles Henri Ford from 1932 until 1967, with a few lacunae in the chronological
coverage. There are some typescripts of selected portions of the journals, one
photographic negative, and two printed sheets. A much later accession consists
of
one folder of correspondence, clippings, typescripts, and photocopies to Ford
from
Ronnie Burk and Bill Wolak. |
|
The journals provide an intimate portrait of a poet in his peregrinations across
Europe, northern Africa, the United States and Mexico from the early thirties
until
the mid-sixties. The journals touch on a wide variety of literary topics, including
novelists, poets, playwrights, and philosophers, in addition to Ford's own aesthetic
concerns. Ford also records his impressions of such literary figures as Edward
Albee, W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, Djuna Barnes, Natalie Barney, Sylvia Beach
and Shakespeare & Co., Paul Bowles, William Burroughs, Truman Capote, Jean
Cocteau, Cyril Connolly, Gregory Corso, E. E. Cummings, Nancy Cunard, Isak Dinesen,
James Farrell, Janet Flanner, André Gide, H. D., Ernest Hemingway, James Laughlin
of
New Directions, Mary McCarthy, Claude McKay, Gerard Malanga, James Merrill, Henri
Michaux, Marianne Moore, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jean-Paul Sartre, the Sitwells,
Stephen Spender, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Allen Tate, Dylan Thomas,
Parker Tyler, Gore Vidal, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, William Carlos
Williams, Edmund Wilson, literary agent Audrey Wood, and Stark Young, just to
name a
few. Ford also includes his thoughts on various works of literature, including
Antonin Artaud's Le Théâtre et son double, Paul
Claudel's Tête d'or, René Crevel's Le Clavecin de Diderot, Flair, Jean Genet's Notre dame des fleurs,
Robert Graves's The White Goddess, Aldous Huxley's
Mortal Coils, Raymond Radiguet's Devil in the Flesh, Denton Welch's journals, Tennessee
Williams's Summer and Smoke and A Streetcar Named Desire, and William Carlos Williams's
Autobiography. |
|
The journals also present a detailed record of Ford's own creative aspirations and
endeavors. Among the projects and issues discussed are the scope of his journals
and
Ford's initial desire that they be eventually housed in the Yale University Library;
magazine editorship; the difficulties of finding a publisher for The Young and Evil; the relative merits of photography
and writing as contemplative arts; Blues; View; various playwriting projects, including "Alexander" (an historical play treating Alexander
the Great), "Let's Get Out of Here,""The Poet" (based on the Isak Dinesen short
story), and "The Labyrinth" (a play combining the
myths of Antigone, Phaedra, and Ariadne); correcting the page proofs of Sleep in a Nest of Flames and Ford's hope that this
volume will establish his reputation as the best poet of his generation; the desire
to rewrite Oedipus Rex; the use of verse in the
theater; the desire to publish an edited version of his journals; the inability
to
work; the desire to sublimate his sexual energy into poetic activity; the
difficulties of translation; the poetry of sound; the desire to write as a desire
to
dominate; measuring himself as a playwright against T. S. Eliot and Christopher
Fry;
the abandonment of journal writing; the lure of documentary filmmaking; a possible
sequel to The Young and Evil; a potential hoax to
publish a story under the pen name Ghondi Cato; the abandonment of literature
for
painting; the possible sale of his papers to the University of Texas at Austin;
and
Spare Parts. |
|
Of more general interest, the journals provide a detailed record of the expatriate
literary and artistic community in Paris in the thirties; important visual artists
of the twentieth century; the social mores of the United States, France, Greece,
Italy, Mexico, and Tangiers; the cultural elite of the United States; Russian
influences on the arts in the United States and Europe; theater; ballet; modern
dance; the American South; Europe before the outbreak of World War II; post-war
Paris; drugs; cinema; music; Greenwich Village; Weston, Connecticut; anti-Semitism;
trans-Atlantic boat travel; and Florida. A few of the important persons mentioned
are Kenneth Anger, George Balanchine, Tallulah Bankhead, Samuel Barber, Jean-Louis
Barrault, Cecil Beaton, Eugene Berman, Marc Blitzstein, Alice Bouverie, Jane Bowles,
Marlon Brando, John Cage, Nicolas Calas, Elliott Carter, Henri Cartier-Bresson,
Jean
Cocteau, Fleur Cowles, Leonardo Cremonini, Caresse Crosby, Merce Cunningham,
Alexandra Danilova, Bette Davis, Jean Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Leonor Fini, Martha
Graham, Peggy Guggenheim, Alexandre Iolas, Elia Kazan, Lincoln Kirstein, Alice
de
Lamar, Tanaquil Leclercq, Serge Lifar, Kenneth Macpherson, Nicholas Magallanes,
Igor
Markevitch, Leonide Massine, Nicolas Nabokov, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso,
Robert
Rauschenberg, Man Ray, Edouard Roditi, Ned Rorem, Kay Sage, Ben Shahn, Leo Stein,
Florine Stettheimer, Igor Stravinsky, Allen Tanner, Dorothea Tanning, Stephen
Tennant, Virgil Thomson, Tamara Toumanova, Andy Warhol, Peter Watson, and Orson
Welles. |
|
The journals also provide an intimate portrait of Ford's private life. They document
Ford's relationships with his father C. L. Ford, his mother Gertrude Cato Ford,
his
sister Ruth Ford, his niece Shelley, and Ruth's husband Zachary Scott. Ford often
reminisces about the family's frequent relocations during his childhood, including
periods in Brookhaven, Mississippi, and Big Spring and San Antonio, Texas. There
are
also accounts of Ford's trip to Tennessee to visit his dying father; the intimacy
of
the relationship with his mother; Gertrude Ford's business ventures; Gertrude's
romantic involvements; the sibling rivalry between Charles Henri and Ruth, as
well
as their mutual dependence; the difficulties Ruth experienced in raising a child
as
a single parent; the difficulties Zachary Scott's alcoholism created in his marriage
to Ruth; Zachary and Ruth's generosity to Charles Henri; Ruth's career as a model
and, later, as an actress; Zachary's acting career; the tensions between Shelley
and
Ruth Ford; the death of Gertrude Ford in Mexico; and the death of Zachary Scott. |
|
Ford also chronicles his long-term relationship with the Russian painter Pavel
Tchelitchew ("Pavlik"). The journals include detailed passages concerning the
beginning of their relationship against the objections of many friends; their
domestic arrangements; Tchelitchew's artistic concerns; his likes and dislikes
among
his fellow artists; his cultivation of younger artists; his close friendships
with
Alice de Lamar, Leonor Fini and, for a time, Edith Sitwell; his relationship with
his sister Choura; his theatrical design projects; his chronic health concerns;
his
generosity to and affection for the Ford family; his emotional dependence on Ford;
Ford's financial dependence on Tchelitchew; their intermittent squabbles;
Tchelitchew's impatience with Ford's tendency to idleness; and Tchelitchew's
insecurities concerning his worth as an artist. Especially moving are the passages
in which Ford documents Tchelitchew's courage while the artist languishes in the
Salvator Mundi Hospital in Rome, where, after some months, he would die of heart
failure. |
|
The journals also provide a lively record of some aspects of male homosexual activity
in the twentieth century. Ford recounts his earliest sexual encounters with older
men; his experiences with prostitution; the heady sexual climate of New York City
in
the thirties; his arrest for public indecency; the constant struggle between his
desire for sexual release and for creative activity; venereal disease; his various
sexual partners; his predilection for adolescents; the sexual unreserve in Paris
pissoirs; the difficulty of renewing his Italian
visa after he comes under suspicion of homosexuality; attitudes in various countries
towards homosexuality; and the cruising protocol of several cities, especially
Paris
and Athens. |
|
The journals have been extensively marked for deletions. Many of these are the result
of Ford's re-reading with a view to publication. In addition, there are extensive
editorial markings by Parker Tyler throughout; there are also occasional editorial
comments in Tyler's hand. |
|
A later accession contains a newspaper clipping about the American Indian activist
Leonard Peltier, one letter to Ford from Ronnie Burk, as well as two of Burk's
typescript poems ( "Heatwave" and "Snapshot") and photocopies of his word collages.
There are also eleven photocopy typescript poems by Bill Wolak. |
