chez Walter Lowenfels

Henry Miller’s friend Walter Lowenfels, the model for Cronstadt in Tropic of Cancer and Black Spring, was a surrealist poet and editor of several influential anthologies of American poetry. His leftist political activism led to his being jailed briefly in 1953 when Joseph McCarthy distinguished him as one of the leading communists in Philadelphia. Lowenfels shared with another of Miller’s friends, Michael Fraenkel (Boris in Tropic of Cancer), a fascination with the spiritual death of modern man. This “Death Theme” found voice in Lowenfels’ books, Anonymous: The Need for Anonymity, Reality Prime and Some Deaths. Miller was fascinated by Lowenfels’ and Fraenkel’s endless discussion of their death theme and made frequent references to it in his own published works:

They talked a sort of higher mathematics, these two. Nothing of flesh and blood ever crept in; it was weird, ghostly, ghoulishly abstract. [...] I enjoyed those sessions immensely. It was the first time in my life that death had ever seemed fascinating to me—all these abstract deaths which involved a bloodless sort of agony.—Tropic of Cancer

Following death, food was be the subject Miller most often associated with Lowenfels. During his more destitute days, Miller was hosted to a once-a-week dinner by Walter and his wife at their apartment where he could always count on being served champagne and homemade apple pie. Sometimes he turned up unannounced:

Dropped in at the Cronstadts’ and they were eating too. A young chicken with wild rice. Pretended that I had eaten already, but I could have torn the chicken from the baby’s hands. This is not just false modesty—it’s a kind of perversion, I’m thinking. Twice they asked me if I wouldn’t join them. No! No! Wouldn’t even accept a cup of coffee after the meal. I’m delicat, I am! On the way out I cast a lingering glance at the bones lying on the baby’s plate—there was still meat on them.—Tropic of Cancer

A dinner party at the Lowenfels’ provided the subject for Miller’s surrealistic story, “Jabberwhorl Cronstadt” in Black Spring, which begins with Miller’s arrival at the Lowenfels’ apartment:

He lives in the back of a sunken garden, a sort of bosky glade shaded by whiffletrees and spinozas, by deodars and baobabs, a sort of queasy Buxtehude diapered with elytras and feluccas. You pass through a sentry box where the concierge twirls his mustache con furioso like in the last act of Ouida. They live on the third floor behind a mullioned belvedere filigreed with snaffled spaniels and sebaceous wens, with debentures and megrims hanging out to dry. Over the bell-push it says: “JABBERWHORL CRONSTADT, poet, musician, herbologist, weather man, linguist, oceanographer, old clothes, colloids.” Under this it reads: “Wipe your feet and blow your nose!” And under this is a rosette from a second-hand suit.

The street, known as rue Denfert-Rochereau when the Lowenfels’ lived here in the thirties has since been renamed to rue Henri Barbusse. Man Ray set up a studio on this street in 1937.

Next Stop

Next up is the Musée Zadkine. To reach it, head back up the rue Henri Barbusse in the direction you came, taking your first right onto rue du Val de Grâce. Head for the box-shaped trees that line a narrow strip of the Jardin de Luxembourg. As you cross this section of the park, notice the ornate fountain filled with statues of horses and turtles. This is the Fontaine de l’Observatoire. In Tropic of Cancer Miller recalled spending a night on one of the benches near the fountain: “All night I was lying on a bench outside the mall while the globe was sprayed with warm turtle piss and the horses stiffened with priapic fury galloped like mad without ever touching the ground.” Once across this narrow stretch of park, exit on the rue des Chartreux and turn right onto rue d’Assas. On your left will be the Musée Zadkine.

“the globe was sprayed with warm turtle piss and the horses stiffened with priapic fury galloped like mad without ever touching the ground”

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