Playwright Barbara Kahn has produced a new play based on the life of Eve Adams, the roaming bookseller who sold copies of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer to tourists in Paris cafés. I’ve written about Eve Adam’s role in Miller’s Paris life before.

In her previous play, The Spring and Fall of Eve Adams, Kahn examined Adams’ life as the operator of a Greenwich Village tearoom in the 1920′s, when she moved in the same circles as Henry and June Miller. A victim of homophobia, Adams was arrested and deported from the US for distributing “obscene” literature.

Marshaling new research, including US Deportation documents and information provided by Adams’ surviving family members, Kahn has produced Unreachable Eden which further explores Adam’s life in Paris following deportation and her death in a Nazi concentration camp.

Judging from the rehearsal photos above, the play appears to include both June and Henry Miller, and possibly Anaïs Nin as characters.

Unreachable Eden can be seen February 9 – 26, 2012 at the Theater for the New City in New York, NY (155 1st Ave. @ 10th St.). For show times and ticketing information, see the Theater for the New City web site.

Unreachable Eden

Unreachable Eden is the story of Polish Jewish lesbian Eve Adams (born Chava Zloczower) who ran a tearoom on Macdougal Street in 1926, which catered to artists, writers and actors, both male and female. She was deported from the U.S. as an “undesirable alien” and spent the 1930’s in Paris, selling banned books to English-speaking tourists. Eve and her friends Henry and June Miller and Anaïs Nin enjoyed both café and nightlife in France, while in Germany the Nazi government was banning and burning books and implementing its war against Jews, homosexuals and others deemed “undesirable.” These parallel worlds collided during World War II, once again putting Eve in triple jeopardy as a Jew, a lesbian and an immigrant. Composer Arthur Abrams has mined the rich musical genres of 1930’s Europe to write a score that ranges from the popular tango to waltz to ethnic melodies.

Unreachable Eden is based on Eve Adams’ deportation file from the U.S. government as well as correspondence and photographs courtesy of her relatives.

…if I wanted to write my experiences of my wanderings and people and adventures, which still continue with every blessed day, it would take me years to write and I could fill volumes…
—Eve Adams, 1934

Eve’s first deportation in 1927 led ultimately to her second deportation, this time from France to Auschwitz in her native Poland. This courageous woman deserves to be rescued from forgotten history.

Barbara Kahn

Barbara Kahn is a multi-award winning playwright, director and actor. She was recognized for lifetime achievement with the Torch of Hope Award, previously given to Terrence McNally, August Wilson, Horton Foote, Jane Alexander, Tony Randall and others. She has directed in New York, Paris and at the National Theatre in London.

Unreachable Eden posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

Good news, Miller fans… the eighth volume of Nexus, The International Henry Miller Journal is now ready to order! As has come to be expected, the journal continues to break new ground in revealing hidden facets of Henry Miller and his writing.

The current issue begins with a private letter from Miller to Alfred Perlès, composed during the writing of Black Spring. Here we find Miller in an exalted mood, confident of the place his work will find in American letters.

Next, we are treated to a rediscovery of Richard Osborn—a very important yet little known figure in Miller’s Paris life (Osborn is the Filmore of Tropic of Cancer). Eric Lehman has turned up a trove of photographs and information that provide a glimpse into Osborn’s youth and reveals the lasting influence of his friendship with Miller.

Karl Orend provides several articles for the latest issue. The first explores “The Heaven Beyond Heaven,” an unpublished handwritten book that Miller created as a birthday gift for Anaïs Nin in 1939. The book analysis provides a springboard for delving into Miller and Nin’s personal relationship and their quarrels over approaches to writing.

Orend’s second article focuses on the work of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, sorting through the difficult terrain of Celine’s dueling reputations as both a brilliant writer and an ardent racist.

In “The Genius and Mr. Nobody,” Joe Kishton provides a peek at the script for a recently completed documentary film that traces the antagonistic relationship between Miller and Salvador Dali. The script includes a set of interviews with Miller in which he relates some humorous anecdotes about the period he spent living with Dali, Gala and Anaïs Nin at the home of Caresse Crosby in Virginia.

An article by Finn Jensen looks into the Greek intellectual circle Miller encountered during his Colossus of Maroussi days. Particular attention is given to the influence of George Sefaris and a poem that he wrote about Miller.

Also included is a selection from the diary of Miller’s friend, Harry Kiakis. A third article by Orend examines Anaïs Nin’s chapbook, Paris Revisited, and explores the role of George Whitman’s Shakespeare and Co. bookstore in Parisian literary circles. James Bantin provides an inside look at the extensive collection of Miller papers to be found at Southern Illinois University, and D.A. Pratt presents a delightful appreciation of The Happy Rock, Bern Porter’s book of tributes to Henry Miller.

Nexus, Volume 8 is available now for ordering from the Nexus website and is priced at $20 for US orders and $24 internationally.

New Issue of Nexus Available posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

Henry Miller in Hydra, 1939
Photo by George Seferis, via Ellopos.org

Golden morning on the Mediterranean. The sapphire-quartz water spreads to the horizon. My family is halfway through a tour of Italy and Greece. I’m restless, standing on the deck of the superfast ferry. Waiting for my first glimpse of a fabled land. Layers of meaning, history, and fiction mix together in my expectations. And then, like the shadow of a Titan, out of the heat haze and morning mist appears the mythic island of Corfu. I stare as we pass it for at least a half-hour. Then we glide past Ithaca, Ulysses’ kingdom. The guide informs us that Hercules’ island is on our right.

Here in Greece, gods and heroes walked among us. And one from my pantheon, Henry Miller, came to this extraordinary country in the first years of World War II. He stayed on Corfu with his friend, the writer Lawrence Durrell. Their visits to monuments and ruins were empty and silent. No tourists during a war. I’m sure I won’t be so lucky. On the ferry I have begun The Colossus of Maroussi, Miller’s famous travel book about his experiences here. I have read it every summer for the last five years, with the self-imposed rule that I must read only in the hot sunlight. I have the thin volume with me today, holding on to it like a lifeline to the past.

I first read Henry Miller ten years ago. I waded through Tropic of Cancer, finding the prose difficult and dense. But alive! Bristling with energy and hope. So, over the next few years I read everything by him I could get my hands on. I became what passes these days for an expert. I modeled my life and writing on his. I composed a poor Masters thesis on “The Inhuman in Tropic of Cancer.” As I got older, more authors crowded my consciousness, more books attached themselves to my psyche. But Henry always held on somehow, laughing and singing.

Reaching the mainland, we disembark and get on the bus to Olympia. A few quick hours pass as I stare out the window, making occasional comments to my parents. But as soon as we reach the hotel, I grab my things and head into the hills alone. The yellow afternoon light burns on my smiling face. Next to the hotel I get sidetracked and poke around in a small grove of oranges and lemons. But I continue, finding a trail over a small wooden bridge that heads in the forest. Where does it go? Who cares! Henry wouldn’t. A fence bars my way, but I crawl underneath and then head up a steep grade to the right. Someone has cut the bark away on the sides of the many pines at the top and placed plastic bags underneath them to collect sap. I push along the ridge, the open Mediterranean vegetation giving me plenty of room to maneuver. Then, the knoll drops off at a near cliff and I clamber down to a dirt track that heads back up into hills of olive groves.

Twisted trees are carefully spaced along the slopes, separated by yellow meadow. Small paths wind from the main road at intervals. I take one of them, eventually leaving it, pushing uphill, and reaching a small crest, where I have a spectacular view. Proud upright cypresses overlook a primitive valley. A stone spire rises to the west along the hazy horizon. A range of green and rocky hills stretches in the distance to the north. About a mile away, one lone village perches on the side of a pine-covered hill. Abandoned huts crouch in the groves below. This is the place. I flop down in the dust under spreading olive branches near the top of the hill.

Dragonflies flash from leaf to leaf. Ants crawl in the shade of the young tree, through dirt and fungus, over patches of sun. I read a few chapters of Colossus. A rooster crows in the valley. This is one of the most peaceful moments of my life. This is the fruit of solitude, the true travel. An hour passes like a breath. I look up from the book at the landscape periodically, in disbelief that I am finally in Greece, a magical place I have dreamed of my whole life. Yet I turn back to the beautiful prose, using the descriptions to give adjectives to the surroundings, even though I know that Henry was never on this spot.

Jackals bark on the far side of the hill, coming closer. Time to head back to the hotel, to my family, to tourism. I take a long way back, through fields of wildflowers and tomato plants. I stumble across the skeleton of a building hiding among tall green clumps, long since fallen into disuse. Then, heading towards the setting sun, I follow a wide swath that has been made by cows across a hill of orange grass, messy with tracks and dung. I find the fence and slip back into the olive grove behind the hotel.

Apollo temple, Delphi
(cc) Photo by Pierre Metivier

The next day we visit the ruins at Olympia in the morning. Then, we ride north back to Patras, ferry across the Gulf of Corinth, and ride east to Delphi, high on the side of Mount Parnassus. That afternoon I read on the terrace of the hotel, far above the Gulf of Corinth and the largest olive grove in the world, which spreads like a green delta thousands of feet below. I read slowly until nightfall, savoring words and phrases with the patience of someone sipping fine wine.

At the ruins of Delphi I can feel the pale presence of gods. The static gods of statues, of crumbling time, of patient, faded perfection. I stare at the cliffs, wanting to climb the stony heights of Parnassus, the playground of muses. The muses! How many times have I invoked them, trying to find inspiration? How many times have I looked outside myself for strength? But I am weak. Myth and literature invade the pure panorama, as I try to see through other, greater eyes. I climb the winding path, passing other visitors, all on their own pilgrimages. I wonder what superstructures they have laid on their journeys, what preconceptions and pictures have altered their experiences, as I have allowed Miller’s to shape mine.

I stare up at the massive Rock of the Sibyl, asking the vanished oracle. No answer. But I can hear my old friend Henry laughing at my useless and juvenile ponderings, dancing in the sunlight, invisible and joyous. Telling me to see things as they are. Telling me to make my own conclusions.

We travel south and spend that night in Athens. The next morning we hike up the ancient temple of the Acropolis with the usual hordes of tourists. I try to ignore them and think of all the kings and writers who had trekked up those steps to the Parthenon, wanting to feel like I am walking in the footsteps of giants.

That afternoon I finish Colossus on the rooftop of the Zafolia hotel, the city honking and steaming all around. At night we watch the sun set over the Acropolis, which would have been an appropriate conclusion to our tour. But instead of ending there, the next day we visit Aegina, Poros, and Hydra. I reread a particularly good chapter at a café along the water at Poros, while my parents shop. And as we pull into the harbor at Hydra, I can see Spetsai in the distance, and know that some day I’ll be back, to visit another godshome, John Fowles’ semi-fictional island of Phraxos, where The Magus takes place. Another day, another Olympus.

Back at the hotel, the rest of the tour group prepares to leave. But I am not done yet. Before we started this trip, I convinced my family to book an extra day in Athens after the tour was officially over, so that we could drive to the ancient ruin of Mycenae. This had always been my favorite place in Henry’s book, a place where he had both an epiphany and a failure. He had come here twice, once with Katsimbalis, the Colossus of Maroussi himself, and once with Lawrence Durrell. Both times he had tried to conquer his fears and had not.

The excursion from Athens is not as bad as we feared. My father drives west and onto the Peloponese, across the Corinth canal, a deep gap of rock. My mother and grandmother comment on the native driving habits. I point out the place between Salamis and the mainland where the Athenians trapped the Persian fleet at one of the turning points in the Persian Wars. My grandfather munches on some of Aegina’s famous pistachios. As we turn inland, the Acrocorinth, a huge sprawling fortress on top of a brown peak, looms to the right. My father pulls off the road and I snap some photos. A short while later, we leave the highway and wind through the empty semi-arid countryside. Somehow this is different, far better than riding in the bus, but I can’t wait to get out and walk. We pass through a small town, heading east up into the hills. Getting out of the car, we make our way to the entrance, paying the fee and climbing the conical hill to the Lion’s Gate. I snap photos of the oldest carved relief in Europe. A billion cicadas hum and chatter. My family is worn out from weeks of travel and decides that they have come far enough. They sit down in the morning heat. I can’t stop. I have a mission to complete.

Cistern at Mycenae
(cc) Photo by Trent Strohm

Leaving my family at the Lion’s Gate, I scramble up the height of Mycenae, a camera, Colossus, and a bottle of water in my backpack. Twisted trees and crumbled rock walls waver in the heat. Occasional tourists stare off across the Argive plain. I must find the cistern, the dark place where Henry Miller could not go. The slippery staircase into Hades. I wander down the backside of the fortress, through the palace ruins and to the point where the mountains push up against the protective gorge. A few groups loiter at this final wall of the fortress. I check my map, search to my left. There it is. A gaping doorway, a hole black as night in the morning brilliance.

A few steps inside at the first turn to the left, a Greek family waits for something. They make small forays into the dark, but don’t go far. I curse myself for not bringing a flashlight. I wait, possibly for the Greeks to just blindly push down into the abyss, steeling my courage to do it.

Just then, light and sound emanate. The faint flicker of candles and muttering voices. Spirits of the underworld? No, a small group is climbing out of the depths. As they reach us they hand off their dripping, waxy candles. The ghost of Henry Miller, disguised as an elderly British woman, hands me hers.

I descend the slippery staircase, behind two young boys and a girl. The light bobs and flickers. My knees shake. The ancient steps, probably the oldest on the continent, are worn and wet. I remind myself that I need to do this, to go where my hero could not. The walls are slick, marbled slime. At the third turn, the three teens balk, echoing at each other in Greek. I take the lead, stepping down, down, down. The meager light from our three candles makes the cistern seem small and tight. Finally, the bottom appears in the dimness, wavering and watery, muddy and flat. I step into the muck and touch the final cold wall with my right hand, invoking a blessing for my gods and heroes. For poor, claustrophobic Henry.

I don’t linger. Some victories are not meant to be savored. The ascent is easier, and again I lead the family up the smooth stairs. Back at the top, in the dayshine and breezes, my eyes adjust slowly. The brisk wind whistling though a hole in the wall nearly blows out the flame, but I protect it with a cupped hand. I realize people are nearby, waiting. I hand the light to a young girl, who thanks me sweetly, shyly hiding her eyes with her hair.

In the sunlight, the humid ruins spread out above me to the hazy sky. On the steep surrounding hills sheep bay over the roar of the cicadas. I watch a shepherd slowly lead his flock across the empty, trackless mountains. Faint bells jingle on the great green-gray slopes. And something stirs in me, telling me that I have left my own shepherd behind.

The Ghost of Henry Miller posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

In the winter of 1930, six months into his first year in Paris, Henry Miller moved in with Richard Osborn to his flat on rue Auguste Bartholdi. Osborn was the youngest child of a blueblood New England family from Bridgeport, Connecticut and was prone to bouts of schizophrenia. “A Connecticut Yankee, with a slip in the ancestry somewhere” is how Miller described him.¹ Only recently removed from his Yale graduation, Osborn had come to Paris in order to experience the wild side for a few years before settling into a planned career on Wall Street. While in the city of light, he found employment in the legal department of the Paris branch of National City Bank. Osborn Appears in Tropic of Cancer as Fillmore, a name derived from Fillmore Place, a favorite street from Miller’s childhood in Brooklyn.

The apartment was a seventh floor walk-up “with a separate kitchen and good-sized bedroom.”² The space was too large for one person, Osborn reasoned, and Miller would help him take care of the place and keep the fire going while he was away at work. The apartment was conveniently located next to a metro line and from his window perch, Miller could observe soldiers absurdly flourishing their swords and practicing bayonet charges on the parade grounds of the nearby École Militaire. Beyond, he was afforded a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower.

The two got along well for most of the winter. Miller admired Osborn’s adventurous nature and Osborn, in turn, was sure that Miller was a budding genius. Osborn’s only complaint was Miller’s habit of clattering away at the typewriter into the early hours of the morning.³ In exchange for Osborn picking up all of the expenses, Miller diligently swept the floors, cleaned the apartment and cooked meals.

With his bank salary, Osborn treated Miller to wine and revelry and took him to the Cirque Medrano.⁴ Often he returned from work with arms laden with bottles of Miller’s favorite Anjou, Vouvray, Macon, or Rhum Negrita, ready for a night of carousing. Upon crossing the threshold he would inevitably shout in absurdist French, “Ce soir, Henri, nous vouldras fait un rigolo!”⁵

Each morning Osborn deposited a 10 franc note on Miller’s pillow in hopes that the money would be spent on a healthy meal. He was disappointed to learn that the daily fare went only toward two packs of Gauloises Bleues cigarettes and a breakfast of croissants and café crème.

Occasionally tempers flared between Osborn and Miller. The truth was that each man envied the other’s freedom. Miller, who was penniless, longed for the liberty Osborn enjoyed to lavish money on good food, drink and entertainment. Osborn, a would-be writer who never got around to writing very much, envied Miller’s freedom to indulge his artistic passion removed from the constraints of the workaday world.⁶

Miller was making good use of his free time in the apartment. While on the rue Auguste Bartholdi he completed the fledgling novel Crazy Cock and began composing his first published articles. “Mademoiselle Claude” and “Buñuel, or Thus Cometh to an End Everywhere the Golden Age” were printed in Samuel Putnam’s New Review at this time while “The Six Day Bike Races” and other articles began making their appearance in the Paris edition of The Chicago Tribune. Emboldened, Miller began to anticipate greater tasks. He wrote to Emil Schnellock that after Crazy Cock, whose literary pretensions had made him feel walled-in and suffocated, “I will explode in the Paris book. The hell with form, style, expression and all those pseudo-paramount things which beguile the critics. I want to get myself across this time—and direct as a knife thrust.”⁷ ‘The Paris book,’ of course, was to become Tropic of Cancer.

Miller began constructing the new novel in his usual disjointed manner: scribbling cryptic notes, copying interesting phrases he found in an assortment of books and cleaving passages from his letters home to Schnellock. “On the wall to one side of him, on a sheet of large brown wrapping paper, is a list of words which he adds to from time to time: scientific words, descriptive words, mythological terms, archaic and obsolete expressions, crapulous words, insulting words, explosive words, garnered from the weirdest sources.”⁸

Later in 1931, Osborn would introduce Miller to the woman who would become his muse and lover, Anaïs Nin. Nin was the wife of Hugo Guiler, Osborn’s boss at National City Bank. Osborn, who had a habit of bragging over his literary flatmate, showed some of Miller’s writing to Nin. Impressed, she arranged a meeting and would record her first encounter with Miller in her diary: “In his writing he is flamboyant, virile, animal, magnificent. He is a man whom life makes drunk, I thought. He is like me.”⁹ The first shoots of one of history’s great literary love affairs had begun to take root.

Osborn, meanwhile, had become smitten with a woman named Irene who quickly joined Miller in sharing the apartment. Irene frustrated Osborn by claiming to be a Russian princess and demanding luxuries befitting her title. She further made claim to a dose of gonorrhea in apparent ruse to prevent him from attempting to have sex with her. Unlike Osborn, Irene’s charms were entirely lost on Miller and the two essentially ignored each other while living under the same roof for most of the winter.

When the lease ran out on March 4, 1931 Miller and Osborn parted ways to find separate living arrangements.¹⁰ They remained friends however, with their further Parisian adventures occupying much of the latter portion of Tropic of Cancer. The two kept in contact over the years through letters and Miller would go on to dedicate The Wisdom of the Heart to Osborn:

“To Richard Galen Osborn originally of Bridgeport, Connecticut, who rescued me from starvation in Paris and set my feet in the right direction. May heaven protect him and guide him safely to port.”

Notes

1. Henry Miller, Letters to Emil, 68
2. Richard Osborn, “No. 2, Rue Auguste Bartholdi,” Henry Miller: A Book of Tributes, 1931-1994, 35
3. Osborn, 36
4. Osborn, 38
5. Jay Martin, Always Merry and Bright, 220. Anther variant found in Letters to Emil, 69
6. Osborn, 41
7. Letters to Emil, 72
8. Osborn, 29
9. Anaïs Nin, Henry & June, 6
10. Letters to Emil, 71

Life with Richard Osborn posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

The artist Frederick Kann was one of Henry Miller’s closest friends and benefactors during his early years in Paris and he makes an appearance in Tropic of Cancer as ‘Kruger’. Miller was introduced to Kann by Brassaï in 1930 and in the fall of that year he spent several weeks living with Kann in his apartment on the rue Froidevaux overlooking the Montparnasse cemetery.

In his novel, Miller paints Kann as a “spiritual-minded individual” eager for an audience to listen to his obsessive prattling over esoteric subjects. Miller shared several of Kann’s theosophical and astrological interests and, as he was then living hand-to-mouth and often homeless, was willing to exchange an obliging ear for the occasional meal or a place to sleep for the night:

He seemed to think I was ripe to move on to another plane, “a higher plane,” as he put it. I was ready to move on to any plane he designated, provided that one didn’t eat less or drink less. He chewed my head off about the “threadsoul,” the “causal body,” “ablation,” the Upanishads, Plotinus, Krishnamurti, “the Karmic vestiture of the soul,” “the nirvanic consciousness,” all that flapdoodle which blows out of the East like a breath from the plague.¹

Kann held regular soirées on Friday nights to entertain his artist friends with “plenty to drink and good sandwiches” and Miller faithfully dropped by on Saturday mornings to polish off any leftovers. Now and then Kann treated Miller to a meal at the Restaurant des Gourmets, where they might linger over the plat du jour and a discussion of Tibetan Buddhism.²

It was likely early October when Miller moved in with Kann. The studio apartment at 59 rue Froidevaux offered several amenities which Miller prized, such as a central Montparnasse location, free rent, and a view over the Montparnasse cemetery where Baudelaire and other illustrious artists lay buried. The sound of the cemetery bell which tolled whenever a hearse passed through the gate became regular feature of Miller’s life in the apartment.³

Toward the end of October, Miller fell ill. Unable to get out of bed, he became convinced he was about to die. Perhaps it was the proximity to the cemetery that inspired Miller’s morbid tone. In any case, the situation was especially alarming for Kann, as he was preparing to host an important exhibition of his art in the apartment:

He tried to coax me out of bed, with the idea of locking me up in the kitchen upon the arrival of his visitors. I realized that I was making a mess of it for him. People can’t look at pictures and statues with enthusiasm when a man is dying before their eyes. Kruger honestly thought I was dying. So did I. […] Worse than having a sick man in his studio should the visitors arrive, was to have a dead man. That would completely ruin his prospects, slim as they were. He didn’t put it that way to me, of course, but I could see from his agitation that that was what worried him.⁴

Miller ends the account of his stay at the apartment when his friends Fillmore an Collins show up and whisk him off to a hotel in time for Kann’s exhibition to come off without a hitch.

Kann was likely preparing for his inclusion in a group exhibition of the Surindépendants which was shown between October 25 and November 24, 1930. The bulk of the exhibit was held at the Parc des Expositions at the Porte de Versailles and Kann appears to have been the only member of the group to display his work in his own apartment. His showing included two sculptures, with the unassuming titles of “Sculpture” and “Plaque,” along with one painting and a drawing.⁵

In Tropic of Cancer, Miller was a harsh critic of Kann’s artistic skill: “as a painter he was nil; as a sculptor less than nil,”⁶ but in other writings it is clear that he respected Kann’s talent: “There is a great deal of mystification in Kann’s abstract paintings, a curious blending of the mathematical and the introspective. Without transition, he jumps from the most rigid academicism to the strange no-man’s land which is not even Surrealism.”⁷

In his letters to Anaïs Nin, Miller presents his own attempts at painting as torn between the competing influences of Kann and another artist friend, Hilaire Hiler: “With Hiler and Kann I’m between two fires, two opposite poles of thought.”⁸ Hiler’s work offered a more organic approach to abstraction in comparison with Kann’s geometrical precision, but it may be interesting to consider a possible influence of Hiler on one of Kann’s own paintings. Miller famously dubbed Hiler “The Cosmological Eye” because he included an image of a disembodied eye in each of his paintings, as Hiler said, “I want that the pictures should look back at me; if I look at them and they don’t look at me too then they are no good.”⁹ In similar fashion, a disembodied eye motif makes a clear appearance in Kann’s Untitled from 1931:

In 1936 Kann collaborated with fellow artists on drafting “The Dimensionist Manifesto” which championed a fusion of modern science with art. In addition to Kann, signatories of the manifesto included Wassily Kandinsky, Marcel Duchamp, Juan Mirò and Alexander Calder.¹⁰

Later that year, Kann left Paris to take up a teaching position at the Kansas City Art Institute where he was a colleague of Thomas Hart Benton. Miller would meet up with him there in 1941 while making a tour of the US that he recorded in The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. On March 20, Kann put Miller up on his couch again just like in the Paris days, but the ensuing years had made Miller less amenable to hardship. He now found Kann’s couch “too uncomfortable” and quickly sought out a hotel. Kann’s esoteric bent had led him to Freemasonry and he regaled Miller in his customary manner with discussions of Tibet, Madame Blavatsky and Krishnamurti.¹¹ Miller stayed for a weekend and before he left Kann presented him with a prized copy of The Phoenix by Manly P. Hall.¹²

In the 1940’s Kann moved to Los Angeles, where he partnered with the actor Vincent Price to open the Circle Gallery which displayed the works of prominent abstract painters. By the 1960’s, Kann’s art and writings were influential and well known internationally. Following his death in 1965 however, Kann’s name quickly disappeared from view—until a cache of his paintings was rediscovered more than twenty five years later. In 2007 an important retrospective of his work was exhibited at the Meredith Ward Fine Art gallery in New York titled, “Frederick Kann: Creative Spirit, Visionary Mind.”

Notes

1. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 195
2. Henry Miller, Letters to Emil, 112
3. Henry Miller, Letters to Anais Nin, 8
4. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 199-200
5. Sophie Levy, A Transatlantic Avant-Garde, 246
6. Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 196
7. Henry Miller, quoted in Susan Larsen, Frederick Kann: Creative Spirit, Visionary Mind, 8
8. Henry Miller & Anaïs Nin, A Literate Passion, 225
9. Henry Miller, The Cosmological Eye, 358
10. Susan Larsen, Frederick Kann: Creative Spirit, Visionary Mind, 10
11. Henry Miller, Letters to Anaïs Nin, 242-3
12. Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, 144

chez Fred Kann posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

Anastasia was not the girl’s real name nor, because she was an orphan, did she know her true name. Her first foster parents, who did not adopt her, Mr. and Mrs. Thrall, called her Marion. Her second foster parents, were said to be Mr. and Mrs. Fish, somehow associated with the Grace Steamship Lines.

“The name of Marion”, says June, “did not fit this beautiful thing at all. I named her Jean.” Then because ‘Stasia’ claimed a Russian parentage, June selected the name of Kronski after Miller’s book character “Dr. Kronski”. All this to lend credence to an artificial background which June dreamed up for the girl, as being a bastard, and a descendant of the Romanoff’s.¹

At first glance June’s explanation of how Jean Kronski received her name seems reasonable. But a closer examination will show that the story is actually quite bizarre.

The first anomaly in June’s story is one of chronology. The “Dr. Kronski” referred to above is the fictional name Miller used for his friend Dr. Emil Conason. Conason first appears in Miller’s novels as “Dr. Kronski” in Tropic of Capricorn, published in 1939, and he later appears under that name in The Rosy Crucifixion series. June and Jean initially met in 1926, long before Dr. Kronski’s appearance in Miller’s novels, and their relationship is generally supposed to have ended during their trip abroad to Paris in 1927. Surely it would have been impossible for June to derive Jean Kronski’s last name from “Dr. Kronski” if that name was not to appear in Miller’s novels for another thirteen years.

Another oddity of June’s story is to be found in the feigned relationship of Jean to the Romanoff dynasty. While the Kronski name is said to come from Miller’s character “Dr. Kronski”, the reason this name appealed to June is that it sounded Russian. The idea is that being introduced to an orphan named Kronski would cause people to think that Jean might actually be Anastasia Romanoff, the princess who for many years was rumored to have gone into hiding after surviving the assassination of the Russian Tsar and his family in 1918. The connection however, is nebulous at best. It is only Miller’s selection of the name “Anastasia” for the Jean Kronski character in The Rosy Crucifixion that makes the connection explicit. “Anastasia” first appears in Plexus, Vol. 2 of The Rosy Crucifixion, which was published in 1952.

As I began to look into the story of how Jean Kronski came to be named, June’s account in Dick’s book appeared to be hopelessly muddled and likely an outright fabulation—with the most significant references drawn directly from Miller’s later fiction rather than from June’s memory of actual events. But then I stumbled across a passage in Sexus which bears an odd resemblance to the account June provided. The passage concerns the changing of June’s character name from Mara to Mona:

It was under Kronski’s influence that Mara decided to change her name again—from Mara to Mona. There were other, more significant changes which also had their origin here in the purlieus of the Bronx.²

What is interesting here is that we have a name change that is influenced by Dr. Kronski, just as June later recounted. However it is the June character’s name that changes rather than Jean’s.

Outside of the Kronski influence, what struck me most about this passage is simply that I had not noticed it before. I was aware that in some of Miller’s novels June is represented as “Mara” and in others she appears as “Mona”. However, I had always assumed that the naming alteration was just an arbitrary aesthetic decision made at the whim of the artist, and that it bore no meaningful significance. I had overlooked that there was actually a specific name-changing event recorded in Miller’s oeuvre.

Mara — Mona

Miller wrote his series of major autobiographical novels out of chronological order and this clouds to some degree the logic that would attain had the novels appeared in sequence. If we put the novels into chronological order, we see that Tropic of Capricorn (1939) comes first—describing Miller’s years in New York during the early to mid 1920’s. The events described in The Rosy Crucifixion, comprising the books Sexus (1949), Plexus (1952) and Nexus (1959), come next, overlapping slightly the events of Tropic of Capricorn and ending at some point in 1928. Tropic of Cancer (1934), which was published first, actually comes last in the chronology and covers the years 1930-34.

In Tropic of Capricorn, June appears as “Mara”. In The Rosy Crucifixion, June begins as Mara, but in the first volume of the series her name is changed to “Mona”. In Tropic of Cancer she appears throughout as Mona. Thus, when considered chronologically, the name change from Mara to Mona is logically consistent and therefore significant.

If June’s name change is significant, what then do the names Mara and Mona mean? Thomas Nesbit has provided the essential reference for the meaning behind the name Mara. According to Nesbit, “‘Mara’ signifies the demon of illusion, as we find in one of the Theological religious texts Miller knew well: Madame Blavatsky’s The Voice of the Silence (1889)”. Nesbit consulted Miller’s personal copy of The Voice of the Silence in which Miller had underlined a footnote regarding Mara which reads, “Mara is in exoteric religions a demon, an Asura, but in Esoteric Philosophy it is personified temptation through men’s vices, and translated literally means, ‘that which kills’ the soul.” Perhaps the shortest definition of the term Mara is ‘illusion’ and another underlined passage from The Voice of the Silence relates, “the unwary soul that fails to grapple with the mocking demon of illusion, will return to earth the slave of Mara.”³

Blavatsky’s texts are also the likely source from which Miller constructed Mona’s name. Nesbit’s examination of ‘Mara’ points us in the right direction: “Containing many passages that inspired Miller, Blavatsky’s The Voice of the Silence is devoted to how we must ‘slay thy lunar form at will,’ meaning one’s desire in order to be liberated.”⁴ Mona is an embodiment of this ‘lunar form’. As a starting point, we can simply substitute the word ‘moon’ for ‘lunar’ and see that the phonetic similarity between the words ‘Mona’ and ‘moon’ is quite clear.

To better understand the concept of a lunar form we should turn to another of Blavatsky’s books, and one that Miller was known to admire: The Secret Doctrine. One of the principal topics discussed in The Secret Doctrine is the concept of reincarnation as expressed in esoteric Buddhism. Within the doctrine, a ‘monad’ is presented as a unified identity which persists across a multitude of reincarnation cycles. As we repeatedly traverse the cycle of reincarnation throughout history, we experience many different lives and distinct personalities. The monad can be described as a collection of our past lives into a single identity. The monad however, is not our soul—it is only the collective identity of our soul’s successive earthly incarnations. The aim of the soul is to escape from the wheel of reincarnation in order to rejoin divinity. To achieve this, the soul must sever the connection to it’s monad. Blavatsky identifies the ‘Lunar Monad’ as being the most exalted of all monad types. Lunar monads have first dibs on incarnating as human beings (as opposed to the lower animal, vegetable or mineral forms) and thus their spiritual development is more likely to result in escape and return to divinity.⁵ Hence the injunction from The Voice of the Silence to ‘slay thy lunar form’. We have already observed the phonetic concordance between Mona and lunar (as moon) and a similar comparison will easily be made between Mona and monad. It is my contention that Miller selected the name Mona to represent Blavatsky’s ‘lunar monad’. As a shorthand, we may simply say that Mona represents the moon.

Miller’s novels contain many passages in which he associates his wife with the moon, and this occurs regardless of whether she is identified as Mara or Mona. Often, these moon references are associated with death—the moon as a dead planet—or with the idea that the moon does not emit its own light, but provides only a pale reflection of the sun. The most striking example occurs in Tropic of Capricorn where Miller describes a sleeping Mara as:

thoroughly extinguished and gleaming with a reflected light, like the moon itself. […] She might live on endlessly, like the moon, like any dead planet, radiating an hypnotic effulgence, creating tides of passion, engulfing the world in madness, discoloring all earthly substances with her magnetic, metallic rays. Sowing her own death she brought everyone about her to fever pitch. In the heinous stillness of her sleep she renewed her own magnetic death by union with the cold magma of the lifeless planetary worlds. She was magically intact. Her gaze fell upon one with a transpiercing fixity: it was the moon-gaze through which the dead dragon of life gave off a cold fire.⁶

In Blavatsky’s conception, being trapped in the cycle of reincarnation is akin to spiritual death, while escape from the cycle entails spiritual life. Whether as Mara (the demon of illusion) or as Mona (the lunar monad) the June character’s symbolic role in Miller’s allegory is largely the same: she is the impediment to his spiritual liberation and thus an avatar of death. Curiously, June’s own last names also reflect an association with death. Her original family name was Smerdt, which Dick indicates is “the poetic Russian word for ‘death’” and June selected the name Mansfield for herself because she read that “it was the nearest English term for cemetery – ‘man’s field’”.⁷

Before moving on, we should also observe the phonetic similarity between the names Mara and Mona: each name has the same number of letters and syllables and each begins with the letter M. For the moment we only have one example, but I will suggest that the appearance of such phonetically similar name pairs in Miller’s writing is meaningful.

June — Jean

What then are we to make of the similarity between the names June and Jean? It is odd that June would have chosen a name for her companion that is so harmonious with her own. The appearance is of June having assigned to Jean the role of an androgynous alter-ego to herself. As June and Jean are the names the pair used in real life, we are unlikely to discover a symbolic meaning behind their construction. For now, let’s simply note the congruity and move on to a consideration of…

Anastasia — Athanasia

Anastasia is the name Miller used for Jean in The Rosy Crucifixion and, as with Mara and Mona, it may be suspected to bear a hidden meaning. Nesbit’s book provides a candidate: “Anastasia is often called Stasia, perhaps to connote ‘stasis’ given her constant presence.”⁸ Nesbit is correct in attributing a symbolic significance to the name, but the intended reference is not to stasis. Recently, a major collection of Miller’s manuscripts was scheduled for auction and among the items listed for sale were pages of Miller’s handwritten notes for The Rosy Crucifixion. Near the bottom of one page—on which the novels’ characters have been organized into lists—appears the following cypher:

Anastasia = Resurrection
Athanasia = Immortality

A quick search of the web reveals that indeed, Anastasia does mean resurrection in Greek and Athanasia is Greek for immortality.

Detail from Miller’s notes. Click image to see the full page.

From Dick’s interview we might assume that the primary reason Miller selected the name Anastasia was to draw a connection to the Romanoffs. However when we consider the importance that the concept of resurrection might have in a novel cycle named for the crucifixion, we must conclude that the Romanoff association is of secondary importance. Miller presents the Romanoff tale in Nexus as simply another in a litany of examples which show that Mona’s is a compulsive liar: “Neither of them seems capable of telling the truth, even about such a simple matter as going to the toilet. Stasia, an essentially truthful soul, acquired the habit in order to please Mona. Even in that fanciful tale about being a Romanoff bastard there was a grain of truth.”⁹ The primary reason that Anastasia is so named is that she represents resurrection. While Anastasia’s presence in The Rosy Crucifixion throws Miller’s life into chaos, she is also the catalyst for his eventual escape from New York and liberation in Paris. Miller’s apparent rehearsal of both Anastasia and Athanasia as names for the Jean character indicate not only that he conceived of character names in sets of phonetic pairs, but that these pairs were also constructed to carry a similar symbolic weight.

Marion — Miriam

In her interview with Dick, June indicated that Jean’s name had been Marion at the time of their first meeting. It is interesting then to find that in Crazy Cock (A novel Miller wrote prior to Tropic of Cancer, but which was not published until after his death) Miller presents the Vanya/Jean Kronski character as having previously been called by a very similar name—Miriam: “She chose for herself the name Vanya. Before that she had been Miriam”.¹⁰ We should note that Vanya is here presented as having chosen her own name, in apparent contradiction to June’s story of having selected a name for her. As for the Marion/Miriam similarity, it is a common enough occurrence for an author to only slightly alter the name of a real person when casting them in a work of fiction. But when we turn again to Sexus, we see that only a few pages after Mara has changed her name to Mona, Miller suddenly breaks into a rhapsody over the wonders of the name Miriam:

Miriam, yes! That was the name I was searching for. Why was that name so wonderful to me? How could such a simple appellation evoke such powerful emotions? I kept asking myself this question.

Miriam is the name of names. If I could mould all women into the perfect ideal, if I could give this ideal all the qualities I seek in woman, her name would be Miriam.¹¹

Miriam has a Biblical antecedent as the sister of Moses and Aaron who led the Israelites out of Egypt. The name Miriam actually derives—along with Marion, Mary, Martha, etc.—from the Egyptian word ‘Mery,’ or ‘Merty’ which means beloved. It has been suggested that Miriam is a truncation of the Egyptian phrase Mery-Amon, or beloved of Amon, an Egyptian god.¹² Whatever the etymological case, Miller seems to provide his own explication for the name in Crazy Cock, “… Before that she had been Miriam, and to be a Miriam was to be a considerate and self-effacing soul.”¹³

We may connect Miriam with Anastasia/resurrection in that resurrection is a liberation of of the soul from its bondage to the reincarnation cycle and Miriam led the Israelites to liberation from bondage to Egypt. But what is more interesting to note is that Miller inserted the name Miriam into Jean Kronski’s name-changing incident in Crazy Cock as well as into the Mara/Mona name changing incident in Sexus, seemingly without purpose.

Kronski — Kronski

Clearly there is no need to examine the phonetic similarities between the names Kronski and Kronski. We are better left to ask why these identical names appear—one in Miller’s fictional novels and the other in Miller’s real life—attached to entirely distinct characters. Miller could not have known that June would one day give an interview in which she claimed the real-life Jean Kronski was named after his fictional doctor. Nor should he have suspected that his readers might see any connection between Dr. Kronski and Jean as he never used the name ‘Jean Kronski’ in his novels. The chronological appearance of the names suggests that Dr. Kronski was actually named after Jean. Whatever the case, it appears that Miller was trying to draw a hidden connection between the two, perhaps as an inside joke—or as a reference that only his close acquaintances might recognize.

Conclusion?

The explanation presented in Kenneth Dick’s book is problematic in that many of its points seem to be drawn from a reading of Miller’s fiction rather then from June’s memory of actual events. There is also a strange concordance of detail surrounding the naming of Jean as June has described it and Miller’s description of Mara changing her name to Mona. Is it possible that both June in her interview and Miller in his novel Sexus are somehow referring to the same event? Recall that both naming events are said to be inspired by “Dr. Kronski” and that Miller seems to have named Dr. Krosnki after Jean. The name Miriam makes an appearance in the Vanya naming incident in Crazy Cock as well as the Mara/Mona switch in Sexus. The repeated examples of phonetically similar named pairs in Miller’s novels, echoing the similarity between the real-life names June and Jean—should be enough to tell us that something interesting is at play here.

So far we have examined some strange name similarities in relation to the Jean Kronski mystery. Stranger still is yet to come.…

Notes

1. Kenneth C. Dick, Henry Miller: Colossus of One, 181-82
2. Henry Miller, Sexus, 154
3. Thomas Nesbit, Henry Miller and Religion, 88-89
4. Ibid.
5. Helena Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, 170-191. Blavatsky’s discussion of the lunar monad is a commentary on the book Esoteric Buddhism by A.P. Sinnett, which Miller was known to have read around 1910 (See Always Merry and Bright by Jay Martin, 19)
6. Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn, 238-39
7. Kenneth C. Dick, Henry Miller: Colossus of One, 164
8. Thomas Nesbit, Henry Miller and Religion, 106
9. Henry Miller, Nexus, 10
10. Henry Miller, Crazy Cock, 4
11. Henry Miller, Sexus, 163-64
12. See Christ in Egypt by D. M. Murdoch and Genesis of the Grail Kings by Laurence Gardner for a multitude of references on the etymology of Mery/Merty/Miriam.
13. Henry Miller, Crazy Cock, 4

Jean Kronski Mysteries: Strange Names posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

A new issue of Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal has just been released! Volume 7 brings another great roundup of research into Miller and his writing. You can order a copy today from the Nexus website—now at a special low price.

The issue starts off with an important selection of Miller’s letters to George Orwell from the 1930’s. Miller discusses Orwell’s Down and Out in London and Paris—which he clearly admired—as well as his own recently completed Black Spring. Miller states that his intent in the novel was: “to give a picture of the whole man, from dreams to faeces and back to the womb again.”

Natalija Bonic provides a fascinating discussion of Miller’s trademark ability to snatch joy from the clutches of despair. Describing this approach as “inverted tragedy,” Bonic takes the reader on a tour of the ancient Dionysian mysteries, revealing unexpected and germane parallels between Miller’s writing and presocratic philosophy.

Karl Orend continues his biographical explorations, detailing Miller’s great friendship with the French author and ex-surrealist, Joseph Delteil. Orend also explores one of Miller’s lesser-known books,—one that is almost wholly unknown to American readers—disclosing along the way Miller’s views on a multitude of literary figures.

Doug Matus presents a compelling argument for including Miller in the high school curriculum. Specific strategies are given for combining Miller’s writing with classroom discussions of important topics in American history, along with examples of success with this approach. Matus makes clear that Miller’s voice is well-suited to exciting students’ interest and engaging them in classroom discussions. This is a must read for teachers or anyone convinced that the ‘obscenity’ tag so often applied to Miller must forever exclude him from the classroom.

Eric Lehman delves into Book of Friends to expose the depth of Miller’s compassion and generosity toward those who were close to him. Critics have often derided Miller as a solipsist for the alienation of his early novels. Lehman’s essay reveals other facets of Miller’s character—the great importance he placed on friendship and the arc of Miller’s personal development over the course of his life.

In “June/Nadja: Symbolic Sisters in Arms?” Michael Jones captures some unsettling parallels between the muses of Henry Miller and André Breton. Both women exude an air of mystery and sexual promise, and the biographical events of their lives can also be seen to develop along uncannily similar lines.

Allison Palumbo provides a modern feminist reading of Miller, discovering in the openness of his narrative style an example of what Hélène Cixous defined as écriture féminine, which subverts the repressive phalogocentric model of traditional literature.

Also in this issue, Katy Masuga explores the ways in which the works of Miller, Hart Crane and Walt Whitman can be considered as an intertextual dialogue between their authors. Randy Chase confirms the site of June Mansfield’s grave in Arizona, Harry Kiakis shares his memory of attending a party for Miller in 1968, Magnus Grehn reports on an exhibition of Miller’s paintings in Sweden, and my own article on “Henry Miller’s Paris Guidebooks” makes an appearance.

You can find a complete listing of contents for this issue on the Nexus site. This issue has been marked at a special low price to celebrate the 7th anniversary of the Nexus journal—only $7 for US orders or $17 international. The price includes postage—a fantastic deal!

New Henry Miller Journal Released posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

In a recent post, I wrote about Eve Adams’ New york tearoom and her friendship with Henry Miller in Paris. Now I’m pleased to announce that a new play focusing on the life of Eve Adams and written by award-winning playwright Barbara Kahn is set to hit the New York stage on April 15. The following is from the official synopsis:

Synopsis

“The Spring and Fall of Eve Adams recounts the true story of an extraordinary woman who was a victim of homophobia and anti-immigrant hysteria that ultimately led to her death. In 1926 Eve Adams, a Jewish lesbian from Poland, was proprietor of “Eve’s Hangout”, a tearoom at 129 Macdougal Street, where local poets, musicians and actors congregated and shared their work in salon evenings. Eve’s haven of artistic and sexual freedom was soon threatened by religious and governmental authorities, leading to her arrest, imprisonment and deportation. The conflict between progressive and reactionary forces provides the drama in the play as the characters attempt to live and love free from discrimination. The play conveys not only a long forgotten moment in New York history but sheds light on current threats by holding a mirror to the past.”

I have had the opportunity to correspond briefly with Barbara about her play and she informs me that the Henry Miller, June, and Jean Kronski triangle will have a role in the production:

The incomparable June Miller is a character in this play. She is married to Henry, involved with Jean Kronski and a friend of Eve Adams, whose tearoom is near The Pepper Pot where June occasionally works. The play foreshadows Eve’s later relationship with Henry Miller in Paris, where she promotes his books, offering them for sale to English-speaking tourists.

Theater for the New City

The play will run at the Theater for the New City from April 15 to May 2, 2010. The theater is located at 155 1st Ave at 10th St. in New York City. Showtimes are Thursday through Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm. Tickets are $12 and may be purchased on the Theater for the New City’s website. While you’re there, be sure to check out the photos from the site of Eve’s tearoom in 1926.

And if you haven’t visited my post on Eve Adams in a while, be sure to check out the comment posted by Martha Reis. Martha is currently working on a biographical sketch of Eve Adams and her research has turned up a wealth of fascinating new information—including the story of Eve’s immigration to America, her life among American radicals before moving to New York, her involvement in a well-known scene from Tropic of Cancer, and what happened to her under the German occupation of France in WWII. Martha has shared some additional information about Eve with me via email and I feel confident that when the facts are known, this obscure, itinerant bookseller will be revealed as one of the most fascinating characters of the Montparnasse expatriate scene.

The Spring and Fall of Eve Adams posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

Lots to See

There’s are many other wonderful Henry miller items up for bid as well, including a carbon typescript of the first draft of Tropic of Capricorn, with an estimate of $40,000 – $60,000. Some of the less pricey items that caught my eye are a wall chart in Miller’s handwriting with innumerable lists of things to do and books to read, notes for The Rosy Crucifixion, corrections to the proof copy of The World of Sex, photos of Miller’s father and childhood homes, and memorabilia from the Xerxes Society.

You can see all of the Miller items available beginning on this page. The Miller items are in the lots numbered 94 through 214. One of the great things about the auction site is that it provides large images of the items for examination. From the previous link, clicking an item thumbnail will take you to an ‘item details’ page; then clicking the thumbnail on that page will open a new window with image previews. Be sure to select the “full size” option at the top of this new window and you won’t have to squint to read Miller’s handwriting.

Rare Manuscripts Auction posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller

On a snowy day in February 1930, Henry Miller boarded the passenger ship American Banker and left New York to begin a new life in Europe. His journey would eventually take him to Paris, where he was to live for nine years and where he began writing the novels that made him famous. The American Banker carried Miller as far as London and there, with only $10 to his name—hastily borrowed at the dock from his friend Emil Schnellock—he was obliged to wait until his wife could wire the funds to complete his travel.

To the right, you’ll see the cover page of the timetable Miller would have used to plan his journey. The timetable is for American Merchant Lines and was published in December 1929, covering departures for January to April of 1930. The American Banker was one of five American Merchant Lines ships that plied the route between New York and London.

Arrival

Miller arrived in London on the twenty-fifth of February and, according to biographer Jay Martin, took a room at the Melvin Private Hotel on Gower Street.¹ Michael Jones, an intrepid reader of this blog, has researched this location and uncovered some further information: The full name of the hotel at the time of Miller’s stay was the John Melvin Groundwater Private Hotel and it was located at 67 Gower Street. The hotel was renamed The Georgian during the 1940’s and today is known as The Ridgemount Hotel, occupying 65-67 Gower Street. Incidentally, 67 Gower Street was in 1869 home to Elizabeth Stride, a victim of the notorious murderer, Jack the Ripper.

Miller remained in London for about a week and was not impressed. In a letter to Emil Schnellock he complained of the pervasive poverty and cold, gloomy weather.

London gave me a severe cold. The houses are not sufficiently heated. You take a bath and run through the halls—and br-r—you shiver before you get your clothes on. I don’t like London anyhow. I would never advise anyone to go there. It is a wonderful city—but they can have it. They—who? Not the English. Christ, what beggars! The scum of the earth is London’s poor—and that means the big majority. Otherwise a fine people.

You said the gloom was rich. It was. You could cut it with an axe. Ate breakfast at the window under an electric light.²

Several of London’s best known sites—Leicester Square, Picadilly Circus and Charing Cross—left Miller cold, appealing to him only as a pale reflection of the New York he recently fled—“just another 42nd Street back in 1895,” as he described them to Schnellock.

Miller’s sense of gloom was no doubt exacerbated by loneliness, his knowledge that his marriage was falling apart and the realization that he faced an uncertain future in an alien land without resources of money or friends. Based on his letter to Schnellock, Miller’s only enjoyable moments in London occurred when he saw an exhibition of paintings by J.M.W. Turner, and on a few stimulating walks through Limehouse and Whitechapel.

The Ridgemount Hotel, London © Photo by Michael Jones		The Ridgemount Hotel, interior © Photo by Michael Jones

Sexus

In Sexus, Miller informs us that while in London he also took in the sites of The Crystal Palace (destroyed in 1936) and the Covent Garden Opera (now known as the Royal Opera House). The Sexus account actually begins in New York, seven years prior to Miller’s arrival in London and frames his experience in the British capitol as a dreamlike series of coincidences which fulfill a premonition he had of losing his wife, June.

Seeing a Broadway advertisement for a performance by “Thomas Burke of the Covent Garden Opera,” Miller makes a date with Mara to attend (Mara is the fictionalized June Miller and at this point in the story, she and Henry have recently met are not yet married). Mara never arrives and Miller is left to see the performance alone. Burke, Miller wrote, “made a tremendous impression on me, for reasons which I shall never be able to fathom. A number of curious coincidences are connected with his name and with the song which he sang that night—’Roses of Picardy.’”³

At this point, Miller leaps ahead seven years and the string of coincidences is revealed. Upon arriving in London, Miller turns up at the Covent Garden Opera, which has been temporarily converted to a dance hall: “It is to Covent Garden I go a few hours after landing in London, and to the girl I single out to dance with I offer a rose from the flower market.”⁴ Miller’s arrival at the dance hall recalls his initial meeting with June at Wilson’s Dancing Studio, an encounter which he references in the opening words of the novel: “It must have been a Thursday night when I met her for the first time—at the dance hall.”⁵ The setting of the Covent Garden Opera conveniently provides a link back to Thomas Burke, and the rose Miller offers connects to his rendition of “Roses of Picardy” with its line that sparks Miller’s premonition of losing Mara—“the words which stab me and leave me desolate”—and which he quotes, “but there is one rose that dies not in Picardy … ‘tis the rose I keep in my heart.”⁶

From the dance hall, Miller leaps ahead to his last day in London and a visit to the home of an astrologer who lives near the Crystal Palace. To reach the house Miller must cross another property, which the astrologer informs him belongs to Thomas Burke. This, however, turns out not to be Thomas Burke the opera singer, but Thomas Burke the writer, author of Limehouse Nights. Miller makes no comment on this transition from one Thomas Burke to another, but in my reading, he is using this dreamlike transference of identities to mark an important transition in his own life.

This becomes evident as Miller’s narrative again leaps suddenly ahead several years to his second attempt to visit London. This voyage, recounted separately in the story “Via Dieppe New Haven” proved unsuccessful, as he was denied entry at the port and sent back to France. In the account provided in Sexus, Miller points out that he was obliged to return to Paris via Picardy, the French province featured in Burke’s song,

and in traveling through that smiling land I stand up and weep with joy. Suddenly, recalling the disappointments, the frustrations, the hopes turned to despair, I realized for the first time the meaning of “voyage.” She had mad the first journey possible and the second one inevitable. We were never to see each other again. I was free in a wholly new sense—free to become the endless voyager.⁷

Miller’s premonition of losing June—coming here at the beginning of their relationship—is joined through this passage to the moment when he actually does lose her. Though not explicitly stated, Miller’s unsuccessful attempt to visit London a second time marked the true end of his marriage to June.

To briefly provide the background: June traveled to Paris in late 1932 to visit Miller and resume their relationship. Though still married, the couple had long been estranged and they began to quarrel—viciously. Miller’s friends tried to free him from June’s clutches by sending him on a trip to England. He was denied entry however, because he lacked the necessary funds for the return voyage and was sent back to France. Before he could meet up with June again, she had sailed back to New York, demanding a prompt divorce.⁸

The Sexus passage is an example of the spiral form of narrative for which Miller has become known. Arriving at the beginning of the novel, this interlude of premonitions, roses, dance halls and opera singers must seem a confusing jumble to readers not already familiar with the biographical story underlying Miller’s attempted second trip to London. I find it interesting though, that while lacking in narrative clarity, Miller’s account provides his readers a taste of the very sort of premonition he is describing—a vision of the future whose narrative specifics are uncertain but whose emotional character is clear.

Notes

1. Jay Martin, Always Merry and Bright, 179-80. Martin is referencing a letter from Henry Miller to Abe Elkus written on letterhead from the Melvin Private Hotel.
2. Henry Miller, Letters to Emil, 17
3. Henry Miller, Sexus, 53
4. Ibid.
5. Henry Miller, Sexus, 5
6. Henry Miller, Sexus, 54
7. Ibid.
8. Jay Martin, Always Merry and Bright, 268-77

London Transfer posted by: Walking Paris with Henry Miller