This anecdote must be told; days ago I was searching for some literary gadgets and I visited Shakespeare and Company. I love to get lost in their website. That bookshop is simply enchanting, I don't find other words for defining it.
At the same time the day after, I received an e-mail from Neri Pozza, an italian publishing house about a new book released by them: the one written by Sylvia Beach the founder of the bookshop, in 1959.
I was so thrilled: "Look, what a wonderful coincidence, let me try!" I thought enthusiastically.
I sent an e-mail to their publicity office. Without too many hopes, let me add this.
I didn't think anymore at this request, when I received an e-mail from an italian lady, in the subject: Shakespeare and Co. I thought: "Oh look, they answered me back! And an italian lady works there, lucky her" but then, while I was opening the e-mail (with dial-up it takes some time): "Wait...I don't remember I sent any electronic mail to Shakespeare and Co."
When I read that the e-mail was from the publishing house and that I would have received this book it was as if they would have said me I had won at the lottery. Well, values are diversified in this world. A book to me means the world.
Translated superbly well by Elena Spagnol Vaccari with a foreword by Livia Manera, this one is the first-hand account of the born, history, passions, emotions, lived, experienced by Shakespeare and Company, her founder and the protagonists of this wonderful reality.
What a glorious, beautiful moment was the one Sylvia Beach lived in.
Her writing-style is fluid, sardonic, ironic, electrifying; she tries all her best to keep normal a life, her one, that was simply extraordinary.
She knew it; she was a great mind and that she was surrounded by great minds and thinkers; great publishers, editors, authors; she was a person genuinely passionate of literature and for this big love, big passion, she helped, completely free, a writer to come out, becoming who became later: James Joyce.
Before to start to see this section of her life, let's say that Sylvia was the daughter of a pastor from Princeton, close friend of Woodrow Wilson and family. Yes, the future President of the USA. Woodrow Wilson's wedding was celebrated by Sylvia Beach's father, like also, later the funeral and Sylvia was a close friend of his two daughters.
The Beaches went to Paris for a certain time, and Sylvia fell in love for that city where she started to meet a lot of intellectuals.
Once returned to the USA, fascinated by this experience, her biggest dream became the one of opening a french bookshop in the USA.
Costs, rent in particular too prohibitive; once returned to Paris, she noticed a little bookshop in rue de l'Odeon called at that time "A.Monnier:" she became close friends with the owner of the bookshop, Adrienne.
Slowly, the past idea of a french bookshop located in New York was over: Sylvia understood that most Americans considering that Paris was a beautiful city and that there was a different freedom decided to start to living there. There were problems with prohibitionism in the USA and at a certain point the author said that men appeared like many pregnant women, because they hid the most unthinkable things under their pants.
The Pounds, a virile Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, Francis Scott Fitzgerald and wife, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and her companion...Everyone fell in love for Paris, and everyone loved to share their works, speaking of literature wherever they could, but, surely in the french capital.
I know what you think: just these few names keep people breathless considering that Sylvia was very close friends of all of them: writers who made the history of literature of the XX century. In particular Hemingway, as said also Beach, admirable, because of his powerful impact, his prose.
Under many aspects to me Sylvia Beach is similar to Peggy Guggenheim. The first in love for literature and devoted for most of her life at an author like James Joyce; the second promoting art, discovered Pollock and many other painters.
Once found the place where she would have created the bookshop, Sylvia asked for some money to her mother working hardly for making this reality possible. The bookshop had to have a real, proper soul and character and...style of course.
Not abandoned to itself, but marked by quality, harmony, beauty and first of all, love. Love for culture, authors, books.
Shakespeare and Company the name.
Sylvia thought that after all Shakespeare was still very read and an incredibly suggestive author.
Not only: she wanted for her bookshop beautiful prints, and she picked up as companions during this literary imaginary trip on the walls of her bookshop William Blake, adored by Sylvia, Oscar Wilde (the daughter of Oscar Wilde was one of the best customers of Shakespeare and Company) a Walt Whitman's portrait;
Oh, about Whitman...Whitman was a close friend of her aunt. At this proposal I admit I found particularly ironic the story told by the author. Once in presence of Walt Whitman her aunt would have asked him if she would have had the permission of picking up some papers thrown away by the famous poet, later donated by this aunt to Sylvia.
Accompanied with her during the visit at the poet there was a girl who would have married Bertrand Russell, famous philosopher and thinker.
I think that they didn't search from the papers thrown away although I am still living with this doubt, you know.
A portrait of Whitman and another of Edgar Allen Poe put on the walls of Shakespeare and Company as well. Although the author writes that she thought that the workers maybe would have been there also the opening day, they started to work from all august, the big day arrived: on Nov 19 1919 Shakespeare and Company was born.
Paris had a nest for American authors, publishers, editors, reporters, journalists, readers, whoever was in love for literature and french readers and authors; an international place where to breath the beauty of books, authors, minds, where to share ideas. Second hand books, American ones, were bought in Paris but also imported.
Name a book, Sylvia Beach had that one in one of her bookshelves, be sure of it. And, this tradition is going on.
Sylvia Beach noticed every little particular of a person; physical and intellectual one. Great description for understands the character of Gertrude Stein and her companion, but also the ones of the Pounds, James Joyce & Family with the children who called him babbo in italian (Joyce talked a lot of languages like many other writers and spent a lot of time in Italy), Ernest Hemingway and many other ones.
The Pounds, Steins, were people pretty sociables and once, in one of these meetings, Sylvia met her hero: she had a picture of him on one of the walls of Shakespeare and Company but she couldn't think that she would have met him in person: to her, he was like God: this author was James Joyce, the man who would have marked her existence.
Sylvia loved Joyce intellectually so badly and to him she dedicated time, passion, patience for seeing released in France and other countries his book Ulysses. Joyce thought that after all twelve copies would have been sufficient, but Sylvia thought that no, Shakespeare and Company would have printed 1000 copies. Sylvia Beach became the publishing house through Shakespeare and Company by James Joyce and his Ulysses a monumental work.
She also asked for help to many intellectuals: one of the most polemic opponent at the publication of this book was George Bernard Shaw. And no one, no one, Pound included in grade to change Bernard Shaw's idea.
Sylvia, enthusiastically, thought that they would have sold the book without problems.
Joyce pretended attentions, asked for advice, left the manuscript in the hands of Sylvia and her collaborator, in general young girls in search of a temporary occupation; Sylvia searched for someone in grade of printing the book with all the risk of the story (the book was banned in Europe and USA.)
Sylvia, trusting the author she adored so badly, continued her crusade and at the end she did it. The book was released.
There were some problems at some point with the USA and the so-called "bunnies" that would have wanted to read the book, still banned and stopped at the American customs, once. Where to search for help? Ernest Hemingway was the savior of the situation, with a friend of him called by the author, San Bernardo for obvious reasons, who brought two copies per time illegally to the USA. The book was heavy and a hardback.
These copies reached the USA and their readers.
James Joyce suffered of glaucoma and Sylvia Beach introduced him a famous and good oculist in grade to fix some of his problems.
Joyce had a lot of phobias. He couldn't tolerate dogs, but adored cats; and being a very respectable bookshop, Shakespeare and Company had various animals. Two dogs and a cat named Black.
Sylvia started to receive also by a lot of people erotic manuscripts after the publication of Ulysses, because they all thought that she was interested in this genre; she refused Lady Chatterly's Lover by Lawrence although the author tried all his best and brought with him several people for convincing Sylvia that his book was good.
Beach couldn't publish another book simply because financially there were costs that a bookshop after all couldn't experience anymore. Sylvia suggested to these writers publishing houses all thrilled and happy to publish erotic books.
Although very in love intellectually with Joyce, Sylvia, convinced by Adrienne, started to spend week-ends distant from Paris and James Joyce.
Sylvia adds that a bookshop means also a lot of hard, manual work, not just intellectual one; James Joyce we can say lived in Shakespeare and Company, pretended to be followed. She was her devoted secretary and she would have done whatever he would have asked her, considering her devotion to him.
James Joyce, uninterested at Ulysses, that he considered like a closed chapter, passed at the realization of Finnegans Wake.
A contract was signed in the while between the parts for clarifying that Shakespeare and Company was the publisher of Ulysses, in case some people and publishing houses from foreign places wouldn't have taken too much in consideration this point.
Let's say that, Sylvia Beach, didn't take in consideration all the aspects of the document she signed skipping some fundamental passages.
Sylvia and Joyce were pretty starved at various points of their existence and Sylvia was thrilled when Joyce received from Harriet Wearer a lot of money; spent immediately after received it; Joyce loved to spend for himself largely also during a dinner in a restaurant; another one like him tells the author were the couple Fitzgeralds: not just munificent, they also left some money in the house for all that people who would have reclaimed money from them. That people could directly pick up the sum from the money left somewhere in their house for the purpose. As wrote Sylvia, Francis Scott Fitzgerald didn't know anymore how to spend the large amount of money that he was accumulating.
One day a Sylvia Beach's friend told her that no, to him she didn't have any kind of legal contract with James Joyce for the rights of the Ulysses. That contract wasn't legal.
The Ulysses, published without any legal contract, was a gift, a donation; an act of benevolence.
James Joyce signed with the American Random House for 45.000 dollars, forgetting his financial problems and leaving forever Shakespeare and Company, followed by other people. He asked for Sylvia's help but Sylvia couldn't be anymore the secretary.
It's a beautiful intellectual atmosphere, the one breathed in Shakespeare and Company, plenty of little or big publishing houses with the desire of publishing works of new authors. A lot of great names were born these years thanks to mr McAlmon. Music played an important role.
The 1930s tells Sylvia were the darkest ones.
A new war was approaching; most of her old friends became famous and returned to the States, but there was still Hemingway around. One day it was 1941 a German soldier asked for Finnegans Wake but Sylvia, stubborn, told him that she wouldn't have sold that book. Sylvia was worried. Germans knew of her connections with Jewish. Most of her friends and intellectuals were Jewish, and she knew that life could become a hell, and so she decided, not just of removing that book from the window, but of closing Shakespeare and Company forever, putting all her beloved books somewhere else. Germans captured her and she spent six months in a camp; then she was set free. The book ends with the triumphant arrival of Ernest Hemingway, real, brave, savior hero of our times.
I love this book immensely for the bravery, courage, intellectual honesty of this little lady, a miss in grade to make the difference in a place like Paris, skeptical and chauvinist. Not only Shakespeare and Company continues to be maybe the most stunning reality in the world, but the legacy left by Sylvia Beach has been the one of a passionate girl in love for literature and books, in grade of helping writers to come out, just for the desire of doing it, as she did with Joyce; a person who didn't ask anything in return, because her love for literature, writers, books, true, and real.
In a society like this one, where no one move a finger if not in return of something, Sylvia Beach is an example of a beautiful soul; someone who, fallen in love intellectually for a writer, decided to help him with all her possible enthusiasm, love, and dedication for his success and do you know why? Just because she believed in him.
Her cleaned and important legacy is admirable and an example to everyone.
Highly recommended.
I thank Neri Pozza for the physical copy of this book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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