Botteghe Oscure e la letteratura statunitense by Cristina Giorcelli (review)

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Dear Ian, as a member of this Review's Editorial Board and as a scholar of Williams, I want to inform you and our readers that I have just published a book on Botteghe Oscure and American literature (Botteghe Oscure e la letteratura statunitense, Roma, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2021, pp. 378), in which Williams plays a significant role. As the book is in Italian (except for all the documents in English cited in it), I am writing this letter to alert our readers of its publication.

When six years ago I spent a month at the Ransom Center in Austin to read in its holdings concerning the literary journal Botteghe Oscure (1948–1960), I was astonished to find out that in the US everybody interested in literature—from the US or elsewhere—knew of the publication which is the topic of my volume. In my own country, when I mentioned the topic of my research I always had to explain that no, I had not changed my interests: I was not writing on the Italian Communist Party (which used to have its national head-quarters in Via delle Botteghe Oscure). "Nemo propheta in patria" [Nobody is a prophet in their own land] referred, this time, to the journal not to the Party!

But, perhaps, my compatriots had some justification for being so oblivious: the journal—which Princess Marguerite Caetani (born Gibert Chapin, from Waterford, Connecticut) founded, sponsored, and edited—published more US writers than from any other nation and language: of slightly more than 600, there were 210 that came out in its 25 issues. In the Western world, this review was the first one to publish—basically without translations—its contributions in five (six, Williams would say) languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and … the American idiom, of course! Previously, while she was living with her family in France, Princess Caetani had founded and sponsored the review Commerce (1924–1932; edited by Paul Valéry, Léon-Paul Fabre, and Valery Larbaud), in which contributions from all over the world and from the past as well as from the present, were almost always translated into French. Botteghe Oscure, her second editorial enterprise, was thus decidedly more cosmopolitan. Even if her main aim was to present young, still unknown writers, Marguerite Caetani was proud to also propose works by such established artists as e. e. Cummings, Marianne. Moore, Henry James, Wallace Stevens, George Santayana, Robert P. Warren, Marguerite Young, and Williams. The correspondence that she entertained with these and younger writers (from James Wright, to Richard Wilbur, from Robert Lowell to Peter Viereck, from Cynthia Ozick to W.S. Merwin and Elizabeth Bishop)—held in the Marguerite Caetani Fund in Rome or in several US Archives—is of great interest both for the opinions expressed in these letters and for the idiosyncrasies as well as well for the acts of generosity and dignity that sometimes emerge.

Through her half-sister, Katherine Garrison Chapin (a fellow in American letters at the Library of Congress and the spouse of the former Attorney General Francis Biddle), Marguerite Caetani had been put in touch with Williams. He appeared four times in the review with previously unpublished work, as this was one of its prerequisites: in 1948, 1949, 1951 and 1953. Since she was so lavish in her payments that authors would often (more or less gladly) meet her requests, Williams too, on one occasion, had to change a few words in The Desert Music as she found them too … daring. At times, she was "from another generation and New England," as her editorial secretary, Eugene Walter, once described her. But this is not all: for a few months, their relationship suffered from some incomprehension as some letters show. Loyalty and understanding being at the basis of their personality, however, this coldness did not last long: when Marguerite Caetani heard of his second stroke, she immediately wrote to him and their friendship continued...