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James Merrill's Poetry Manuscripts

"The Broken Home"

"The Broken Home," Text and Notes
"From 'The Broken Home'" (1971)
"Looking at Mummy" (childhood poem)
Home and Parents, Photographs
Merrill Reading "The Broken Home," 1973 and 1968
Notes on the Manuscripts
Manuscripts of "The Broken Home"
Manuscripts of 1963 Journal
Critics on "The Broken Home"
"The Black Swan"
“The Black Swan”: Texts and Revisions
Notes and Background on "The Black Swan"
Manuscripts of "The Black Swan"
Excerpt from 1945 Journal
"The Black Swan," Kimon Friar, and Merrill Interview
Possible Sources: Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Valéry, Tchaikovsky
James Merrill Reading "The Black Swan"
"For Proust"
"For Proust" from Water Street (1962), Text and Notes
Manuscripts of "For Proust" & "For Proust, II"
Manuscript and Transcription of "For Proust, II"
James Merrill Reading "For Proust"
Typescript of "Impressionism in Literature," Merrill's Amherst Senior Essay
Merrill's Copy of Proust with Annotations
"James Merrill’s Translation of Proust" by Erica Kao
James Merrill's Masks
Kimon Friar, James Merrill, and the Mask
Criticism of "For Proust"
Three Late Poems and Draft of his Last Poem
Survey of Literary Criticism
David Kalstone's Milieu
"Minotaur"
Text of "Minotaur"
Images by Jean Cocteau
Manuscripts of "In Amazement" and "Minotaur"
Transcription of Manuscript 9
Order of the Manuscripts
 "Farewell Performance"
Text of "Farewell Performance"
Manuscripts of "Farewell Performance"
Transcriptions of "Farewell Performance"
Langdon Hammer on Kalstone and Merrill
Edmund White on Kalstone and Merrill
"Investiture at Cecconi's"
Text of "Investiture at Cecconi's"
Manuscripts of "Investiture at Cecconi's"
Transcriptions of "Investiture at Ceconni's"
Draft of Merrill's Final Poem
Nights and Days of 1964
Text of "Days of 1964"
Manuscripts of "Days of 1964"
1965 Journal Manuscripts
Merrill on "Delusion"
Merrill Reading "Days of 1964"
C. P. Cavafy's "Days of" Poems
Table of contents of Nights and Days
Langdon Hammer on Poem and Manuscripts
Langdon Hammer on JM and Strato
Music in James Merrill: "Matinées" and "The Victor Dog"
"Matinées" Text and Notes
Matinées Manuscripts
Merrill's Opera Scrapbook
Merrill's Musical Scores and LP Recordings
Merrill's 1967 Journal
Langdon Hammer on Matinées
Langdon Hammer on Merrill and Music
Reena Sastri on "Matinées"
"The Ring Cycle"
"The Victor Dog" Texts and Notes
Victor Dog Manuscripts
Merrill and the Muse: "Letter" and "Syrinx"
"Syrinx" Text & Notes
"Letter" Text and Notes
"Syrinx" Manuscripts
Merrill's Journal: Drafts of "Letter"
Irma Brandeis' Translations of Montale
Mirror Image: "The Thousand and Second Night"
"The Thousand and Second Night" Annotated
Merrill's 1961-63 Journal
Merrill's Notes
Related Verses
"Rigor Vitae [Opening Sonnet]
"Rigor Vitae: [Hagia Sophia]
"Rigor Vitae" [The Hamam]
"Rigor Vitae" [The City and the Wen]
"2 / The Cure"
"3 / Carnivals"
[Epigraphs]
"Love. Warmth."
"Postcards from Hamburg, Circa 1912"
"4" [The Classroom]
"5" [Scheherazade and the Sultan]
 [Organization]
Langdon Hammer on "The Thousand and Second Night"
Under Pisces: Three Poems
The Child and the Fish: "The Pier"
Text of "The Pier: Under Pisces"
"The Pier" Manuscripts
Merrill's Play The Bait
Palm Beach Elegy
"Palm Beach": Text and Notes
"Palm Beach" Manuscripts
Jimmy Merrill's Poem "Palm Beach" (1936)
John MacDougall on "Palm Beach"
Typescript of Merrill's Elegy for Tony Parigory
"Key West Aquarium: The Sawfish"
Text of "Key West Aquarium"
The Manuscripts
Eric Ormsby on "The Sawfish"

"For Proust" from Water Street (1962), Text and

Notes
Link to a complete reproduction of Merrill's Water Street on the Internet Archive.

List of printings of "For Proust."

Over and over something would remain

Unbalanced in the painful sum of things.
Past midnight you arose, rang for your things.
You had to go into the world again.

You stop for breath1 outside the lit hotel2,

A thin spoon bitter stimulants3 will stir.
Jean takes your elbow, Jacques your coat. The stir
Spreads — you are known to all the personnel —

As through packed public rooms you press (impending

Palms, chandeliers, orchestras, more palms,
The fracas and the fragrance) until your palms
Are moist with fear that you will miss the friend

Conjured — but she is waiting: a child4 still

At first glance, hung with fringes, on the low
Ottoman. In a voice reproachful and low
She says she understands you have been ill.

And you, because your time is running out,

Laugh in denial and begin to phrase
Your questions. There had been a little phrase5
She hummed, you could not sleep tonight without

Hearing again. Then, of that day she had sworn

To come, and did not, was evasive later,
Would she not speak the truth two decades later,
 From loving-kindness learned if not inborn ?

She treats you to a look you cherished, light,

Bold:"Mon ami, how did we get along
At all, those years?" But in her hair a long
White lock6 has made its truce with appetite.

And presently she rises. Though in pain

You let her leave — the loved one always leaves7.
What of the little phrase? Its notes, like leaves
In the strong tea you have contrived to drain,

Strangely intensify what you must do.

Back where you came from, up the strait stair8, past
All understanding, bearing the whole past,
Your eyes grown wide and dark, eyes of a Jew9,

You make for one dim room without contour

And station yourself there, beyond the pale
Of cough or of gardenia, erect, pale.
What happened is becoming literature.

Feverish in time, if you suspend the task,

An old, old woman shuffling in to draw
Curtains, will read a line or two, withdraw.
The world will have put on a thin gold mask10.

1. Marcel Proust suffered from asthma as does his semi-biographical narrator of In Search of Lost
Time.

2. J. D. McClatchy summarizes this part of the poem: “Proust’s rendezvous at the Ritz is with a
young girl who can remember and hum for him a tune that haunts him. Before we know it, it is
two decades later; then—they are still conversing at the hotel table—she has a white lock in her
hair. Proust returns home and sinks exhausted into bed, while ‘an old, old woman’ draws the
curtains against the dawn." See the Criticism link on this site for more from McClatchy.

3. Proust used stimulants such as caffeine and opium to relieve his asthma.

4. A notable child figure in Proust is Gilberte, the young narrator’s first infatuation.

5. The little phrase in Proust appears in the andante of Vinteuil’s sonata for piano and violin and
obsesses Proust’s character, Swan.

. In the party in the final volume of In Search of Lost Time, the narrator becomes aware of the
changes time has made upon his friends (particularly the white hair of the women) and receives
a shock of inspiration. He then decides to set to work without delay upon the task of writing his
book and the reconstruction of the past.

7. In Merrill's poem “Days of 1971," he states:

Proust’s Law (are you listening?) is twofold:

(a) What least thing our self-love longs for most
Others instinctively withhold;

(b) Only when time has slain desire

 Is his wish granted to a smiling ghost
Neither harmed nor warmed, now, by the fire.
(Collected Poems 349)

. Stairs figure prominently in Proust. For the child Marcel, going upstairs marks the all-important
nighttime ritual of a good night kiss from his mother. For the adult Marcel, a crucial revelation
about time takes form at the top of a staircase leading into the library from the Guermentes
drawing room. The spelling of "strait" may echo Matthew 7:14, "strait is the gate . . . which
leadeth unto life."

9. Proust was Jewish on his mother’s side. In his senior essay at Amherst College, Merrill writes
that the "homosexual, [Proust] tells us, is like a centaur . . . . a member of a race that must live
by falsehood and perjury, obliged like a Christian on the day of judgment to renounce and deny
his strongest desires. He is a son who must betray his mother, a friend who cannot accept
friendship, pardoned only as the Jew is pardoned for treason because of the destiny of his race”
(Impressionism in Literature, 84).

10. When Merrill first published the poem in the Quarterly Review of Literature 10.4 (September
1960): 224-25, he altered the phrase to "frail gold mask." He also makes this change in his
reading of the poem. See this site's link to James Merrill's Masks for further discussion of the
mask in this poem.

← "For Proust" "For Proust" Manuscripts of "For Proust" &

"For Proust" from Water Street "For Proust, II" →
(1962), Text and Notes

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