A fine copy in a shabby, ripped manila envelope. Kelly p 6, Stefanik A8.I.a.
Stefanik notes that this publication was intended to be the first in a series put out by Fredericks but that this never really materialized. He cites Fredericks and Milton Saul, wearing their Banyan Press hats, as intending to publish a “..new poem, entitled ‘The Black Book’ ..” [p38 Stefanik ‘John Berryman’] but couldnt remember if Berryman submitted the manuscript. In the only known printed reference to the work, published in 1966, Berryman stated that it was named after the ‘Black Book of Poland’ a ‘diagnostic’ or ‘historical survey’ of the destruction of Polish Jews in the 1939-1945 war. For Berryman, the subject matter was ‘..more than I could bear..and was written in the form of a Mass for the Dead..’ and he was unable ‘..to find any way of making palatable the monstrosity of the thing which obsessed me..’ [ibid p39]. Indeed, John Haffenden in ‘The Life of John Berryman’ notes that on April 1 1949 the poet ‘..wept on reading about the murder of the Polish Professors in The Black Book of Poland..’ [p205]
The authors inscription to Catherine Carver shows that amidst all of the anguish and self torment he still took counsel from an editorial voice and in the process whittled away at Adornos rule that ‘There is no poetry after Auschwitz’ and that in effect the ‘Holocaust’ as a subject was indescribable: ‘To Catherine you probably don`t remember the passage you criticized in the first section of The Black Book which accordingly I revised. few of these will be new to you. Affectionately John mpls 6 Mar 1959.’
The recipient was Catherine Carver an editor whose career, from scattered references on the net and in commentaries, covered ‘The Partisan Review’, Harcourt Brace, Viking and OUP. Berryman seems to have held her in deep respect even foregoing his usual indigence, procrastination and drinking as Haffenden suggests: ‘The one professional advance to which he looked in the near future was the publication of ‘Homage to Miss Bradstreet’, which Catherine Carver was seeing scrupulously through the press at Partisan Review..’ [ibid p232] A superb association between two close friends and colleagues that is largely unexplored in the secondary literature on Berryman.
