Chapter three: a wunderkind without knowing it

Saul liked to tell the story: HS, interview, April 18, 2007.

“a culturally born Levantine”: Hughes, Nothing If Not Critical, p. 260.

he too had to get out: Norman Manea, “Made in Romania,” and ST in conversation with Karl Meyer, then a reporter for the Washington Post, who was interviewing him for the feature story “Steinberg Looks at Washington,” October 1978; also Karl Meyer, interview, September 1, 2007.

an outsider and an observer: These two words occur frequently throughout his correspondence with AB and were often told to me in interviews and conversations by (among many others) HS, Ruth Nivola, IF, Norman Manea, and Benjamin Sonnenberg.

He received no feeling of normality: R & S Outtakes, and mss. pages in YCAL, Box 38.

“sewer” of a country: ST to AB, unpublished portion of letter dated May 31, 1982, SSF.

“most important and strongest memories”: Jacques Dupin, “Steinberg 1971,” in Steinberg: Derrière le Miroir, no. 192, June 1971.

It was only then: ST to AB, unpublished portion of letter dated June 12, 1986; R & S Outtakes and YCAL, Box 38. As these letters have only been privately translated into English but not published by SSF, I do not distinguish here between the published and unpublished portions in the Italian book, because I have no way of knowing what may or may not eventually appear in an English publication.

“Levantine people”: Cummings, “ST Interview,” AAA.

“Paris of the Balkans”: Behr, Kiss the Hand, p. 75.

a study in contrasts: Mak, In Europe, p. 771; Behr, Kiss the Hand, p. 75.

“a mixture of honey and shit”: ST to AB, February 27, 1985. ST was referring to Philip Glazebook’s Journey to Kars, which he praised.

Strada Palas 9: ST to AB, April 15, 1989. ST was mesmerized by television pictures of the wholesale destruction of entire neighborhoods by the dictator Ceaus¸escu.

“a society with no mysteries”: R & S, p. 21; Cummings, “ST Interview”; HS, conversations, April 18, 2007; Daniela Roman, interview, January 7, 2008.

as an elderly man was moved: ST, diary, May 29, 1991, YCAL, Box 75.

Even as a child he recognized: ST, diary, n.d., but follows May 19, 1991, YCAL, Box 75.

“identification and denunciation”: Manea, “Made in Romania.” He made a drawing of himself in the school uniform, originally printed in TNY, “Cousins” portfolio, May 28, 1979; reproduced in Manea’s article, and also as LMB 566, 1968 in Saul Steinberg: L’écriture visuelle, catalogue for the exhibition of the same name at the Musée Tomi Ungerer, Centre International de l’Illustration, November 27, 2009–February 18, 2010.

Those children were a hodgepodge: Cummings, “ST Interview,” AAA. Also ST to AB, February 3, 1988, where he writes that he is reading the autobiography of Elias Canetti, whose family “held the same ancient prejudices against the Sephardim, who at that time were considered inferior, a prejudice no one has held for sixty years.”

“a true native”: Cummings, “ST Interview,” AAA.

A decrepit American streetcar: Ibid.: “probably from Philadelphia because they always ended up in places like Bucharest when they became obsolete.”

It suffused him with shame: HS described these emotions in conversations throughout 2007.

As an adult, Steinberg liked to use the word: Cummings, “ST Interview,” AAA.

“an inferno of screams, slaps, toilets!”: ST to AB, ca. June 21, 1997: “The professor was named Ciupagea Emil? (almost seventy years ago! The good things must be remembered).”

“extremely sophisticated”: Cummings, “ST Interview,” AAA.

“part of a civilization”: Ibid.

“the minuteness of the German despoliation”: Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of Adventure 1874–1920 (New York: MacMillan, 1952), pp. 406–7.

“urged and begged”: Charles J. Vopicka, Secrets of the Balkans: Seven Years of a Diplomat’s Life in the Storm Center of Europe (Chicago: Rand-McNally, 1921), pp. 287–89.

“whilst one cannot obtain”: Quoted in Pakula, The Last Romantic, p. 264.

Steinberg’s memory of wartime hunger: ST, diary, n.d., YCAL, Box 75.

“American Jews, bankers, and big businessmen”: Pakula, The Last Romantic, pp. 293, 395.

the country was in disarray: Sources for the following discussion include Jelavich, History of the Balkans, vol. 2, pp. 204–6; Eugen Weber, “Romania,” in Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber, The European Right: A Historical Profile (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), pp. 541–42; Hugh Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe Between the Wars, 1918–41 (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).

“a social class revolution”: ST to HS, July 15 and 16, 1944, AAA.

“a little like being a black”: R & S, p. 3.

the “serious boys”: Eugen Campus, “Saul Steinberg, Portrayer of Our Times,” Minimum, no. 10 (January 1988); translated from Romanian by Emil Niculescu. Campus became a literary critic, first in Romania and then after his immigration, in Israel. This quotation and information is from the “first set” of Campus articles published as “Iosef Eugen Campus, Deschizând noi orizonturi: Ĭnsemnâri critice, Israel, 1960–2001 (Opening New Horizons: Critical Notes, Israel, 1960–2001) (Libra: Bucharest, 2002), vol. 1, p. 254.

“my real world”: All quotations in this paragraph are from Hughes, Nothing If Not Critical, p. 261.

The rigorous curriculum: Mario Tedeschini Lalli, “Descent from Paradise: Saul Steinberg’s Italian Years (1933–1941),” Quest: Issues in Contemporary Jewish History, no. 2 (October 2011), pp. 312–83, online at: http://www.quest-cdecjournal.it/focus.php?id=221. I am grateful to MTL, whose formidable research into ST’s Italian years, particularly his university studies, supplemented my own 2007–8 inquiries into the archives of the Politecnico di Milano, Archivio Generale d’Ateneo (AGA), Fondo fascicoli studenti e Registri carriera scholastica, folder “Steinberg Saul,” and Steinberg pages of the relevant registro. Among the documents are transcripts of ST’s coursework at LMB, 1928–32.

Music was one of his two best subjects: Hughes, Nothing If Not Critical, p. 261.

Despite his high grades: That he scored so high in German is especially surprising, because even though he studied it for four years in the lycée and later at the Politecnico, throughout his life he claimed he could not speak or read the language, although he did admit to knowledge of it in his U.S. Navy papers. He told HS that he “did not know” German (conversations throughout 2007) and Leo Steinberg that he “could not read” German (interview, October 31, 2007). This appears to be another example of ST’s habit of saying what suited him at the moment.

He read avidly: ST to AB, March 25, 1988, and September 26,1986.

when he became proficient in Italian: ST to AB, September 25, 1986.

“a language of beggars and policemen”: ST to AB, April 23, 1991.

Uncle Harry visited: ST to AB, November 20, 1987. A photograph taken during the visit is in the family photo album in possession of Dana Roman, copies in SSF and YCAL, Box 2.

“especially magic”: ST, diary, n.d. but follows May 22, 1991, YCAL, Box 75.

“I was different”: Campus, “Elective Affinities (Conversations with Saul Steinberg),” p. 368.

Two Romanian writers, Miron Costin and Dimitrie Cantemir: A copy of the essay in the original Romanian and the English translation by Emil Niculescu are both in SSF.

“a fictitious history”: Cummings, “ST Interview,” AAA.

He was shocked by things he had not been taught: Ibid.

It was what Moritz liked best: ST to AB, November 1, 1988.

“without [electric] current”: ST to AB, October16, 1985. ST was comparing damage inflicted by a recent hurricane on his East Hampton property to “a return to Bucharest in 1924.” HS spoke in telephone conversations, March 19 and 22, 2007, of how she and ST compared their Bucharest experiences. She agreed that some of the worst privations were experienced around 1922–24 but said that ST also spoke of enduring similar privations after the move to Strada Justitie.

he painted a telling portrait: “Strada Palas,” 1942; ink, pencil, and watercolor on paper, 14½ x 21¾ in., SSF; S:I, cat. 4, pp. 86–87.

“wearing a name plate”: R & S, p. 3.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-30