48
PARTISAN REVIEW
destruction." I was upset by this letter; never before had Elizabeth writ–
ten, at least to me, with such naked despondency. Nor did she ever strike
so bleak a note again. But the death of Dylan Thomas had inflamed a
nerve that could not for a time be stilled.
Despite
all
the prizes and the praise, the joy of her life with Lota,
the crippling self-doubt never ceased to gnaw at Elizabeth. When Philip
Rahv warned her in a letter from New York that a hostile review of
A
Cold Spring
would appear in the next issue of
Partisan Review,
she
squirmed with anxiety: "I am steeling myself, but feeling pretty low
about my own work at the moment. I've never minded criticism a bit,
strange to say - but what if this reviewer [Rahv had not divulged the
name] says the TRUTH? - does point out the awful faults I know are
there all right? I've been just too lucky and spoiled, I know." Dona
Elizabetchy was not indulging in false modesty; her insecurity was a con–
stant, a burden she could not dislodge.
In the late 1950s her habitual self-reproach - for earning so little,
letting too many poems and stories die on the vine - intensified, because
Lota was having severe financial problems of her own at the time. Of
course Elizabeth knew perfectly well that most writers at times experi–
ence the dismaying collapse of work begun with high hopes and the best
of intentions. But she was tortured by her inability to get anywhere with
the story of Sable Island and the "surrealist" book about Brazil. With no
real money coming in ("Oh for $1,000 and a day at Lord
&
Taylor's,"
she exclaimed more than once) and the royalities for
The Diary of Helena
Morley
a crushing disappointment, she grew more and more depressed.
"My own earning capacities seem to have gone to zero . . . right at the
wrong time and I can't seem to finish a line of anything. But surely,
surely it will come to an end soon. Only it's been awfully long and I
seem to grow stupider and stupider
all
the time.... Maybe I'm suffering
from simple going-to-pieces-in-the-tropics.... "
Then, early in 1961, the editors of the Time-Life "World Library
Series" approached her about writing the text for a lavishly illustrated
volume on Brazil, and Elizabeth felt it was a godsend. She was deter–
mined that just this once she would stifle the imperatives of perfection,
stop fussing about the rightness of every word. After signing the contract,
she was brimming with practicality:
It will pay well, (by my standards) and also mean free trips around
Brazil and [a] free trip to NY. . . . Around 35,000 words of text.
Naturally very superficial, a little of everything - history, economics,
geography, the arts, etc. - I really don't think it should be too hard to
do.... However - one requirement is that I spend three weeks in
NY
'rewriting' with them, and
I
know that will be hell. .. . However
