Letters from Iris Murdoch

In Granta 111: Going Back we publish six letters from the novelist Iris Murdoch to her mentor, the French surrealist Raymond Queneau. They reveal a side of Murdoch that was previously unknown: she is beseeching in her affection for him, and one letter even shows that Murdoch probably made a declaration of love to Queneau on a bridge in Paris – and was snubbed. Here we reproduce two letters not in the print magazine: one written from a UN camp where she was assisting the French army as a volunteer just after the war, and the second written in Oxford, when the author was feeling ‘extremely depressed & obsessed’. Immediately below is a scan from a page of another letter, in which she talks about Enid Starkie’s appointment at Oxford University – an event which stirred ‘much passion’.

Letter 1

SP 50310
Armée Française
(and better put INNSBRUCK)

June 2nd 1946

I am now at Graz working at the studentenheim. I love this camp. Why didn’t I come here months ago instead of hanging around in HQs waiting to be promoted? As I cross the ‘quad’ at evening to check on the accommodation in Barrack V I meet the two Jančars, just back from the university. They are studying medicine. Under the trees is Pardonjač, one of the philosophes (but not the Pierrot kind) deep in a book. Here comes Elfriede Petek who is an art student & always exquisite tho’ she lives in an overcrowded room with 10 other girls. Komnetsky lounges on the horizon, a problem child, but remember he was in a concentration camp. There is much life here – quite mysterious to me still, like fishes in a dark aquarium... There is much life here – quite mysterious to me still, like fishes in a dark aquarium, but very moving and obscurely significant. Most of the students are Yugoslavs, but there are also lots of Poles & Ukrainians & some Albanians, White Russians, Lithuanians, Jews various & others. About 300 in all. German is the main mode of communication; I find I can talk it enough for practical purposes, aber schnecklich, but as their German is dreadful too we understand each other very well in a happy indifference to tenses genders & cases. Some of them talk French but so horribly I can’t bear it & we soon fall again to murdering German cheerfully together. The main factor in our lives tho’ is food. The camp is now on a real starvation diet & my God how can those children study on 200 grammes of bread & one plate of stew & some coffee per day? Improvements soon I hope – but meanwhile heartbreaking…

I have still not heard from you since your letter of April 8th; this is a report, not a complaint. Either you are very busy & troubled & have no time & inclination to write / or your letters have gone astray somewhere in the intestines of the postal system. (Odd that there is no either/or in French. What is the use of ou bièn… ou bièn? Another proof of the fundamental depravity of the French character.) We recently had delivered to us a batch of letters addressed to people in Nairobi, so maybe by now your letters to me are being urgently flown across the Sahara. Forgive me by the way for talking English now. Talking French, tho’ I enjoy it, puts me one remove farther away. (As seen from my side anyway.) Not that English, very often, is other than a complicated barrier, however much one wants to approach the other person…

I have abandoned my own writings for the present. The novel on Carington’s telepathy theory has reached a sort of airy witty flashing perfection in my head which I should undoubtedly spoil by putting pen to paper, & there I think I shall leave it. I have also abandoned, for the moment, Pierrot. Silence (mine) on this subject does not mean indifference; the reverse.

(...)

You know I have not had a conversation with anyone since before I left Innsbruck – only indifferent chatter about UNRRA or what’s for dinner. Just at this moment I feel bad about this, tho’ often too I don’t mind. Always it does me good to think of certain people whom I care about – there are various chaps & girls in England whom I’m very grateful to for existing tho’ they rarely write to me the cads. Also eg you. On these occasions I feel a sort of I-and-Thouish warmth & am no longer in the desert. I can’t live without giving & receiving affection, oh lots of it I suppose – & the cool dignity of not expressing it is also far from me.

Pierrot & Les Kougard and the rest have been a wonderful mythology to me. (Poet, joker, mythmaker. Alas my impossible possibles!) To know their creator has made me very happy too. Or rather, to have met, not to know. (My remarks on chêne et chien, which I have now reread, were gauche. I’m sorry.) Why this gratuitous display of feelings? Faut me pardonner: la solitude. Anyway why should one hoard one’s sentiments, however little they may be valuable or important? In a year or two we may all be blown up in some grand atomic experiment & then you would never know In a year or two we may all be blown up in some grand atomic experiment & then you would never know, in case it should amuse you at all, that one hot Sunday evening in Graz I was thinking about you. It’s odd. Here I sit, the time being approximately 7.50, writing you this letter & having the illusion of talking to you. When you get the letter weeks later, opening it hastily as you step into the metro to go to some writers’ conference or racing chez Gallimard or to the radio HQ or something & stuff the sheets back into your pocket you probably won’t at all have the illusion of being talked to. All of which illustrates some profound fact about das Leben but I’m not sure what.

UNRRA’s time here is short so I expect I’ll be flashing thro’ Paris one of these days on my way home & I hope you won’t be in New York by then (whither I see Camus has gone. What has England done?)

If you are in any sort of difficulties or perhaps ill in Paris please forgive me for so much foolish talk & know that I wish you in all things well. If there is ever anything I can do for you…

The jeep is coming soon to take me to the camp where there is a dance & cabaret show tonight. I am getting quite good at understanding low jokes in German. And it will take everyone’s mind off the food.

I hope those chaps in Nairobi are enjoying ‘Un rude Hiver’ which should have reached them by now.

Look after yourself.

I am your most devoted reader

IM

Letter 2

(Lakeview Villas)
16 Park Town
Oxford
Jan 9 (1949)

Greetings to you. Am feeling extremely depressed & obsessed, & tho’ I don’t suppose you can do anything about it, you are the one that it occurs to me to complain to. Will explain the reasons another time maybe, at the moment just vague complaints and suppressed screams. Life is hell. Not assisted by having read ‘Tobacco Road’ (Caldwell) earlier this evening. I’m not feeling robust enough to laugh at this work, which I suspect is what it deserves. Really there are limits.

Sometime when I get out of the grip of this death wish I intend to get back to some thoughts I was intending to have about metaphysical novels. Meanwhile, I wonder if you have anywhere on your desk an exemplaire of the yellow explanatory slip of paper which goes with ‘Saint Glinglin’ (I have lost mine) & could send to me? You know the things I mean, where you talk about Hegel. You also mentioned a cove who had written an article on St Glgl which you said had been illuminating – (in ‘Temps Modernes’?) – & if ever you had your hand on a copy of that & could send, it would be welcome. But don’t bother if this is difficult.

I hope you are well, and not in the hands of the devil? Write to me, old friend. Ever & always, love from

I

Read also... an interview with Anne Rowe, director of the Centre for Iris Murdoch Studies, in which she discusses what can be added to our assessment of Murdoch’s life and works.