Eric Mottram's letter and recommendation for the Salzburg Seminar which did not materialize but it was the gesture and the generosity with which he proffered it that remains worthy of attention even after some seventy years...

A-weg, 39,
Groningen.

March 27, 1958

Dear Wignesan,

I only arrived back from London yesterday ; so I have answered your letter as soon as I could in the circumstances. I enclose the recommendation you require, and with it goes my best wishes for luck in getting the scholarship. I was most interested to read about your Malayan life, a thing you have kept silent about, apart from what there is of it in your poems. One thing – you will see that I have corrected the English of the « career » essay. I think you ought to embody the corrections in the actual copy before you mail to Professor Adams, especially since I have said your English is O.K. !

I have just realised that I have to send the recommendation off myself. As I have not made a copy by carbon, I’m sending you a rather badly typed rough draft I made first – the actual thing is only slightly different, mainly in the grammar. I hope it will feed your already enormous vanity !

All the best for getting published in London.

Yours sincerely,

Eric Mottram
……………………………………………

Rijkuniversiteit,
Groningen

March 26, 1958

Dear Professor Adams,

Since I myself experienced the benefits of the Salzburg Seminar I have recommended to you a number of people whom I felt certain would use the Seminar well and make a contribution to its activities. I have great pleasure now in recommending Mr Wignesan, who would like to take part in the seminar on American literature this year.

I first met Mr Wignesan when an old friend of mine from the years I spent in the University of Malaya asked me to look at his poems, and then to meet him personally in London. I have known him, for a year now, as a man of considerable determination and ability, most sincerely striving to produce good poetry and to think out the philosophical problems he tackles. He has a fresh approach to literature and ideas largely through his Malayan nationality, the problems of which, in my view, he admirably seeks to articulate in his work. I feel quite sure that the Seminar would greatly enlarge his intellectual scope and bring him into a much needed contact with American life and ideas in the literary field.

When I recall our many hefty conversations, as well as his poems and prose, there can be no question about the quality of his English language abilities. His liveliness and sociable character would ensure his useful contribution to seminar work and the general social activity at Salzburg alike.

Every time I make such recommendations, the Schloss and the really fine experience I was afforded there are vividly and gratefully in my mind. It is good to know that the Seminar continues its success as the years go by.

Yours sincerely,

Eric Mottram

(Note : It turned out that the Salzburg Seminar was meant only for « Europeans », and other seminars were organized for « Asians » elsewhere. And, I suppose, « Africans » too had had their own seminars in their own mountain retreats. By no means, « sour grapes ». I was more than enthused by Eric Mottram’s recommendation. )

(c) T. Wignesan- Paris, 1958/2023