Here we see "vistas" of EM's intellectual outreach in the days when he was only a budding scholar though his trenchant comments remain harbingers of the mature self long already in gestation....

A-weg 39,
Gröningen
February 2, 1959

Dear Wignesan,

Many thanks for your charming Christmas card: another bit of guilt to start the New Year with, since I didn't send you one. If it's not too late let me wish you a very happy coming new year, with the prosperity and fulfillment you deserve. My best wishes to your wife I never seen and the baby. It was impossible to see you in the vacation. My mother has sold the old house and moved to Brighton, and I was staying there all the time (and caught an appalling cold and throat, my first for five years -- I was furious with my brother and his wife for presenting us with the germ) except for five days in the Isle of Wight (a traditional visit) and one [underlined] day in London entertaining my Mother and shopping. I don't much like being far from London when I am in England, but that's the way it will be now.

I don't know what you have been up to since we last met or corresponded, so I can't even commiserate, criticise, curse or damn you ! I can only hope vaguely that things are not too bad: but I must admit that when your letter comes I shall sit before the closed envelope full of apprehensions and misgivings.

The proofs of a poem to be put out in the US came and went: it made me a bit courageous for a while, especially as I am to be paid -- actually paid -- however trivial the sum is -- it makes you feel professional, which is entirely flattering to the self, because I am not, and know it.

I have been reading a poet I admire very much and would like you to read -- a young American called Lawrence Ferlinghetti -- you can read him in "Pictures of the Gone World" or "A Coney Island of the Mind." I even have a record of him and other US boys reading their stuff. I'm going to talk about him to my students the week after next. By the way, I heard Dom Moraes [his father - probably of Goanese extraction - was a journalist of India-wide renown, connected to S.Spender who edited the "Encounter" in London. Dom M. won the Hawthornden Prize for his first book of poems: "A Beginning".] reading his stuff on the Third [the BBC's intellectual division] last night: such old-fashioned slob, such a horrible voice - like Stephen Spender imitating a weak Oxford don imitating the sound of a dying wind or fart. He has talent but at the moment it sounds like some one else's he has appropriated. Like John Press.

You'll laugh to know that I am taking part in a seminar on Ayer's book [A.J. Ayer's "The Problem of Knowledge": he was Professor of Philosophy at University College, London and Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford] we looked at together -- fortnight after fortnight all last term and now this -- unravelling that mind ! It'll be engraved of my soul like Calais or callous. Pity you weren't there to be done good to !

As you can see I have absolutely nothing to say of any possible importance: only to reply to your card and wish you well.

Yours sincerely,

Eric Mottram

(c) T. Wignesan, Paris - 1959-2023