note rendered in pencil note rendered in black pen note rendered in blue pen note rendered in pink marker note rendered in purple marker note rendered in typewriter Merrill, James, 1926-1995. Divine Comedies. Merrill, James, 1926-1995—The Book of Ephraim modern English modern Italian initial XML encoding made small correction of typos and added encoded transcriptions of handwritten portions cleanup of comments and redundant tag--still need to address the tagging of the image issue (see comment below) reviewed initial XML encoding proofreading --> This passage could end the appendix (let it begin "Scene: The dining room at Stonington) See section B of finished poem, which begins, "Backdrop: The dining room at Stonington" I confess to failure by writing beginning writing this In its present form. To do it as a novel Had seemed more useful, or at least more stylish. Over the years I’d assembled characters [ BothHuman and ghostly otherwise both --not that the distinction difference between them Meant very mucha great deal anything, in fiction. I had seen My way to as much of a plot as would still have allowed For surprise and pleasure in its working-out. I'had chosen a setting; and had, from the start, a theme Whose steady light would have shone back from every Least detail exposed to it. I came To see it as an old, exalted one: The incarnation and withdrawal of A god. That last phrase is Northrop Frye’s. My failure cannot be gauged judged without a fuller Account of this unwritten book not written. Surfeited By our age’s [delectable ] spicy narrative effects, I longed for the kind of unseasoned telling found In legends, fairy tales, a tone licked clean Over the ages centuries by mild old tongues, Grand-dam to cub, serene, anonymous. Lacking that voice, despite all its other triumphs, the in its way so brilliant The nouveau roman, even including the one I wrote, Struck Impressed me Strikes me as an orphaned form, whose authors, Suckled by Woolf not Mann, had stories told them In childhood, if at all, by adults whom They did not love or honmor. My chaaracters Were to have been, accordingly, stock figures So my proseWas to have been limpid—, My characters, conventional, stock figures Afflicted to the least possible degree With personality and past experience. A witch, a hermit, innocent young lovers-- The kind of being we recall from Grimm, Jung Jung, Verdi, Grimm, and the commedia dell'arte. That I was temperamentally unsuited To [bringing off] something] any project of this nature merely Provoked Incited further futile stabs at it. The more I wrote and rewrote, the more my page Reeked Bristled with the very attitudes time and place and point-of-view. We'll have some illustrations later on.—Precisely what, a 2nd voice answered me, Made, when surrendered to, for universal Applicability Relevance. What to do! In any case Plain reportage When simple reportage Is called Presumably the simplest Reportage is called for, that would reach The largest widest public in the shortest time. Naturally more difficult for Failing that, to do it of the very individuality The very personality I I most longed to be free of. What I’d written What I’d written The very things I most yearned to transcend. drafts My knack was for "word-painting." The scenes I wrote sketched , Its Their My never-to-be reader might have thought, Were Was high baroque, derived from compositions Wherein celestial personalities-- Plumage, flushed limbs , and drapery--impinge Upon a group of startled earthlings. (These No doubt standing for Soon came to represent my audience; While I, as author, sided with the angels?.) But in fact it had all derived from a thousand and one [Agreeably domestic ordinary evenings spent Exhausting if enchanted evenings spent with David Jackson at the ouija board In touch with Ephraim, our familiar spirit. 53 En Call it perverse But I am not at home except in verse from inside the Whom in the Properly clear hand, I shall try to There remained only the actual expence to