Typed
Letter Signed, 2 pages |
| O'Neill and Carlotta spent August and
September of 1934 vacationing at Wolf Lake, deep in the Adirondack wilds. On September 8th, 1934, Leon Mirlas, an Argentine essayist and playwright, wrote a letter to Richard Madden, O'Neill's agent, describing the production of his translation of THE GREAT GOD BROWN in Buenos Aires. This initiated a correspondence between, first, O'Neill and Mirlas, and then, Carlotta and Mirlas, which was to last for many years. Mirlas eventually translated most of O'Neill's plays into Spanish, and his translations were performed in both Argentina and Spain. O'Neill spent eight months in Buenos Aires -- he arrived on August 4, 1910 and left on March 21, 1911. The people and places he encountered there had a significant influence on his writing. |
(Letterhead: CASA GENOTTA / SEA ISLAND / GEORGIA) September 11th, 1934, Dr. Leon Mirlas, My dear Dr. Mirlas - I have read with the greatest pleasure your letter to my agent, Richard Madden, in which you speak of the successful production in Buenos Aires of your translation of "The Great God Brown". This news is particularly gratifying, not only because "The Great God Brown" is one of my favourites among my plays but also because Buenos Aires is one of my favourite cities! True, I have not been there in many years. Twenty-four years ago at this time I was working at a very respectable and very minor job in the drafting department of the Westinghouse Electric Company in your city. I was not at all a success at it. I was fired! Later, I held other jobs with two other internationally well known companies. I was not at all a success at those either! In truth the record of the time I spent in Buenos Aires is a record of successive failures -- until I finally was eating only every once in a great while and sleeping (when the vigilantes let me!) on benches along the Paseo Colon. But, that did not matter. I was in my early twenties and more curious about living than about succeeding. Every experience -- no matter how uncomfortable -- then was coloured with adventure and the glamour of romance. And so Buenos Aires has always remained in my memory a city of youth and adventure and romantic glamour and I will always so recall it with grateful nostalgia. You ask for a message to your public but I cannot be so presumptious as to offer anything beyond my deep gratitude, as an American to Americans, that my work should have found favour in their eyes. Will you do me the kindness to convey to the director, Mr. Gustavino, and to the actors and actresses my grateful appreciation? I know how difficult the play is to produce and I realize how hard and with what intelligent artistry they must have worked to win success for it. I also realize what a splendid piece of translation you must have done! My grateful thanks to you! With all good wishes, I remain -- Yours very sincerely, Eugene O'Neill P.S. -- Could I request the great favour of you to ask the Management if they would send me a set of their photographs of the production? I would like so much to have them for my collection. |
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