| | FPG (Felix Paul Greve/Frederick Philip Grove)'s Passage to America in 1909 The October 1998 Discovery of the Author's Arrival in North America by Gaby Divay University of Manitoba, Archives & Special Collections e-Edition © 2006 Originally published in Walter Pache's Festschrift: New Worlds: discovering & constructing the unknown in Anglophone literature. München: Verlag Ernst Vögel, 2000. (Schriften der Philosophischen Fakultäten der Universität Augsburg), 111-132. Notes
Introduction: fn. 1-9:
[1]
B. Traven is believed to be identical with Ret Marut
(pseud. for Richard Maurhut) who was sentenced to
death after his involvement in the Munich November
Revolution of 1918/19.
[2]
Douglas O. Spettigue, FPG: The European Years,
(Ottawa: Oberon, 1973).
[3]
Douglas O. Spettigue, "Felix, Elsa, André
Gide and Others: Some Unpublished Letters of F. P.
Greve," Canadian Literature 134 (Autumn
1992): 9-39.
Douglas O. Spettigue, "Introduction," Else
von Freytag-Loringhoven, Baroness Elsa, Eds.,
Paul I. Hjartarson and Douglas O. Spettigue, (Ottawa
: Oberon Press, 1992a): 9-40, p.24. All references
to Else's autobiography in our text, marked "(AB),"
are to the 205 page typescript prepared by Djuna Barnes,
University of Maryland, College Park.
[4]
Douglas O. Spettigue, Frederick Philip Grove.
([Toronto]: Copp Clark Pub.Co., 1969). 175p.
[5]
Arthur Leonard Grove, born in Ottawa on October 14,
1930, and named after A. L. Phelps of Wesley College,
Winnipeg, was working in the Canadian National Archives
on passenger lists in early June 1969 (University
of Manitoba Archives (UMA), Spettigue Collection I,
Correspondence, 5.6.1969).
[6]
UMA, Spettigue Collection I, Correspondence.
[7]
Walter Pache, "Der Fall Grove: Vorleben und Nachleben
des Schriftstellers Felix Paul Greve," German-Canadian
Yearbook/Deutschkanadisches Jahrbuch 5 (1979):
121-136.
Pache,
Walter, "Dilettante in Exile: Grove at the Centenary
of His Birth." Canadian Literature 90 (Autumn
1981): 187-191.
Walter
Pache, "Frederick Philip Grove's Loneliness: Comparative
Perspectives," Annals/Annalen 4: German-Canadian
Studies in the 1980s: Symposium, CAUTG Publications
9, (Vancouver: CAUTG, 1983: 185-196).
[8]
The FPG Endowment Fund was established in December
1996 to foster Greve/Grove & Else von Freytag-Loringhoven
research and related editorial projects.
[9]
Bruce Thomson's documentation has been deposited in
FPG Research Collection Mss 12, University of Manitoba
Archives (UMA). Sparta, Kentucky evidence, Pittsburgh
information, and Bonanza Farm documents addressed
below can be consulted in the same collection.
Search Strategy, fn. 10-24:
[10]
Grove, Frederick Philip, A Search of America,
(Ottawa: Graphic Publishers, 1928, c1927). 448p.;
[vi]: Author's Note, Rapid City, Man., December1926,
F.P.G.
[11]
Grove, Frederick Philip, In Search of Myself,
(Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1947). 457p.; [458]:
Postscript.
[12]
Mary Grove, personal telephone communication, February
11, 1999.
[13]
Greve and Else stayed for six months in such a "cottage"
in Paris-Plage outside Étaples, from June to
December 1905. Gide had been asked from Wollerau,
Switzerland, to help find it for them (Greve/Gide
Correspondence, UMA, Spettigue Collection I. There
are fifty-five letters by Greve, written between 1903-1908).
[14]
Applying the 20 year rule, this points to a composition
date of late 1913. The period covered in ASA is 2
1/2 years, not 1 1/2 years as claimed here in IMS,
181. In ASA, Grove reflects on the time between 1909
and 1912 fairly truthfully, except for the missing
year 1910/11 which he spent with Else in Sparta, Kentucky.
In Manitoban disguise, this experience had already
been addressed in Settlers of the Marsh, 1925.
[15]
Greve had taken a course on Byron during his studies
at Bonn university, 1898-1900 (UMA, Spettigue Collection
I).
[16]
Frederick Philip Grove, Letters, Ed., Desmond
Pacey, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976):
526, 6.6.1903.
[17]
Frederick Philip Grove, "The Life of Saint Nishivara,"
60 Aphorisms, Mss. Notebook (UMA Grove Collection,
Box. 18, Fd. 9. Also published as "Of Nishivara,
the Saint," A Stranger To My Time, Ed.,
Paul Hjartarson, (Edmonton: NeWest Press, c1986):
83-87. Hjartarson points out (p. 83), that Flaubert's
Tentation de Saint Antoine, which Greve translated
in 1905, provides an intertext. Given Greve's preoccupation
with Oscar Wilde until 1903, the prose poem "The
Doer of Good" can be added to the list, demonstrating
once again Greve/Grove's artful and complex adaptation
of multiple, literary models (The Works of Oscar
Wilde, Leicester, Eng.: Galley Press, 1987, 843-4).
[18]
Friedrich Nietzsche, "Vorrede zu Zarathustra,"
Werke in sechs Bänden, Hrsg., Karl Schlechta,
(München: Hanser, 1980): III, 277.
[19]
Grove, Letters, 548-552, German & English.
[20]
Heinz Sarkowski, Submission for the Anniversary Symposium
"In Memoriam FPG: Greve/Grove 1879-1946-1998,"
Winnipeg, Sept. 30-Oct. 3, 1998.
[21]
Probably Jonathan Swift's Prose Works in four
volumes, Berlin: Oesterheld ; E. Reiss, 1909-1910.
The original edition by Temple Scott in twelve volumes
is extant in the UMA Grove Library Collection.
[22]
Friedrich Michael, "Verschollene der frühen
Insel," Börsenblatt für den deutschen
Buchhandel 28 (1972): A79-82, A81. -- Since Michael
cannot specify the time of this plea for help, it
could have come from Else who lived in New York from
1913 to 1923.
[23]
Frederick
Philip Grove, Poems/Gedichte, by F. P. Grove/F.
P. Greve und Fanny Essler. Ed., Gaby Divay, Deutschkanadische
Schriften, A: Belletristik; Bd. 13, (Winnipeg:
Wolf Verlag, 1993): 123-124.
[24]
Bruce Thomson, Report on "Grove's Passage to
America," (14.11.1998, p.2, UMA, Collection Mss
12).
The Passage on the White Star Liner "Magantic":
fn. 25
[25]
From photocopies showing and describing these ships
in B. Thomson's documents. They stem from v. 1 of
Arnold Kludas' twelve-volume set Great Passenger
Ships of the World.
Implications, fn. 26-41:
[26]
Gaby Divay, "Names, Pseudonyms, Monograms, and Titles
in F. P. Grove/Greve's Work," German-Canadian Yearbook,
Bd. 14 (1995, c1996): 129-151.
[27]
Published in Grove, Poems/Gedichte, 1993, 40-47,
and facsim. 49b. For a discussion, see G. Divay, "Fanny
Essler's Poems: Felix Paul Greve's or Else von Freytag-Loringhoven's?"
Arachne: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language
and Literature, v. 1, no. 2 (1994): 165-197.
[28]
For Greve's preoccupation with Dante, which dates
back to 1898 when he translated sonnets from the Vita
Nuova, see G. Divay, "F. P. Greve's First
& Last Translations: Dante's 'Vita Nuova' &
Swift's 'Modest Proposal'," German-Canadian Yearbook,
Bd. 14, (1995, c1996): 107-128.
[29]
Work
is in progress about Greve/Grove's relations with
Thomas Mann in 1901/2 & 1939. Parallels between
Felix Krull's and Felix Greve's careers suggest that
Mann's hero was partly based on Greve's conduct before
1903.
[30]
Grove, Letters, 291, n. 1.
[31]
Bruce Thomson, personal telephone communication, February
11, 1999.
[32]
See G. Divay, "Abrechnung und Aufarbeitung im
Gedicht: Else von Freytag-Loringhove über drei
Männer (E. Hardt, A. Endell, F. P. Greve),"Trans-Lit
VII/1 (1998): [24]-37. [Includes first publication
of three German poems from the Freytag-Loringhoven
Collection, University of Maryland, College Park].
[33]
Spettigue, Introduction to Baroness Elsa, 1992a,
24.
[34]
Langenscheidts Taschenwörterbuch der schwedischen
und deutschen Sprache, (Berlin; München;
Zürich: Langenscheidt, 1965, c1958): 182, "Graf,m,
greve."
[35]
Felix Paul Greve, "Reise in Schweden," Neue
Revue und Morgen 3 (1909): 760-766.
[36]
Documents from Pittsburgh Historical Society (directory
entry; 1910 city map) and the Allegheny Court House
Public Relations Dept. were deposited in UMA
Collection Mss 12, in April 1995.
[37]
Information from the Historical Society, Louisville,
in UMA Collection Mss 12.
[38]
Grove allegedly has many sisters, none of whom he
remembers clearly. To Gide, Greve already spoke of
seven sisters in June 1904. He seems to have applied
his mother's family background for himself: Bertha
Reichentrog was one of nine children; after one brother
and one sister died, there were six girls and one
boy who was the youngest.
See UMA Spettigue Collection for documentation of
the Greve and Reichentrog families in the Schwerin
area, and Henny's birth on the yellow brick estate
Thurow in 1876 (a colour photo, courtesy of Gisi Baronin
Freytag-Loringhoven, 1994, in UMA Collection Mss 12).
[39]
Grove, Letters, 38, n. 2, April 1926.
[40]
Knut Hamsun, Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 5, 959:"All
summer of 1887, I worked on a section of Dalrumples'
immense farm in the valley of the Red River..."
[transl. mine]. Five sketches "On the Prairie"
were originally published in Kratskog: Historier
og Skitser in 1903.
[41]
Hiram
M. Drache, The Days of the Bonanza, 1964, n.112,
184: "... in 1912, the Company bought a Twin
City 40 gas tractor with a twelve bottom plow. It
was a showpiece in that day." All details presented
here and below about the Bonanza Farm are owed, with
permission, to this fine book.
| | | | |