PEN INTERNATIONAL AND ITS REPUBLIC OF LETTERS 1921-1970 Megan Doherty Submitted in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree Of Doctor of Philosophy In the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSTY 2011 © 2011 Megan Doherty All Rights Reserved PEN INTERNATIONAL AND ITS REPUBLIC OF LETTERS ABSTRACT MEGAN DOHERTY In 1921 a circle of writers formed a dinner club in London to welcome foreign writers visiting from abroad. Punningly dubbed the “P.E.N.”—for the poets, playwrights, essayists and novelists invited into its fold—the group argued that writers above all could best promote communication and civility across national lines. Over the years, PEN survived a series of onslaughts that undermined this humanistic idea: fascist infiltration, yet another World War, revelations of Holocaust, the shock of atomic warfare, and CIA meddling. By 1970 PEN had become global, transforming from a British club into an organization devoted to protecting freedom of expression and facilitating communication worldwide. In doing so, its members strove to create an institutionalized form of the Republic of Letters, a federation that aimed to model cultural civility to the wider world. PEN survived challenges to its existence because it molded itself to evolving contexts while insisting on the stability of its core values. PEN justified its existence by arguing that its definition of literary values were universal. Yet PEN’s ideals needed to be protected and promoted by an institution precisely because they were neither universally accepted nor secure. PEN promoted a distinctly liberal, humanistic, and aesthetically middlebrow definition of literature and its social role. By claiming its values were universal, giving them institutional expression, and attracting the attention of funders and competing governments during the Cold War, PEN helped make liberal humanism seem synonymous with internationalism. TABLE OF CONTENTS PEN INTERNATIONAL AND ITS REPUBLIC OF LETTERS 1921-1970 IntroDuction: “Literature Knows No Frontiers” 1 Section I: Foundations Chapter One: The PEN Club, 1921-1927 37 Chapter Two: PEN International, 1927-1933 82 Section II: Challenges Chapter Three: Hitler Émigrés, 1933-1939 119 Chapter Four: War and the Refugees, 1938-1945 166 Section III: Resolutions Chapter Five: The Right to Write , 1945-61 208 Chapter Six: Commercialization and Professionalization, 255 1950-1960 Chapter Seven: An International PEN, 1962-1970 299 Conclusion “Specialized Cells in a Single Organism, Mankind” 349 Bibliography 361 Appendices 385 i FIGURES Figure 1 Dinner Club, 1921 50 Figure 2 Membership Application Cards 67 Figure 3 The Rake’s Progress: The Novelist 75 Figure 4 Seating Chart, PEN Congress 1923 88 Figure 5 H.G. Wells in India 127 Figure 6 Keen Readers 206 Figure 7 Writers in Prison 249 ii APPENDICES Appendix I PEN Charters 385 Appendix II PEN Congresses 387 Appendix III PEN Presidents 388 Appendix IV PEN Centers According to Formation Date 391 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A range of funders generously supported this project, and to them I must first offer thanks. The History Department at Columbia University provided me with the fellowship that supported the early years of the Ph.D., in addition to summer research grants along the way. I am grateful for the Department’s support. I must also thank what became my second base at Columbia, the Center for American Studies. Under the guidance of Prof. Andrew Delbanco, American Studies provided me with research funding at crucial moments. The Harry Ransom Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin and Princeton University both furnished grants to visit their archives, facilitating my trips to Texas and New Jersey. Reid Hall in Paris provided a summer residency fellowship that allowed me to undertake a month of research in Paris. The DAAD offered funds that allowed me to complete research in Germany. The Mellon Foundation supported me as a Fellow for a year at the Institute for Historical Research in London. From there I completed research in the UK and to began pulling together chapter narratives. The Mellon Foundation also funded the Seminar on British History at Columbia, which provided invaluable help as I began writing up. The Contemporary International History Network, funded by the Norwegian Government, has afforded me the privilege of conferring with other historians from around the world, feedback that continues to better my work as the Network evolves. I would like to thank my advisers, Professors Casey Blake and Susan Pedersen, for their unfailing generosity during my Ph.D. This project grew far beyond my initial training in US History, involving multiple countries and languages, iv spanning subfields from cultural to political to intellectual history. It seemed almost impossible at some stages to reconcile the range of questions that could be brought to bear on this material. Their guidance has repeatedly forced me back on to the right track—and will no doubt continue to do so, the dissertation being a pause in a much larger, ongoing project. Thank you also to my other committee members, Samuel Moyn, Andrew Delbanco, and Peter Mandler, for their feedback at different stages. I must also thank the following forums for the opportunities to present papers: the Institute for Historical Research in London; the Modern Cultural History Seminar in Cambridge; the History Seminar at the Albert-Ludwigs Universität in Freiburg; the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in Postdam; the North American Conference on British Studies; and Columbia University’s European History Seminar. Feedback from these groups helped clarify my thinking, and I am extremely grateful. I feel lucky to be able to acknowledge the friendship, from day one to defense day, of my cohort mates Jenna Alden and Valerie Paley. The adjective sympatica, with its array of meanings, describes Jenna perfectly. Kind, empathetic, likeminded. From midnight writing breaks on 118th St, to conferences in Brooklyn backyard gardens, to Skype from Berlin, grad school would have felt very different without her. Two words fit Valerie: new and york. Anyone who pushed through a Ph.D. without such wit propelling them along must truly be pitied. No glass of white wine (French or Italian, thank you) comes close. I must also thank a new friend. While I would never again chose to write up a dissertation while teaching Contemporary v Civilization for the first time, the intensity of the experience pushed me into close contact with Julia Nordmann. Julia, du schaffst es auch (überhaupt). With a keen awareness that a dissertation acknowledgement page is no place to practice an acceptance speech, I will refrain from listing the many other friends and colleagues whose support has been so appreciated during this process. I am confident they know who they are, and thank them. Most of all, I thank my family. What kind of people pack up and move around the world multiple times just for the experience, proffer advanced reading material to youth without fussing about its nutritional content, and insist on the imperatives of Potential and Progress when all indicators point to the opposite? These people. Thank you for remaining bemused and entertained by the rituals of academia. vi For Paul and Maria vii 1 INTRODUCTION “LITERATURE KNOWS NO FRONTIERS” In 1921 a circle of writers formed a dinner club in London to welcome foreign writers visiting from abroad. Punningly dubbed the “P.E.N.”—for the poets, playwrights, essayists and novelists invited into its fold—the group argued that writers above all could best promote communication and civility across national lines. 1 The Great War, the war to end all wars, to borrow American President Wilson’s endlessly evoked phrase, had concluded a mere three years earlier. The conflict claimed thirty-seven million lives. Maimed soldiers limped through the streets of Europe’s grand imperial capitals. Literary movements devoted to romanticizing soldiers’ heroism gave way to melancholy screeds diagnosing the barbarism latent under civilization’s gloss. International covenants and governing bodies formed to regulate and tame great power politics. PEN joined their ranks. Mankind shared a common humanity, it insisted, a fundamental essence that flowered in art and culture. This universality found its chief expression in the medium of literature. PEN, and the literary writers it admitted, would protect the gates of Literature for the benefit of mankind. Over the years, PEN survived a series of onslaughts that undermined this humanistic idea: fascist infiltration, yet another World War, revelations of Holocaust, the shock of atomic warfare, and CIA meddling. By 1970 PEN had 1 Throughout this dissertation I use the acronym “PEN” instead of the abbreviation “P.E.N.” I believe it makes for more fluid reading, and it is the format used today by PEN International. Many PEN members, however—especially during the early years that I cover—were purists in relation to grammar, and preferred the abbreviated form. I have transcribed all archival material precisely, so at times my use of “PEN” can be found on pages where members themselves refer to “P.E.N.” 2 become global, transforming from a British club into an organization devoted to protecting freedom of expression and facilitating communication worldwide. PEN survived these challenges because it molded itself to evolving contexts while insisting on the stability of its core values. In doing so PEN created, for the very first time, an institutionalized form of the long-heralded Republic of Letters. Though it began only as an idealistic promise, by the end of its first fifty years, PEN’s mission became a self-fulfilling prophecy. PEN members argued that cosmopolitan global citizenship offered the best means to secure a peaceful future. Through its sheer tenacity, its ability to survive multiple threats to its existence, PEN demonstrated that a cosmopolitan orientation provides the surest path to a flourishing global civil society. Membership of PEN was available only to literary writers who accepted a common humanistic creed.