Paul Rosenfeld papers

The Paul Rosenfeld Papers contain manuscripts of a variety of unpublished works and letters from Rosenfeld to Yale classmate Philip Skinner Platt spanning the dates 1910-63.

Series I, Writings , (Boxes 1-6) is divided into two alphabetically arranged sections; Books and Shorter Works. The Books section contains three volumes of literary criticism, two autobiographical works, and one unpublished novel, while the Shorter Works holds twenty-eight articles, essays, and reviews.

The series begins with four typescript versions of the unpublished novel, "A Concert in Rome," originally titled "Temple of Venus and Rome." Set in fascist Italy, the novel is about the American Martin Newman and attempts to imitate early Joyce in its style. The series also includes multiple typescripts of three critical works, "The Novel in the Journal's Form," "The Pindaric Novel" and "The Spiritual Voyage." Each is devoted to a literary form and they were perhaps intended to be parts of a single work. Among the books discussed in "The Novel in the Journal's Form" are Robinson Crusoe and The Sorrows of Young Werther, while "The Pindaric Novel" concerns such works as Hermann Broch's The Death of Virgil; and "The Spiritual Voyage" analyses The American Scene by Henry James and Etruscan Places by D. H. Lawrence. "The Rites of Spring" is a semi-autobiographical novel set at Yale. Flavian King of Paris, the disguised son of a European ruling house, is the main character. The other autobiographical fragment concerns Rosenfeld's youth.

Paul Rosenfeld's wide ranging interest in art, literature, and music is reflected in the Shorter Works section. Seventeen of the apparently unpublished articles, essays, and reviews are devoted to literary criticism, seven to music, two to art, and two to photography. Each work normally consist of corrected typescripts, and several files include rejection letters. Some of the essays, for example, "The Inventions of Nodier" and "The Perfect Voyage" may be chapters of larger works. Rosenfeld's friendship with Alfred Stieglitz is exemplified by two works, "Salutations on an Eightieth Birthday" and "Alfred Stieglitz," an appreciation of the photographer's life and work written shortly after his death in 1946.

Series II, Correspondence , holds chronologically arranged letters from Paul Rosenfeld to Yale classmate Philip Skinner Platt, plus one photograph of Rosenfeld and a folder of Platt material. This last folder contains copies of a 1963 letter of Platt to Albert E. Godbut, which discusses Rosenfeld, and handwritten lists of the letters donated to Yale. The letters span the years 1910-15. The first two were written in the summer of 1910, when Rosenfeld was vacationing in Europe. The largest number cover the period between June 1912 and February 1914, when the young Yale graduate was attending Columbia and working in New York City. Another dozen describe Rosenfeld's 1914 trip to Europe, and a final group of 1915 letters report on a visit to a resort in Blue Hill, Maine.

The young writer frequently wrote about Yale friends like Louis Connick, William Griffin, Joseph Le Conte (Jake) Bell, William Herman, and Cyril Brown, all graduates of the class of 1912. A number of other Yale men were also mentioned, including William C. Bullitt, Eric Dawson, Waldo Frank, Cole Porter, and Arthur E. Baker. Rosenfeld never belonged to a secret society, a subject discussed in a May 22, 1913 letter, and he hinted at Yale's attitude towards Jews in an April 18, 1913 letter. "At times I feel sore as hell at Yale. I have several little cousins who ... are ordinary well-bred normal boys. They have had trouble getting rooms for their freshman year, because they go to small prep-schools, and it seems that all the rooms in Wright are given to the big prep-schools."

The bulk of the letters are concerned with Rosenfeld's ill-formed career plans and with discussions of friendship between two young men who formed a close bond at Yale. Rosenfeld frequently discussed his hopes for a writing career, his love of classical music, and the books he was reading. As early as June 29, 1912, he mentions doing a free-lance article for the Times, and over the course of the next two years he wrote two novels, "Coronation" and "The Emperor of Trebizond." On January 30, 1913, he reported attending a performance of "Louise" with Mary Garden, adding, "she can't sing." He praised Mahler's Fifth Symphony on December 5, 1913 and described a Cole Porter musical presented at the Yale Club of New York in a May 8, 1913 letter.

Rosenfeld travelled to Europe in the summer of 1914. In letters written from Munich on July 1 and Marienbad on July 27, he discussed the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Austrian expansionist policies, and Balkan politics, and praised Charles Seymour of Yale for his course on European politics. Upon returning to New York City, he shared an apartment for about two years with Platt, and the remaining letters describe life in Blue Hill, Maine in the summer of 1915.