Letter from Wallace Fowlie, February 24, 1991

Letter from Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) at Chapel Hill, February 24, 1991. 

Dear Erik,

Thanks for the good words about Poem and Symbol. A long time has gone by since I saw you last.

On Jan. 11, a Duke policeman drove me to the campus for me to meet my first Dante class. I reached the classroom an hour before the students were to arrive. After putting the lesson's outline on the board, I sat down at the big table and . . . quietly . . . had a stroke. A mild one. Une petite attaque, as Proust says of the grandmother in the Champs-Élysées. The doctor urged me to withdraw from the course. How I miss those classes: 132 students, all good ones.

I am feeling myself now -- and am back to exercising. I still plan to give a re-vamped talk on Jim Morrison and Rimbaud: the rebel as artist on March 20, in the Duke Museum. That may help move me back into the center of things. In November, I gave the talk in Monterey, Ca., and in  Washington D.C. (George Washington, Georgetown, and Catholic Univ.[)]. 

Please come and visit me when  you have time. The film The Doors is due March 1.  The big book The Doors Complete is due in Nov.-Dec. 1991.

Give my best to Liz. Hope to see you both soon. That would help raise my spirits.

affectionately,
Wallace