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560 J A M E S I 1923-1926 ]problems. At the beginning of 1924 he sent a copy of the newly publishedbook to Joyce, who was impressed by its irony and languid savagery.When Schmitz wrote in January that he was discouraged by thebook's reception and felt that he had again done a foolish thing, and atan age—sixty—when one hates to cut a foolish figure, Joyce reassuredhim: 'Why are you discouraged? You must know that it is by far yourbest book.' The reading of it was affording him 'great pleasure,' he said,and went on: 'At the moment two things interest me. The theme: I wouldnever have thought that smoking could dominate a person in that way.Secondly: the treatment of time in the novel. There is no absence of witin it and I notice that the last line of Senilita: "Yes, Angiolina thinks andweeps, etc."* has impressively developed in privacy.' 25He made carefulsuggestions for bringing Zeno to world notice. Schmitz must send copiesto Larbaud, Benjamin Cremieux, Eliot, Ford, and Gilbert Seldes (theneditor of the Dial), mentioning Joyce's name. Joyce spoke to the first two,telling them that the only modern Italian writer who interested him wasitalo Svevo.' By April 1, 1924, he could write Schmitz the good newsthat Larbaud was very pleased with the book; and Larbaud himself, afterreading some of Schmitz's other books as well, sent him two effusiveletters. Schmitz replied to Larbaud gratefully, if you only knew what anupheaval your two letters have caused in my life! I've reread Senilita andnow see the book, which I had resigned myself to dismiss as null, in thelight which your judgment throws upon it. I have also reread Una Vita.James Joyce always used to say that there is room in a man's heart forone novel only (He hadn't even begun Ulysses at the time) and that theothers are always the same one artificially masked under other words. Butif this is .so then Una Vita is my only novel.' 26Larbaud planned anarticle on Schmitz in the Nouvelle Revue Frangaise, then in Commerce,but when these were not at once forthcoming Joyce wrote Larbaud onJune 6, 1924, i had a letter from "Italo Svevo" this morning. He is indespair about his book. If you manage a short note on it somewhere or,as you suggested, give some pages of it in the second number of Commerceyou would do much more for him than my mention of Les Laurierssont coupes did for Dujardin.' 27The advocacy of Joyce, Larbaud, and Cremieux won for Schmitz theattention of Eugenio Montale, who wrote in 1925 the firstrespectfulstudy of him outside of Trieste, where Silvio Benco had always been anadmirer. Then in February 1926, Adrienne Monnier dedicated an issueof Le Navire dArgent to him, and Larbaud published an article, withextended quotations from Svevo's works, in Commerce. When Schmitzpublished a second edition of Senilita, he thanked Joyce, as Dujardinhad done, for resuscitating him like Lazarus. 'They'll put up an equestrianstatue of me,' he told his wife. During these four years, 1924-1928,* 'Yes, Angiolina thinks and sometimes cries, thinks as though the secret of the universehad been explained to her or the secret of her own existence, and is sad as though in allthe whole world she could not find one solitary deo gratias.'