Letter from Oskar Kokoschka to J.P. Hodin

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[Translation/transcription]

Cliff End Cottage, Polperro, Looe, Cornwall

4 November

My dear Dr Hodin,

Many thanks for your very kind letter, and for the encouragement. Along with the same post I'm sending you the final version of my 'Via Lucis', which you hadn't quite finished. I've made some changes to the language as well as some changes of a more constructive nature, so I would ask you to withdraw the old copy and send it over to me - or to destroy it (reliably)! I'm curious to hear what the publisher has to say and about the opinion of Dr Grünewald. I very much look forward to seeing the printed version of your splendid article, which combines so much understanding for my work with so much warmth that I was transported back to my most successful years as I read it.

I would be very grateful for an issue of the Revue in the stated [illegible], and it would also be advantageous in Switzerland, where ten of my museum pictures were recently auctioned, with some of them actually remaining in the country. I don't know whether you wanted me to return your study? Because of the precarious situation in Finnland I have been asked not to send the material there yet and would ask you to kindly look after it for the time being.

Now to my economic difficulties. I would be very grateful to you and your friends Grünewald, Hoppe and Paulsson if you were to arrange this meeting, and I would be honoured to donate a picture to the Goteborg museum, for as far as I know not one of my paintings has yet found its way to Sweden. People there have always tended to focus solely on Paris, and the well organised art market there has turned this to its own advantage. There is no such thing as a German art market, and even the Third Reich with its 'degenerate art' propaganda, after some good early results abroad, will eventually have to abandon its efforts because the war will only bring more and more restrictions. And so it was that I found myself sitting between to two thrones, so to speak: between Monsieur Rosenberg, the dictator of taste in France, and Herr Rosenberg, the dictator of the Third Reich. And I am frowned upon in both camps.

The main difficulty for me is how to save my small but heavily mortgaged house in Vienna. My brother is about to leave it high and dry along with all the hugely important things I left behind there: things worth keeping, things collected, things begun. I'm not able to support my brother from here, and via indirect channels he tells me that, on account of all the interest, taxes and charges owed, he feels compelled to give up the house to pay the sum of the liabilities and move to the country to hire himself out as a farmhand. For me these are almost grounds for suicide. I can't explain it all to you in writing, the why and the wherefore, and yet I must do absolutely everything I can! But if you would be so good as to have someone there ask my brother how much he needs (at current exchange rates it won't be a small amount) and, without mentioning me, tell him that certain people there want to secure the house for art historical reasons - perhaps on behalf of some of the museums in Sweden - then you would be helping me in the most welcome and unexpected way. My brother would have to agree to look after the house as a sort of caretaker on behalf of the Swedish friends (in my opinion he is a very talented writer, blighted by an almost freakish misfortune when it comes to publishers and now almost fifty years old). In this way he would be protected and would in turn protect the many things that I have begun, the materials I will need for the future and my spiritual connection to my parental home. In short, someone would have to ask him how much money he needs to pay the debts on the house, and he would then have to agree to look after the house for the Swedish art lovers.

All my cares are putting such an awful strain on me that I would dearly like to hear sooner rather than later whether this plan is going to work.

America is so far away that any correspondence takes months, whereas Europe is either at war or off limits. As for me, I'm quite used to privation and hostility. In my thirty year artistic career I've seen more of these than their opposites.

With sincere and heartfelt thanks for everything, please say the same to our friends,

Devotedly yours,

OK

My brother's address: B. K., 26 Liebhartstalstraße, Vienna XVI

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