Letter from Edward Renouf to Anny Schey von Koromla

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Saturday evening, 28 September

Dear Baroness Schey!

Your voice on the telephone brought another cheerful sonnet into the world (instead of another arid prose report). In the two days before that I’d started and finished a novella of forty-five pages, so I was tired but in high spirits and feeling fulfilled but also sad and lonely. As I was writing I was completely immersed in my own fictional world, so when I suddenly woke up in the empty house, the real world seemed dreadfully lonely. I wandered about the house like the only boy left alive by the dinosaur in the labyrinth. It was cold and dark everywhere, inside and out, and I couldn’t find a way out of the cold and the dark. I’d just sat down at my desk and picked up my fountain pen to start writing about my solitude when the telephone rang. I thought it might be you, so I jumped up and ran down the stairs – unfortunately Hanni got there first. But from that point on, everything was fine! I hope you won’t think it’s an emotional imposition if I admit that after my conversation with you I was whistling like a man possessed, performed several dance steps, leaps and turns, then sat right down to write a sonnet.

This morning I took a long walk and found some enchanted foxgloves and skylarks for the lady painter. And although this wasn’t my intention, I also came up with the plotlines and premises for another two novellas. I had lunch at Hochbrunn, came home, took a nap for half an hour, then started writing the first of these new novellas – hopefully I can finish it tomorrow and get started on the second right away!

Just now I shall read some Wilhelm Meister, and then – I wish you ‘good night!’

29 September

The letter arrived and got me thinking again – and dreaming and longing again.

The kernel, the inner conviction of art lives inside us, even if it hasn’t yet achieved its full potential, its full expression, its greatness. And yet it’s this kernel that shapes our independent attitudes, towards beauty, creativity, work. And yet it’s only through freedom, courage and ‘wholeness’ that this kernel can quickly achieve its unfettered potential. I think we should indulge ourselves in the present, with whole hearts and clear conscience, even if we can only hope to justify our actions in the eyes of some ‘public’ at a later date. If one can’t independently judge the praise and blame in one’s own life, one can’t possibly judge one’s own art. Rather than being soft and uncritical and accepting our own weaknesses, whether in life or in art, I think we ought to live, act and create according deep, unadorned, indefatigable conviction. If we did that, the world – the wider world outside – could never hold anything against us. For we have nothing against the rest of the world. Again, I don’t mean we should be uncritical, easily pleased and subordinate so much as searching, critical not cynical, hopeful not blind. It’s the petty, narrow-minded world that ought to take stock – the rest of the world can rejoice with those who rejoice, feel liberated with those who have the courage to liberate themselves from their senseless chains, feel more real with those who can look at themselves in the mirror, raise their hats and say: be sufficiently free to accept yourself as you are. And the world is certainly made stronger by all those who – like master builders, not starched collars – seek the kind of companionship that makes them as strong as they can be.

Hopefully Thursday!

– – – – – – Edl

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