Letter from Edward Renouf to Anny Schey von Koromla

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Löwenbräu brewery

My Annie!

I’ve just sat down and now I’m waiting for a large vegetable platter, so for once I’m not thinking of you. It took me half an hour to walk home blind from your place, with flakes of snow floating into my eyes, my thoughts anywhere but on the road. On the way I passed the window of a florist which looked particularly bright and fresh. I went in to look for crocuses but didn’t find any, so I couldn’t use this as an excuse to come back and see you so soon. At home I made up a portion of the delicious cocoa and then went to the dentist to do some interpreting, where I found a young married couple, American through and through: practical, prosaic, friendly. We immediately got talking about all sorts of inconsequential things. They’re from the Midwest, they don’t speak German, they have a flat they look after themselves and they want to stay for two to three years so the husband can train at the Blocherer school of applied arts. The wife is thin, with coarse, loose, female features and the mouth of a horse. She’s expecting her first baby (no time soon but definitely the only one), is nice, plucky and practical in her demeanour. The husband is the American type, unmistakeable at two hundred metres. He and I stood there chatting while the doctor maltreated his wife. Then the two of them said I should come to eat with them if ever they happened to find a roast chicken – yes –

The platter was wonderful – fried eggs and vegetables. Now I’m back home, listening to the fuel in the stove whistling over and over like the tick-tock of the clock – cosy and friendly at first, then, the longer I listen, becoming abstract, laboured and hard. But the tulips and crocuses are always warm and animated, whether they’re sleeping or awake, whether I notice them in passing or watch them over time. What colours, forms, aroma! From Annie! That’s what matters. When I’m tired and weak, how I wish I could escape the active life with you – and yet art includes this life and all manner of disruptions; it might blossom less quickly, but it will be tougher, riper, truer, like the artist himself, if he remains proud and true in spite of everything –

As a child I had moral convictions that I sometimes broke with, and so I would pray and then I felt lighter and stronger. Now I have ambitions that sometimes seem to falter on their way to fulfilment, and now I just have to talk to you or write to you and everything seems easier and more achievable.

Good night, my Annie. May your first pleasure be rest now, and then whatever you desire.

Yours – E

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