Letter from Edward Renouf to Anny Schey von Koromla

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Winchester, New Hampshire

1 February 1933

Dearest Annerl!

Hurrah! Splendid! It’s great that you’re doing so well! And that all the complications are getting straightened out! How could I not be the first and most excited person to welcome and celebrate this news! My one concern came as a reaction to my over-enthusiastic ‘idealism’, which caused me to worry (as you yourself were also worried back then) that all this might be detrimental to Ellen in terms of practicalities, finances, friends and family life. As Clifford himself said, he could hardly make unreasonably urgent demands for something he could neither take responsibility for nor give practical real-world advice on (much as he would have liked to have done, if only that had been possible for him!). But how delighted he is now that everything has turned out just as he would have liked for Ellen! We’ll have to celebrate – with candles and champagne!

I’m astonished to hear that Gretl’s coming to New York, and I’d be especially glad to know how and where I might meet her and when I should travel to Cannes with her. But I think we ought still be able to get in touch with her and make all those arrangements. If we can, she’d be the first sign of spring from Vienna and the harbinger of our reunion!

I don’t understand what you mean about Bullitt. I think one of your letters must have gone astray. He was around in New York this winter, but I didn’t see him because he was so busy with the presidential election for the Democratic Party and I didn’t want to keep him from his work. But I did meet some of his friends, none of whom are half as important. All of them speak very highly of him and they all think that if the new government decides to recognise Russia, Bullitt stands a good chance of being appointed Ambassador to Russia. Yet you write: ‘. . . ruthless. Almost like Bullitt. Be on your guard if he ever turns up there . . . . . .’ And I have no Idea what I’m supposed to make of that.

It’s useful to know that Mr Titus lives in Cagnes. I must meet him. I’m sure he’ll be able to help me. (I’ve just had a letter from the kids, and they tell me his newspaper has folded. Shame! That’s what I had my eye on!)

About my own novellas: having spoken to various agents I’ve concluded that my work is too indelicate to be sold on the popular magazine market. But they say a collection of short stories would almost certainly find a publisher and might even be a success. But my novellas are all so different, the recent ones so much better than the earlier ones, the whole philosophy so contradictory from one to the next, that I actually have nothing that might form a coherent volume. If I’m capable of writing something as good technically as WINDERL-SEPL or THE BET (my most recent work), for instance, then I could hardly justify publishing a story like THE MAPLE TREE or A MAN AND A WOMAN in the same volume, if indeed at all. The latter two simply don’t exploit their own dramatic, psychological and realistic potential; they leave you with the impatient sense that good ideas have been completely wasted due to a lack of technical skill. So now I’m working towards the production of a coherent volume that will consist of the following sketches:

Giants (complete reworking of Wolkenkratzer [skyscrapers])
Weltschmerz [world-weariness] (about a poor devil who finds meaning and self-affirmation only in the pain of others)
Sally’s Grand Duke (about that Cossack colonel)
Drunk (a young man versus ‘gold digger’ episode)
The Maple Tree (another revised version)
Death (how death turns a hate neurosis into a love neurosis)
Satan (an old man attempts to seduce a young boy)
Erich Hafner (Glaser)
Marry Me (a doctor plays knight-in-shining-armour to a provincial girl)
Convenience (Charlie Bergfeldt’s story)

I want to do this work slowly and steadily, without disruptive influences; it needs to develop and ripen little by little. It will take me at least a year, and maybe much more than a year. No publisher or critic can help me until I’ve completed this task. Only Annerl can help me, if she could put me up somewhere near Ellen, if she could provide me with food and board for a routine of two hours’ work each day, for her or Clemens or the car or the garden or whatever it might be (such routines are psychologically important because otherwise I feel like a helpless child, I’d be unhappy with myself, I wouldn’t work well and I’d be unkind to others (as though, heaven forbid, I’d eaten a Bavarian meat platter too quickly!) and perhaps, in the twisted, hidden corners of my soul, I’d take a look at myself under the microscope and find that I hadn’t followed the divine advice in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Portuguese sonnets: Love me for love’s sake only. I’m just looking it up now. The sonnet starts: ‘If thou must love me, let it be for naught Except for love’s sake only . . . . .’ Aristotle was also quite right to say that friendships and society can only be based on transactions. And in that he already knew as much as our most advanced modern psychologists.

The most exciting news I have is that I’ve discovered a psychological principle that seems to me tremendously important as a critique of our crumbling culture (most of which is based on bourgeois deception) and as a foundation for the construction of a new, more realistic social and cultural edifice. I don’t want to say too much about this idea until I’ve elaborated and subjected it to rigorous scrutiny. In any case, it would hardly be possible to convey in a letter. But we’ll soon be able to talk about it, and I’m sure you’ll understand and be just as enthusiastic about it as I am. I find this idea particularly exciting and pleasing because it promises to bring order, purpose and harmony to my whole world view!

My little sister is coming to Europe this summer, though not until June. Would she be able to visit us? Shall I come in April? When will you take up residence for the spring and summer? Please write straight back to let me know when it would be most convenient for you. Also, assuming it’s not a burden, whether you could use a student-writer-tutor-chauffeur-factotum for any length of time and whether you’d have enough for him to do to justify his existence!

Our old friends Clifford and Ellen send their regards!

Yours,

Etl

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