Letter from Edward Renouf to Anny Schey von Koromla

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Sunday

Dear Annerl!

Your last letter, from 17 August, just arrived.

You know what? Since the dawn of man there probably hasn’t been a single person who didn’t try to escape the clutches of fate, if not in this life, then in the next. Likewise, and for the same reason, there hasn’t been a single person (nor will there ever be) who didn’t baulk with a certain bitterness at the superhuman forces that held him in the clutches of his fate. Man baulks at his fate but rarely acknowledges that his real enemies are those ‘superhuman forces’. He also fails to acknowledge that his own strength, his own fortune, his own VICTORY would mean willingly reconciling and subordinating himself to it, understanding it and adjusting his life to it. No – ‘fate’ and ‘superhuman forces’ seem too untouchable, too incomprehensible, too insuperable, even too invulnerable for man to even acknowledge them at all. If your enemy injures you, surely you have to retaliate?! But retaliation against fate is futile. So you look for a scapegoat for your suffering, pain for pain, for all the suffering that fate has caused you. It doesn’t matter who it is. The poor goat might be a Jew, a capitalist or a communist, a Frenchman or a cook or a member of your own family. It might even be Etl.

What are you getting at with your ever more vehement accusations against me? Will you never understand that I can’t escape the clutches of fate either? That I too am a victim of fate, that I too suffer from the pain that fate has inflicted on me and that I’m not the ‘source’ of that suffering, as you always say with such bitterness. I possess no divine free will, no superhuman powers with which to resist the forces that pursue each and every one of us through our lives.

You write: ‘May all this suffering never return to its source!’

Then you write: ‘The greatest injury was that my soul was systematically ignored and disregarded . . . . . therein lay the prostitution,’ then you speak of ‘masculine conceit’ and of my supposed ‘male sadism’ and of the way I supposedly made ‘cruel and powerful interventions’ in your relationships with your children.

You write beautiful letters. They’re broad and varied. They show a fine sensibility . . . . . . In fact, they’re exceptionally beautiful. But dear Annerl, please tell me, what am I supposed to do with these accusations? Should I turn the other cheek in Christian humility? Should I concede that you’re right in all things and let myself be consumed by guilt, let the vultures gorge themselves on my liver, as they did with Prometheus? Or should I try to find the moral resolve to ignore and forget such hurtful accusations, so I can go on with my work undeterred and with a little joie de vivre. What do you want? What are you getting at?

You write that hate is a cardinal sin. Never! Only Christian hate, which always shows up in the guise of love, nagging, vexatious, treacherous. An honest, heathen, cursing outburst of rage and hate is a beautiful thing, a virtue, like castor oil at the right time, like a storm that clears the air, a catharsis of the soul that the human race forgoes at risk of forfeiting happiness. If you feel the need to hate me, don’t shy away from doing so! Hate and inveigh all you like! God will understand, as He does so many other things. He won’t be a narrow-minded pedant in his reckoning, or a perverse and moralising bishop. God loves his people as He loves the trees and the animals and the stars, and He likes to see us going our natural, healthy ways. A healthy outburst of hate will surely only make Him smile with all the more love and understanding, like any other understanding father. And if, instead of brooding on cardinal sins, you just let yourself hate and curse, you’ll soon see that we’ll quickly find our way back to one another and that we’ll become healthy and honest and lifelong friends . . . . . . whereas enough Christian moralising is liable to scupper that prospect entirely.

Enough advice from the great uncle. May the modest, generous, understanding god of the heathens keep and protect you! Be good, eat well, grow strong and write back to me soon.

Yours,

Etl

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