Library and Archive Reading Rooms
View by appointment- Created by
- Edward Renouf 1906 – 1999
- Recipient
- Anny Schey von Koromla 1886 – 1948
- Title
- Letter from Edward Renouf to Anny Schey von Koromla
- Date
- 5–6 October [1930]
- Format
- Document - correspondence
- Collection
- Tate Archive
- Acquisition
- Presented to Tate Archive by David Mayor, December 2007; 2015; 2016.
- Reference
- TGA 200730/2/1/35/18
Description
Sunday evening, 5 October
Dear Baroness Schey!
For the first time today my head is clear, and ideas are coming to me that tell me why I was gloomy and reveal the emptiness of the letter I sent you at midday.
When you left here on Saturday morning you were displeased with me – it’s not necessary (and would actually be untrue) to say ‘as much as I would have liked’ because that ‘as much as’ is a measure that probably can’t be attained on this earth. You were displeased with me because, after too long in solitude, the animal (but the true) man in me came too much to the fore with ideas and feelings which, during this time with no distractions, had been too narrowly focussed on certain hopes, passions and circumstances. My desire to make something of myself and to determine my own future is not the stuff of entertaining conversation. Mozart, Rubens and so on surrounded themselves with a variety of people and dressed up their ambitions in appealing cultural forms that could never have been dreary, egocentric or offensive. Levity is achieved not by revealing and exposing one’s inner self but by concealing one’s nature, artfully and completely adapting one’s nature to more gracious cultural forms. Hence the levity (and dishonesty) of the French.
When one’s adaptation is so perfect that one can truly say, ‘it would be dishonest of me not to be dishonest’ – at that point dishonesty becomes a genuinely beneficial cultural value.
You live in a city (even if it is just Munich). You go to exhibitions and discuss them with others who’ve also seen them, possibly even the artists themselves. You go to concerts and discuss music with musicians, with Cherubim (?) and Edwin Fischer. You converse and interact with many people, and even if no-one ever comes up with any grand ideas, the variety of your conversations is something –
And then you come to Schwaz. When you tell me about the city and don’t get the right response it’s because I haven’t experienced any of it first hand, and you notice that my mind always seems to revert to arid theories, nebulous hopes and obscure passions, which become as desolate as the desert when they’re repeated over and over.
It would be doubly weak to recognise weaknesses in oneself without summoning the will and the strength to transform those weaknesses into strengths. I don’t lack the will – but I would ask you to be patient with me for as long as remaining here in Schwaz is beneficial to my writing –
I’ll finish writing this letter once I hear from you. What and how will you write to me, I wonder?
Late evening –
I’m just back from the telephone. Your voice sounded so sad! How I longed to comfort you! What could I have said? That I and my friendship will always be there for you, without reservation? But you know that already!
Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned that I felt you were displeased with me? Perhaps I shouldn’t send this letter? But I must, now that I’ve promised, otherwise the harmless account of self-dissatisfaction that it contains will become a many-headed hydra in my imagination. Or are these awful inventive leaps unique to my imagination? If you’re dissatisfied with yourself, you tend to think others are dissatisfied with you too. Please, please don’t take this the wrong way! Don’t think my dissatisfaction is somehow intended as an accusation against you – as it might well have seemed from the unqualified assertion I wrote: ‘When you left here on Saturday morning you were displeased with me.’ Perhaps you can still look favourably on this undeveloped youth who’s gradually finding his way in life. He is impatient – in all things. From the confusion of his emotions you should read clear friendship, as boundless as Clifford’s love.
I’m tormented by the idea that when we spoke on the telephone I may have told you things that were pointless, upsetting and untrue rather than saying things that would calm and comfort you. Is my love that of a hypochondriac? Because of a cold at the tip of my nose? I shall go to bed and await the day. Good night!!
Monday –
The letter from Wägl arrived. All dejection, ill-humour and even dissatisfaction is now gone, adapted and staged as comedy by Privy Ill-Councillor Impatience of Headcold, who, with eyes moistened in advance, gladly gives expression to the downy undertones of the soul!
An American I would otherwise have forgotten long ago made himself immortal in my memory by the following saying: the true test of a man is how he behaves when he’s ill. Not that I’m ill! But the saying left its mark, so I shall pull myself together. And even now it wouldn’t be dishonest, it wouldn’t be an act, if I were to strike up a song of praise in A-major, and I do! The great beauty of my world, my Ellen!
You said on the telephone that you’d seen some strange things on your travels. I didn’t press you to tell me about them immediately because I thought they’d be in your letter from Wägl. What happened?
I wish untold good things to all and sundry – !
When I come to Munich, what would you say to me dropping the formal address and just calling you Aunt Annie instead? Can I take that liberty? Or would that be too strange? From your great uncle,
Edl – – – – – – !
Archive context
- Additional papers of David Mayor TGA 200730 (79)
-
- Material relating to David Mayor’s Austrian ancestry TGA 200730/2 (79)
-
- Correspondence of Anny Schey von Koromla TGA 200730/2/1 (78)
-
- Letters from Edward Renouf to Anny Schey von Koromla TGA 200730/2/1/35 (78)
-
- Letter from Edward Renouf to Anny Schey von Koromla TGA 200730/2/1/35/18