Letter from Oskar Kokoschka to J.P. Hodin

Description

[Translation/transcription]

Villeneuve

29 February 1968

My dear Master Pepi,

Don't despair - spring is coming! I understand that, with the fledging of the witch from her dreamy peacock-blue nest, you and the beautyfull one have lost a stargazer, a vital part of yourselves, but what you're feeling is without doubt the melancholia that invariably heralds a new spring. I wanted to write to you straight away, but I had a lot of housework to do while Olda had the flu, and our cleaning lady was away in Grenoble for fourteen days, since her husband is president of the Swiss bobsleigh team. We could hardly deny her that, and now Olda is long since better. Today she was digging in the garden where crocuses, cowslips and snowdrops are coming out in droves and the dirty snow has melted. Unfortunately we have to fly away on 10 March, first to Munich, then to Turkey for a month, where I'm supposed to be painting because the Czechs won't allow loans or photographs of the Istanbul picture I painted fifty years ago, which the Nazis once flogged to a banker who'd fled to America. My fingers are raw because I've just scratched twelve copperplates for The Frogs by the Athenian Karl Kraus, Aristophanes. Is it any wonder that I should feel a little aggrieved when my stories, 'Spur im Treibsand' [A Sea Ringed with Visions], which are surely more imaginative than anything anyone else is writing these days, remain out of print, languishing in the obscurity of the Atlantis Verlag? They ought to be required reading for the revolting students of Germany, who know nothing of life and do nothing but chuck rotten eggs. But I suppose for the time being I too must be patient like you. An affectionate embrace for the beautyfull one and you from your OK



[Invitation, verso in Hodin's hand:]

O.K. February 1968

Finishes twelve copperplates for Aristophanes' The Frogs
Going to Istanbul for three to four weeks in March (Munich 10 March)

Olda [illegible]

Read more