Library and Archive Reading Rooms
View by appointment- Created by
- Oskar Kokoschka 1886–1980
- Recipient
- Dr J. P. Hodin
- Title
- Letter from Oskar Kokoschka to Hodin
- Date
- 8 January 1969
- Format
- Document - correspondence
- Collection
- Tate Archive
- Acquisition
- Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to Tate, 2006. Accrual presented by Annabel Hodin, 2020
- Reference
- TGA 20062/4/199/3/40
Description
[Translation/transcription]
Villeneuve
8.1.69
My dearest Master Pepi,
Please do not be angry with your father in law, he feels like King Lear. His wife is not there whom he tried in every way to test her devotion and love, afterwards his beloved Pam run away with you. No wonder when he has misgivings towards you because he is old and lonely. Write a story about all that instead of being angry. You are making life more difficult for the beautyfull one who likes sometimes to stay in the castle of King Lear because it reminds her of her childhood. Now your other problems. I cannot do drawings or etching of Dresden or Prague. It is too long since I had been there and from memory I never do such things. They would not be true and alltogether I feel badly during winter. It is too grey and cold, no light. I am lazy like a dog full of flies. You are ambitious because you are so young still but I learnt to let everything grow. Recording to its own force of life, never push. It is a wall of energy.
I wonder how you would write a novel about me at Dresden where you never met me. Why not some other hero more suitable to the conception of a Dresden as you knew that town long forgotten by myself! I do hope my beloved beautyfull one and yourself are in better condition than myself and that we see each other again this year. My 'Frogs' are a splendid book and very expensive, don't you think so? Probably I do a mise en scene of that play this year!
Love to both of you,
Always yours,
OK
Archive context
- Papers of Josef Paul Hodin TGA 20062 (407)
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- Correspondence by sender TGA 20062/4 (275)
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- Correspondence between Oskar Kokoschka and J.P. Hodin TGA 20062/4/199 (112)
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- Correspondence from Oskar Kokoschka to J.P. Hodin, 1960-9 TGA 20062/4/199/3 (43)
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- Letter from Oskar Kokoschka to Hodin TGA 20062/4/199/3/40