Letter from Edward Renouf to Anny Schey von Koromla

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24 September

Dear Baroness Schey!

The sun’s just gone down and I’m back here again with muddy boots and a mountain sweat (I’ve been hunting skylarks again). My unguided steps led me up the mountain to that lovely clearing we found with Clemens, where we sledged on lederhosen. And I found two solitary larks, though one had too much and the other had too little. The one was more slender, elongated, hollow-eyed and quixotic than Don Quixote himself. The other was as sweet, meaningless and well-mannered as a sweet, meaningless and well-mannered Biedermeier bourgeoise. I enjoy looking at trees with selective, critical eyes, savouring in advance the pleasure I’ll take in bringing the artist to the same spot and sitting there while she works on her paintings. I’m yet to find a tree with features so distinctive and strong, whose branches whisper so furtively of earthly delights that it couldn’t be categorically defined as normal or abnormal. Such a tree would be a marvel!

It’s grown dark so quickly, and now I’m sitting here at the table –

Ach, to be without limitations, a citizen of the world! To speak other languages, to read literatures, philosophies, religions, to visit people and places – Paris, London, Rome, Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, New York – – – Alexandria, Egypt, Baghdad, Peking, Tokyo, Moscow – – ! To absorb the world with a happy appetite and give it back in jubilant works! But are we not doing that already? Why long for other times and other places? A falcon with two wings can see the world, the whole world! The beauty of the mountains, valleys, clouds, streams, sunny days and starry nights, rainy days and stormy nights; it’s all there – beauty upon beauty without end!

Oh dear! I’ve just bathed, but my chin is bristly. Now I shall fry the onions for dinner!

25 September

Playing the pan-pipes may not conjure up the personification of dance in flesh and blood, but when the falcon-winged piper is surrounded by an alpine cloud ballet of jubilant fairies with dragonfly wings, gentian eyes and edelweiss hair, it’s like a symphony in a major key. If a nymph should catch cold, her satyr’s there with a warm heart and a thousand hot kisses!

You only mentioned Monday’s letter. You didn’t get Tuesday’s note about Whoopsie-Boopsie and his fruitful lyrical muse? That story needs a broader outline and a tidier form. It seems to want to be a short novel rather than a novella.

Two weeks is a long time! You could travel to America and back. Soundwaves [musical notation] could circumnavigate the globe. Rays of light could cover the distance between stars. The sow here (could and) has farrowed, and poor Hanni’s distraught because the piglets are all dying, one after the other. I’m sitting here noticing distances, time and space, the rhythms of life, the pressure in the clouds, the grand indifference of the stars – eating onions and writing words. O, dear God, help me! If only I could stop eating onions!

Edl

PS I’m about to go to the post office. I’d much rather be going to the station and on to Munich – to see the exhibition, of course! Hopefully it will still be on when I come. I’m looking forward to Lauterburg.

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