Letter from Edward Renouf to Anny Schey von Koromla

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31 December

Dear Annerl!

Maybe I’ll arrive there just as quickly as this letter – but I have to write it, not least because I’ll be walking through the English Garden to collect my Austrian passport this morning anyway, so I’ll be able to put it in the postbox myself. Letter from New Yorker Ellen (in England they call her Nanny!) was a pleasure to read, partly because the time away from home is easier to bear (it can hardly be much longer), partly because her soul seems to be dissolving into impatience and longing. Clifford told me about a telephone call he’d had with his islander friend in Paris. He said he could hear another voice, even down the telephone, that ‘unfortunately wasn’t entirely foreign’ to him. He said he felt like a prisoner, only allowed to say ‘hello’ to his Ellen though all manner of locked steel bars and with a hundred guards watching and listening. Still, he said that ‘hello’ lifted his spirits just because it was Ellen.

I’m making real progress with my work – not so much in quantity as in quality. I’ll bring some carbon copies to Schwaz. I’m going to have to write tragedies somehow! Abbé Domnet articulated the idea, though it’s not a particularly original one, that comedies convey a profound discontent and sadness under the mask of fun and laughter, whereas tragedies express contentment under the weeping mask. This is perhaps because a comedy is an unconvincing wish fulfilment that only really serves to estrange us from real life, whereas the painful conviction of a powerful tragedy compels us to seek refuge and protection in the everyday, and to be reconciled to the real. I tell you this not as a reason for writing but in defence of my tragedies.

I’m now sitting on the sofa in your boudoir with my writing pad on my lap. Warmth, light, soft cushions, table-deck-yourself service, bathtub – ideal conditions for a creative mind!

I’m so looking forward to the second of January! New year’s greetings to all.

Yours,

Etl

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