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
- 14–15 February 1933
- Format
- Document - correspondence
- Collection
- Tate Archive
- Acquisition
- Presented to Tate Archive by David Mayor, December 2007; 2015; 2016.
- Reference
- TGA 200730/2/1/35/52
Description
14 February 1933
Annerl!
When I put this new tracksuit on it fills me with more warmth than the fabric itself could possibly contain. Must I speak through Clifford and Ellen? Somehow I want to communicate in a less intellectual way. After all, Ellen was Peter’s wife, and the symbol of her name is a diversion that sometimes tries my patience, because for me at least the diversion is unnecessary and makes me feel as though there were a glass wall between me and the palpable, living reality. The warmth of the tracksuit reminds me of the English Gardens, the wisps of fog above the meadows, the moon that broke through the clouds and quietly conjured those deep, branching shadows behind the trees – the white hood – the furtive gurgle of the stream. I don’t think I can cope with the mental strain of thinking through Clifford all the time. The thoughts I have are so unintellectual that I have to put on my old boxing gloves, run out to the garage and bash the bag of sawdust around until I’m ready to come home, gasping and sweating and somewhat subdued. Cutting down trees, schlepping wood, running the couple of kilometres for the post and the milk sometimes just isn’t strenuous enough to release the tension and guide my pent-up streams of emotion through the fertile fields of the spirit.
From the perspective of this recent period of sobriety and mental clarity, from the point of view I’ve learned to adopt when regarding us in Europe from here, I’ve also come to understand several things about my own character and I’ve come to see the direction I need to take. The most important thing for my development, both as an artist and as a person (which of course go hand in hand), is that I should remain absolutely independent, even if it means becoming a beggar, and that I don’t accept any kind of compromise, however tempting and advantageous it might seem. To me that isn’t idealism; it’s naked realism. Because I know that any compromise has such a destructive effect on me that, instead of accumulating and enjoying the advantages of such spiritual compromises and regarding my social life as ‘well adapted’ and trouble free, I become unwell, listless, cantankerous towards everyone and everything, a disused dishcloth who occasionally tries to console himself with suicidal thoughts and is loathsome to anyone who has to see him. Often my outward appearance gives friends the false impression that I’ll be perfectly good company. If they were a little more perceptive they might see otherwise . . . . . but that’s all in the past now, and hopefully that’s where it will stay. For the path I need to take is becoming ever clearer to me. If I follow it faithfully and stringently, my art will become deeper and stronger, and I myself will be healthier and more enjoyable company for friends who love me for what I am and aren’t afraid of the realism that’s becoming an increasingly prominent part of my character. No-one else in the world has ever shown me as much good will as you have, and there’s no-one else in the world who could possibly be as willing and able to understand, tolerate and perhaps even honour my way of life. Have your own inclinations not also taken a similar turn recently? My mother would like to be able to support me, but she’s incapable of doing so on account of her own personality. My brother understands me and is as profound a friend as any man could be. But there’s something else, something no man can give me, something spiritual which I’ve only ever known and want to have – must have – from you! It’s something unique to you that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world . . . . . . and why should I let such a precious thing go unsought and unused so far away from me (for no-one else could possibly know what I mean)? Why let a scent go unsmellt, a tender warmth unfelt, why let the embers glow without using them to light a fire whose divine flames would then course through my veins?! Why should I stay away from someone who, quite unconsciously, has so much to give me, who could do so much to edify my art and my self?! Finding a job here and fitting in with my paternal relatives and their social circle are things that I will not and cannot do. During my final year at Harvard I thought I would have to, so I tried to get used to the idea, and to some extent also the hard fact of the matter. But I was so unhappy back then that I can’t imagine ever being so unhappy again!
Mama interrupted me by calling me away to dinner. Oddly enough she started telling me about my family and painted a picture for me of the demise of a noble and formerly rather grand lineage. In the time of my great, great grandfather the family was still in full bloom. The decline set in with my great grandfather, even though he was still regarded as the noblest and wealthiest patriarch in the entire state of New Hampshire, had twelve horses in the stables and lived in a house that rarely had less than six to ten guests at a time, guests who were each given three to four private rooms, plus their own servants. As a widower and a man of advanced years (by this point grandfather was a Professor at Johns Hopkins University and my father was already a student), my great grandfather married his housekeeper. In that undemocratic age this misguided alliance was regarded as a completely unforgiveable break with historic tradition. My grandfather and the whole ‘legitimate’ side of the Renouf family stopped coming to the family house and wouldn’t even speak to my great grandfather until the housekeeper had died. But by then it was already too late for a reconciliation that might have saved the standing of the family. There was a reconciliation, but just before her death the housekeeper had given birth to a daughter and had convinced the patriarch, who was already senile by this point, to sign the greater part of his fortune over to her – all his property, the house, the silver, the paintings and the books. And she (one could hardly blame her) left everything to her daughter, who married a handsome gambler, and so the family fortune was lost. The servants were dismissed. The house was sold. The money was frittered away. My grandfather could have contested the testament of his senile father, but he didn’t because he didn’t want to offend conventional notions of decency. He inherited a fortune of no more than a quarter of a million dollars, and otherwise not a single memento of his ancestors. And so he started out with the tent on his back . . . . . My father grew up in self-imposed privation, with almost no support from home; married a foreigner; died in China from overwork and typhus while his fame and his works were still budding. And his sons? The eldest suffers from diabetes, has no job and knows not what tomorrow will bring. And me . . . . . . ? In my great, great grandfather’s day, every educated person in the country knew who Mr Renouf was. Some knew my grandfather as a professor of chemistry at Johns Hopkins. My father left the country, and few here knew who he was. And us . . . . ? Ha! What a joke! When grandfather dies, the remainder of the family fortune will be dispersed once and for all; it will vanish, like a final sign of our demise . . . . . . . . Heinzl and Edda and I will have to start over. The tree of our ancestors has died and fallen, and we three, the last shoots of a dying root, are breaking away and looking for new ground, we have forgotten and banished the generations of which we are the continuation; unburdened by the obligations of inheritance, reputation, tradition, we can dedicate ourselves afresh to new ideas, new people, to creating and conquering new worlds . . . . . . . .
15 February
The books have arrived too! Wonderful! I read THE GOOD EARTH and Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD straight away. Complete opposites, but each in its own way highly accomplished and inspirational. One really ought to read them together, for although they seem as different as two books and two authors could possibly be in terms of style and subject matter, at heart both contain the same earthy longing. Have you already read them? I shall read Lawrence’s APOCALYPSE next, once I’m finished with my own novellas. You also mentioned an APOCALYPSE by Dürer? That hasn’t arrived. Having ULYSSES by Joyce at last is a festive occasion for me! And the fact that Jaffe sent me two first volumes rather than a first and a second doesn’t detract from my joy, because I’m sure they’ll rectify that soon enough. When I return them I’ll have Jaffe send the correct volumes directly to you in Cagnes, since I won’t have time to make a start on this great work until May anyway. Agreed?
Recently I’ve also been reading a book by Calverton, THE LIBERATION OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. In it he shows how American writers since the colonial period have liberated themselves little by little from historic prejudice, sentimentality, snobbism and inhibitions so that they’ve now ploughed and prepared the intellectual ground for great literature, a literature which will be proletarian, i.e. sympathetic towards those PEOPLE who suffer under and rebel against the current global socio-economic situation and against those plutocrats and the BOURGEOISIE who find their autocratic power in the status quo and attack any political or intellectual innovation; a literature which will therefore also be international, pacifist and will strive for a more legitimate world order. All sounds pretty good to me!
American literature is at its best in the novella, less so in the novel and barely at all in poetry. The poets one reads in the various newspapers rarely seem to take the stuff of life by the scruff of the neck; they write about all manner of inconsequential things and conceal their lack of talent behind linguistic incomprehensibility. The symbolic significance they do sometimes achieve (if they ever do anything significant) is almost always subjective. And subjective art has always been worthless. Nowhere in the English speaking world – perhaps the whole world ¬– has ever known so many genuinely good short story writers as there are in America today, but England and Europe have in the past seen far better periods for novels, plays and poetry.
Do you remember how Bullitt wanted to introduce me to his friend Whit Burnett, the fellow who set up the literary magazine STORY when we were in Vienna? When Bullitt went to look him up he found that Burnett had lost his job as a newspaper reporter and was on the brink of starvation when a wealthy friend came to his rescue and took him and his wife off to Majorca with all the STORY manuscripts. There Burnett continued with his work. And now he’s just returned to New York TRIUMPHANT because his magazine STORY (where he published stories by himself, his wife and their friends, which no-one else would publish) has just been recognised as THE BEST SHORT STORY MAGAZINE IN THE WHOLE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD!!! Well, I’ve now promised myself that my own work will be published in the next few years, and to no less fanfare!
But now I must take this letter to the postbox quickly if I’m going to catch the postman, and going quickly won’t be easy because I’ve had a really bad knee since I bashed it on a wooden stake two weeks ago. I haven’t heard anything from Gretl yet. When should I come to Cagnes? Write soon!
Everything — !
Yours,
Etl
Carbon copy
Waldfrieden, Winchester, New Hampshire
11 February 1932
Dear Frau Wiesenthal,
You’re here! And somehow I wasn’t there at the quay to welcome you, to line your path, every step of the way, with violets, forget-me-nots and daisies!
Your arrival here came as a huge surprise. What wouldn’t I give to see you in the spotlight! I know you only as Frau Wiesenthal of Rechte Bahngasse 28 and as Annerl’s favourite Gretl, the Viennese lady of incomparable charm. I hear great things about your art, though I’m sure the reality will trump the hearsay, just as I’m sure that meeting you in person will trump everything they say about you – wonderful though it always is!
How will you like New York, I wonder? Will the enthusiasm for your art here not leave you with a sense of superficial incomprehension? Because for me you represent a cultural utopia (in a sense that is profoundly foreign to us), a perfect way of life that has as its goal the development, fulfilment and veneration of man, a way of life guided by art and understanding. More than others, you have achieved that goal – a humanity that must also shine through in your art.
But what of us? Our ends and purposes are fogged by the thirst for power. And if power should ever threaten to slip from our impotent hands, we immediately start to suffer from intellectual cramps that make it very difficult for us to understand healthier, more progressive ways of life. The countries of Europe have their epochs of power far behind them, they know what a fleeting experience it is (despite Hitler and Mussolini) and have achieved peace and maturity (despite and perhaps because of their misfortunes), so they can now attend to things of lasting value. But we still have our epoch of power before us. That’s why people here always seems to be ‘en route’ and without direction, because the direction of the nation can’t possibly be right and proper for each individual, who, by running along with it, leaves his own personality behind in the dust of unfulfilled possibilities. Artists are the only exception in this regard.
Our compensation for this deficiency is our humour (good-natured derision), which comes from no-one taking himself or much else too seriously; and also our national self-irony, which has seized the upper hand of late and is blazing trails for a healthy, vigorous and unsentimental art. What you see now is partly the result of the general tendency of the nation, but partly just an experiment – a tentative exploration (‘en route’ who knows where) by which the American seeks out a path to himself, to art, to life. For every intelligent American knows that he is far from having reached the cultural maturity that the European has long since enjoyed. That culture will naturally have to take a different and specific form here, a form almost completely independent of historic European culture, adjusted to a new state of mind and a new way of life, where all routine work is mechanised and where one finds a sharp critical intellect, unadorned, direct thinking and creativity, an ethos of cool reason growing up on the basis of the natural sciences.
But enough of this idle philosophising! How I wish I were in New York so that I could take you to exhibitions and concerts and show you the city from the tower of the Empire State Building! . . . . . . Annerl sends her warm regards through me and asks whether you and I might take the same steamer to Cannes. What do you think? I shall be going over in the spring.
With my kind regards also, yours
Archive context
- Additional papers of David Mayor TGA 200730 (79)
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- Material relating to David Mayor’s Austrian ancestry TGA 200730/2 (79)
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- Correspondence of Anny Schey von Koromla TGA 200730/2/1 (78)
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- Letters from Edward Renouf to Anny Schey von Koromla TGA 200730/2/1/35 (78)
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- Letter from Edward Renouf to Anny Schey von Koromla TGA 200730/2/1/35/52