Typed letter to Marianne Ihlen ("My dear Marianne"), Montreal, 25 June 1964.

Two pages, 280 x 215mm (some light toning to paper), with a line added in autograph by Cohen to second page.

Wounded from a recent fight with Marianne, he struggles to understand their relationship.She had joined Leonard in Canada but her recent departure was not on good terms. “I have been alone for almost a month now, and I’m just beginning to feel in possession of myself. I haven’t written a word. This is the first time I’m using a typewriter... Right now I want to work more than anything in the world. I hope I will find the strength."

He continues, "I’m not trying to dramatize myself, but it will be some time before I can accept anything tender from anyone. I don’t think you know how defeated I was, and probably still am, or how thoroughly everything that I know about myself was destroyed. I still cannot understand, except on a level of pure cruelty, what you did to me that Saturday night... I’m too tired for games, even tender games. I demand honesty from you, and if I do not feel that I can get it I will walk away."

“You said not to come to Hydra until I feel my old self again. That strong and holy poet we both admired and loved and destroyed is not going to turn up again. I will not stir from here until I’ve made a dent into a new book. That I set above everything, above you, the child, my friends, sunlight, everything. Because if I can’t be the man who writes this book I don’t want to be anything, and I’ve wasted enough of my talent...”

Cohen had spent the winter of 1963-64 in Canada revising Flowers for Hitler, and by 1964 was at work on his second novel, Beautiful Losers.

By descent from Marianne Ihlen.