Montreal, 25 June 1964

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.