Typed letter signed (“Leonard”) to Marianne Ihlen "("Dearest Marianne"), [London] 10 March 1962.

One page, 280 x 215mm.

Full of longing after an extended visit, Cohen writes to Marianne from London. They parted a week earlier and he dreams of “a beautiful desolate wild Canadian island, Bonaventure,” where they can be “Esquimaux and forget our manners and eat codfish and laugh.” “There are a million things I want to talk about with you, things I’m frightened about, things I’m happy about, but none of them really matter and oceans between us distort things that become very simple when we are together.”

Miserable in the London winter, he continues, “I miss everything that I love. I long for you and blind love, brown bodies that speak to one another in a language we don’t want to understand, I long for readers to devour my soul at a feast, I long for health in the sun, woods I know, tables of meat and fruit and bread, children shattering the monarchy of the home, I long for cities of preserved elegance and the chaotic quarters of modern cities where the village persists, for loyal restaurants, for parks and battles.”

He had returned to London to make final revisions on The Favorite Game, which would be published that October. Regarding the work, he reports that he will need to make cuts to his book, but that his editor has been sick. “I don’t think there will be more than a few weeks work if I get my way—but I suppose we’ll thrash that out in a few days. I don’t want to change the entire character of the book.”

By descent from Marianne Ihlen.