Autograph letter signed (“Leonard”) to Marianne Ihlen ("My darling Mu"), St Jean, Quebec, 26 June 1961.

Two pages, 245 x 190mm, aerogram.

The Yugoslav freighter has broken down. “Marianne, why the hell aren’t you on this ship with me? Then I wouldn’t care when we sailed. The river is empty. One fills it with one’s own desires and longings; one tries to drag some human meaning out of the incessant rain and the poor villages along the coast. I would like to live without hope, but Christ the rain drowns you and you are left solitary and rusted as those mastless oil freighters that pass you silently in the channel. I have no resistance to hope—especially at the beginning of this broken journey. I am lost in the future, in your arms, in the hope of love."

He yearns for the idyllic, domestic days they shared in Hydra: "Things are barren without the thought of you. It would be so simple if you were beside me. I’d brush your hair, eat with you and love you, and to hell with all the glories of loneliness.”

By descent from Marianne Ihlen.