| PID | https://hdl.handle.net/21.11115/0000-000E-C307-E |
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| Editor(s) | Mayer, Sandra; Frühwirth, Timo; Grigoriou, Dimitra |
| Publisher | Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Vienna 2024 |
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| Cite this Source (Chicago Manual of Style) | Auden, W. H.; Musulin, Elsa Gerda Maria Louise Pauline von; Musulin, Stella Mary Bellairs1964/2024. "Autograph Letter Signed W. H. Auden to Stella Musulin 1964-12-23." In Auden Musulin Papers: A Digital Edition of W. H. Auden's Letters to Stella Musulin, edited by Sandra Mayer, Timo Frühwirth, Dimitra Grigoriou, Edward Mendelson, Peter Andorfer and Daniel Elsner. Vienna: Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Austrian Academy of Sciences. https://hdl.handle.net/21.11115/0000-000E-C307-E. |
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| Previous document: | Autograph Letter Signed W. H. Auden to Stella Musulin 1963-05-12 |
| Next document: | Typed Letter Signed W. H. Auden to Stella Musulin with Typescript W. H. Auden "Joseph Weinheber" 1965-03-15 |
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It was sweet of you to think of me at
Christmas ,especially since it's a little einsam here.
Am beginning to know some local inhabitants. Oddly enough,
the ones I can talk to most easily ar from Ost-Berlin,
The most awful thing about the Bifkies is that
they are so much nicer under a little Druck.
When they feel their oats they are so apt to become
uppish.
If I'd known,I'd have warned you about The
National Review. I once reviewed a Charles Williams
book for them - never again. Of course you're right
about the lib-labs ostrich attitude to those who
wish to destroy them, but one cannot let one's name
be associated with shits.
Torture is the iniquity which utterly bewilders me.
I know something about the evil in my own heart and
[]in the sort of people I knowmeet, but I cannot conceive of myself
or them torturing anybody. Where do the torturers
come from? What class? Whom do they marry?
Have you ever met one? To what pubs do they go?
Where do the torturers come from? What class? Whom do they marry? To what pubs do they go?
In her memoir "The Years in Austria" (14r-15r), Stella Musulin relates the lines "(In what bars are they welcome? / What girls marry them?)" in the version from 15 March 1965 of W. H. Auden's poem "Joseph Weinheber" to a passage ("Where do the torturers come from? What class? Whom do they marry? Have you ever met one? To what pubs do they go?") in the poet's letter to her from 23 December 1964: "When I told Chester about how Auden's letter to me had made its own infinitesimal contribution to English literature, Chester snapped: 'Wystan never wastes anything!'"
External Evidence: ph_023
It was sweet of you to think of me at Christmas
In her memoirs ("Auden in Kirchstetten" 210, "The Years in Austria" 14-15), Stella Musulin refers to her own previous letter to Berlin, in which she had mentioned Brian Bunting's non-fiction book The Rise of the South African Reich in relation to the issue of torture.
Typescript Memoir Stella Musulin "The Years in Austria" 1976-09-04--1980-12-01- 14-15
External Evidence: ph_007