0001                                         Fridau
0002                                     A-3200 Obergrafendorf
0003                                           bei St.Pölten, Austria.
0004                                               15 Dedcember 1985.

0005 Dear Ed,

0006     The time has come to send out a signal to you from this
0007 ancient, scandal-ridden, provincial dump.  Peter Müller has
0008 not been sleeping over his plan to edit a book on Auden´s
0009 time here, he has been writing books himself in addition to
0010 his full time profession.  Now - you may know this - it is
0011 definite and the book is to come out in February 1987 in
0012 time for A´s 80th.

0013     So he got me back to my desk, to, in his words, combine
0014 my English and German texts^1/2/3, and bring the whole thing up to
0015 date.  "Write as fully as you can, double the length."  I
0016 protested that a) I don´t wish to chatter more feebly than I
0017 have already, b) I am ancient and frail, also lazy, c) the
0018 first MSS^1/2/3 only approximate to each other while containing m[]kuch
0019 the same material;  their tone differs.  But above all they
0020 have, whether bad or indifferent, a certain shape or form and
0021 you cannot just stuff more material into it which refers to
0022 things which hapepened subsequently.  So we agreed that we would
0023 leave the texts to stand and that I would say, roughly, okay,
0024 that was how it looked then;  what has happened since, what
0025 is there still be said by us, who knew Auden in Kirchstetten
0026 in view of the fact that Carpenter did no research on this
0027 locations?  For a long time the idea was only to write a
0028 German text, I mean that the book would be solt´ely German
0029 lnanguage production, and this I thought until quite recently.
0030 Suddenly, Peter bounced me with the comment that he would
0031 "like an English version as well."  I had thought my two texts^1/2
0032 were only to be combined and the sequel written in German.
0033 This presents technical problems.  For example, and now my
0034 questions to you begin:

0035     We ihave here a copy of Auden´s declaration to the tax
0036 authorities.  (I have been determined all along that this
0037 document should be published AND RIGHT HERE.  Apart from making
0038 Them look stupid, it must be unique in literary history that a
0039 great poet should explain to the tax authorities how poetry
0040 comes to be written.)  Do you have the English original, or where
0041 is it; did it ever exist or was the German drafted by Auden
0042 and put together by, syay, his lawyer?  Or could this have been
0043 done by whoever it was who wrote the prose version of the
0044 Weinheber poem?  I have that text which A. gave me, but there
0045 is no record of who wrote it.  In my first drsaft of the talk
0046 given at the PEN Club in London in 1976 I wrote: "I have the
0047 statement in German translation, so that what I am reading is
0048 my own re-translation back into English and not the original.

0049     I should be very grateful if you could help me over the
0050 address which Auden held at Neulengbach.  I have the original
0051 English text which to my horror Auden asked me to translate:
0052 although capable of creative writing in German, to deal with
0053 this tough text was too mkuch and it was corrected by my husband.
0054 Müller possesses the German text taken from a tape.  Now this
0055 English text is so familiasrrto me that it deafens me to all
0056 or any sources.  A digest of it is in the PEN text but I wonder