Auden, Wystan Hugh/Kallman, Chester: Brief an Henze, Hans Werner. New York, Dienstag, 6. Januar 1959
author: Auden, Wystan Hugh; Kallman, Chester
language: en
availability: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Copyright by the Estate of W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman. By courtesy of the Estate of W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

77 St Mark's Place
New York City 3
New York
U.S.A.

1st letter 1st letter from Auden-Kallman ever[^1]

[^1: Here, Henze notes that this is the first letter he received from the two librettists, whom he had already met in person. Their first meeting took place in the summer of 1951 in Forio d'Ischia. See Henze's Autobiography, pp. 98-99 and pp. 162-163.]

Jan 6th,I959[^2]
Dear Hans:

[^2: Henze himself probably underlined “59” in the date, as if to emphasize the date the correspondence began, perhaps for archival purposes.]

Delighted to get your letter. Chester & I would love to collaborate with you on an opera,provided we can earn some money thereby.

What would you say to this idea?[^3]A re-incarnation of the Daphnis-Chloe story[^4],set in an imaginary Forio[^5] in about 1910. One of them would have been brought up b y grape-growing contadini, the other by pescatori.[^6] Gnatho the rich queen,would be a version of Norman Douglas, the anti-Christian romantic “Pagan”.[^7] Lycaenion ( O ur copy of the novel is in Kirchstet t en[^8],and I have forgotten her name),who teaches Daphnis the arts of love,a German Baron i n from San Angelo,etc,etc. Though one wouldn't need a proper chorus, we think we should need a quartette of Forian Gossips at the side of the stage throughout,who would amorally comment upon the action and invariably get everything wrong,ie,They would think that X & B, Y & A were having affairs when in fact it was X & Y, A & B,they would predict that N wont marry M when they do,or that K will marry L when he doesnt,etc.[^9] A straight romantic love story with a buffo background.[^10]

[^3: The subject the librettists proposed for an opera in this letter would never come to fruition.]

[^4: Daphnis and Chloe is an ancient Greek novel written in the Roman Empire by the Greek writer Longus.]

[^5: Forio is a city on the island of Ischia, which was very significant in the friendship of the three authors of Elegy for Young Lovers. Like Auden and Kallman, in 1951 Henze also spent his summer vacations in Forio, where he would move the following year, and which was already a meeting place for world-famous artists and intellectuals. It was there, in the Caffè Maria Internazionale in the town square, that in 1951 the composer met the two librettists for the first time. See Henze's Autobiography, pp. 98-99.]

[^6: In the preface Auden and Elizabeth Mayer wrote to their English translation of Goethe's Italienische Reise in 1962, the authors wondered if there was a country in Europe where the character of the people had been so unaffected by technological changes as Italy was, see Foreword , pp. XX–XXI. Probably because of this perception that Auden must have already developed at the time of this letter (1959), he uses the Italian language to refer to the ancient trades of the “farmers” who make wine and “fishermen” who would have raised Daphnis and Chloe.]

[^7: As Federica Marsico writes in her article “Il poeta e la sua elegia del desiderio inappagato” , p. 13, the reference to the English writer Norman Douglas, who had died only a few years earlier, in 1952, is significant: Douglas resided in Capri (another island of the gulf of Naples just south of the Island of Ischia) in the last period of his life, after having run into serious legal problems in England, due to his homosexuality.]

[^8: Auden had purchased a farm in Kirchstetten. This became the summer residence of the librettists.]

[^9: Unlike the previous initial to indicate the name of the character Lycaenion, the following letters are only meant to be representatives for the characters of the hypothetical quartet.]

[^10: Henze declined this proposal. His reply cannot be found, but in his Autobiography, p. 164, the composer writes that he would have liked “psychological drama, a chamber drama that would deal in the most general terms with guilt and atonement, in other words, with subtle and complex issues, and not with the all too pastoral and affected bucolisms with which they had tried to fob me offer in their letter of acceptance”.]

Chester gets back to Kirchstetten in April;I have to go first to Oxford[^11] and will get xout[^12] in the middle of June. I am enchanted with the place. As reg ar ds the Mezzogiorno ,I am getting too old for the strange:the Kr au ts[^13] can be monsters like Hitler,or idiots like H. H. Stuckenschmidt,but I understand them in a way that I shall never understand Wops[^14].

[^11: From 1956 to 1961 Auden was Professor of Poetry at Oxford.]

[^12: The letter “x” is faded.]

[^13: The word “Kraut” is an ethnic slur for a German.]

[^14: “Wops” is an offensive word for Italians.]

Let us know your reaction, and please come to see us in Niederösterreich.

love
Wystan

P.S. Please send me the address of Kl au s and Blackie, as I ha v e lost it. I’m hoping to show Chester Berlin this year, in case it should become too late.[^15]

[^15: Auden writes that it might “become too late”, probably alluding to the political situation of the Cold War that led to the division of Berlin by the wall, which was built shortly afterwards (the construction of the Berlin Wall began in August 1961).]

Love
Chester