You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Vienna XIX, Strassergasse 47
22. 6. 36
Dear Meister Arnold,
Your ship sails a month from today. The post takes so long that I must answer at once. And I do not want to put off any longer writing to tell you how pleased I am that your eyes are better. The improvement is visible even to others.
You must bring Looney back with you. I must try him on others, for obviously with you I have had no success. Your Shakespeare theory seems to me to be as improbable as it is lacking in foundation.1 The most personal of Sh. works, his sonnets, show an elderly man who regrets much that has happened in his life and who pours out his heart to a younger man he loves. This youth is an aristocrat, probably H. W. Earl of Southampton. Actually the poet reveals himself unambiguously at one point when he mentions that he once carried the baldachin (i.e. over the Queen's head in a procession). So I warn the poet A. Zw. against building fantasies about Sh. on untenable premises.
One of your promises you did not keep: there was nothing in your envelope about your correspondence with Emil Ludwig. From what I hear he, along with Masaryk, was the only person who refused to sign the address for my 8oth birthday. Last summer I was the victim of a painter called Victor Kraus who is married to a cousin of E. L. He told me frightful things about his behaviour.
The climate of the times, and also the happenings within