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21 July 1935
Vienna, XIX. Strassergasse 47
Dear Jones,
I admit that I have reason to be pleased by the fact that you are at the helm of the ΨA bark, not only because of the “Gedenkbuch.” You met my concerns with such understanding that I now have the courage to go a step further.
So let us bury the Gedenkbuch or the “Sammelband” and such like. Turning to my own suggestion of the album, I confess that it now pleases me just as little, indeed, it thoroughly displeases me. Aside from the two objections that it would also involve much effort and afford no guarantee that I will live until that date, I now disapprove of the aesthetic monstrosity of some four hundred pictures of mostly ugly people, more than half of whom I do not know at all, while a considerable number of them do not want to know anything of me. No, the time is not right for a celebration, neither “intra Iliacos muros nec extra.”1 The only admissible course, it seems to me, is to give up the idea of any concerted action. Whoever thinks he must congratulate me may do so, and whoever does not need not fear my vengeance.