Béla Bartók. Autograph letter to Klára Gombossy, 6 January 1916, only partly published

Béla Bartók

Autograph letter to Klára Gombossy, ONLY PARTLY PUBLISHED

providing her with advice on how to read foreign literature, explaining that he is aware of two methods of reading a foreign book, namely one in which he underlines all the unfamiliar words, looking them up after he has read 10-20 pages (and committing them to memory after making a translation in the margin), and another where he marks only the words necessary for sense, observing that the first method is the more solid, while the second is also effective, at the beginning, as well as less tiresome, also referring to a visit at his friends Emma and Zoltán Kodaly at which he promoted the poems from his op.15, providing the age and gender of the author, but not place and name, and noting that they 'caused great surprise'

...A könyvel, bánjék úgy, mintha tulajdona lenne. Értem ezt a szókeresésre. Idegennyelvű könyv olvasásánál két féle módszert ismerek. Vagy minden ismeretlen szót aláhúzok a könyvben, 10-20 lap elolvasésa után valamennyit kikeresem a szótárból és a köyv megfelelő lapján a margo megfelelő részére ráíro, megtanulom. Vagy pedig: csupán azokat a szavakat jelölöm meg és keserem ki lehotőleg olvasás közben, amelyeknek megértésére föltétlenül szükség van, vagy amelyek már többször fordultak elő s ezzel mintegy kíváncsivá tettek jelentésükre. Az első módszer az alaposabb, a 2. kevésbé fáradságos, de - főleg eleinte - szintén célhoz vezet...​​

14 pages, 8vo, the four bifolia numbered by Bartók in red crayon 'I'-'IV', no place, 16 January 1916

Bartók's letters to the adolescent Klára Gombossy - all from 1916 - can well be described as crucial documents in our understanding of Bartók, coming as they do from a period in his life which is only sparsely documented. For they reveal, as László Vikárius has observed, a good deal 'about the composer's personal feelings and ideas...giving the reader a glimpse into aspects of his personality that certainly contributed to his artistic greatness either directly or, more often, through the composer's very rejection of them'. Bartók had become involved with the young Klára, a forester's daughter from the village of Kisgaram (present-day Hronec), in the course of his collecting tours in Slovakia in 1915-1916. It was she who provided the composer with the ecstatic texts for his lieder cycle of love poems op.15, a set which however remained unpublished during his lifetime 'for personal reasons' (as he explained in a letter of 24 June 1922 to Calvocoressi).

LITERATURE:

László Vikárius, 'Intimations through Words and Music. Unique Sources to Béla Bartók's Life and Thought in the Fonds Denijs Dille (B-Br)', Revue Belge de Musicologie, vol.lxvii (2013), p.179-217

PROVENANCE:

Formerly in the collection of Peter Bartók (1924-2020)