Intimate Letters

Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Stösslová
edited and translated by John Tyrrell
Faber and Faber, London; new Ed edition, 2005
???, 416 pp.
ISBN 10: 0-571-22510-1
ISBN 13: 978-0-571-22510-1

In 1917 Leoš Janáček met Kamila Stösslová while on holiday at Luhačovice, a spa resort in Moravia. He was sixty-three and locked in a loveless marriage, she was twenty-six, the wife an of antique dealer frequently away from home. After the holiday, Janáček began writing to Kamila. Undeterred by her lack of interest in his work and her spasmodic replies, he continued to send her letters until his death eleven years later. An extraordinarily self-revealing portrait emerges of an isolated artist at the height of his creative powers and the beginning of his international fame. It is also a portrait of a lonely man who, as the years went by, came to fantasize about Kamila Stösslová as his true 'wife', the inspiration for many of the great works of his old age.

Most of these letters were suppressed until changing conditions allowed their full publication in 1990. John Tyrrell has edited and translated a comprehensive selection, concentrating on the almost daily letters of the final eighteen months. Supported by a diary of meetings between Janáček and Kamila Stösslová, a decoding of the erotic references in the letters and a selection of mostly unknown photographs, this remarkable book illuminates the inner life of one of the greatest opera composers of the 20th century and provides vital clues to the nature of his creative genius.