These are the letters of a great love story. In 1917, the Czech composer Leos Jan��ek met Kamila St�sslov� while on holiday at Luha�ovice, a spa resort in Moravia. He was sixty-three and locked in a loveless marriage; she was twenty-six, the wife of an antique dealer frequently away from home. After the holiday, Jan��ek began writing to St�sslov�. 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 St�sslov� as his true "wife"--the inspiration for many of the works of his old age.

Most of these letters were suppressed until changing conditions in Czechoslovakia 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 Jan��ek and St�sslov�, a decoding of the erotic references in the letters, and a selection of mostly unknown photographs, this remarkable book breathes life into the story one of the greatest of operatic composers and provides vital clues to the nature of his creative genius.

Originally published in 1994.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Review

"He was 63 and had been unhappily married. She was 25 and apparently dully, indifferently married. His infatuation was immediate and continued at high convection until his death 11 years later. His love was neither reciprocated nor consummated and she seldom even responded to his epistolary bombardment, yet most of his greatest music is about her. The letters are wonderful."--The Washington Post Book World

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