Peripatetic (1937–1940)

“Something choked me in England”, Kolnai wrote to Irene Grant on June 17th 1937, to explain his “bolting” to Paris while she was abroad. It seems likely that both he and his friends assumed that his visa was renewable, and that he would stay, perhaps permanently. His immediate reason for coming to London was, of course, to see The War against the West through the press. This was not to be the triumphal progress that some of his friends, at least, imagined it would be. For one thing Dr Lewis, Gollancz’s right-hand man, told him that Gollancz was too busy to see him. But it had now also been decided to give the manuscript another overhaul with a native English speaker (at Kolnai’s expense). Although he found Miss Lowe “intelligent and pleasant to work with”, he decided to put an end to their “verbal arguments”, and to carry on the business by post. This was one reason for his departure. ¹ But it is clear that – despite certain aesthetic and gustatory delights – London itself, especially as a social reality, disappointed him. In a letter to Jászi he mentions “snobbery, their absurd state church, London’s chaotic jumble of houses”, ² and elsewhere “restraint of expression and emotion; the ‘Greek’ cult of a fine soul in a fine body; the [London] Squares, … the absence of genuine bourgeois pride”. ³