15 January 1922

Chalet des Sapins, Montana-sur-Sierre, Switzerland

Dear Koteliansky,
   What a supremely good piece of translation is this story by Bunin in The Dial. One simply cannot imagine it better done & I am, with everybody else, deeply grateful for the opportunity of reading it.
   Bunin has an immense talent.? That is certain. All the same . . .there's a limitation in this story, so it seems to me. There is something hard, inflexible, separate in him which he exults in. But he ought not to exult in it. It is a pity it is there. He just stops short of being a great writer because of it. Tenderness is a dangerous word to use, but I dare use it to you. He lacks tenderness - and in spite of everything, tenderness there must be . . .
   I have been in a horrible black mood lately, with feelings of something like hatred towards "everybody". I think one reason was I wrote a story - I projected my little people against the bright screen of Time - and not only nobody saw, nobody cared. But it was as if the story was refused. It is bitter to be refused. Heaven knows one does not desire praise. But silence is hard to bear. I know one ought not to care. One should go on quietly. But there it is.
   I am leaving for Paris in a fortnight. A chill and the weather and money have kept me back. But I shall go then. Shall I write to you from there?
   Koteliansky - I HATE snow and icicles and blizzards. It is all such mock mystery and a wrestling with the enemy. I love the fertile earth - spring. Wouldn't you like to be now, this instant, in a beech forest with the new leaves just out?
   I press your hands
                           Katherine.[To S. S. Koteliansky, 13 January 1922.]