Item 130 - Letter from Hasan Shahid Suhrawardy to R. C. Trevelyan

1 item.

21, Theatre Road, Calcutta (on University of Calcutta printed notepaper). - Has not heard from Trevelyan for six months: received no reply to the letter he wrote from the boat. Was saddened by a reference to [Clifford] Allen in the "Statesman of Calcutta" due to Allen's kindness to him and what he knows his death will have meant to Trevelyan. He too has been 'much in contact with death' recently. Has received the first volume of Trevelyan's "Collected Works", which is a magnificent book; was proud to see his name above the letter printed in "Rimeless Numbers". Needed to read 'pure and straightforward poetry'; realises more and more the 'trumpery in modernistic verse'. Was happy to think the book might have kept Trevelyan's 'mind steady' at the time of Allen's death. Is looking forward to the second volume. News from Europe is very worrying; Allen would have been 'invaluable' at this time. Clings to the hope of peace, but asks 'if bullies should not be punished'. Very hard to be away from Europe, which he feels to be his real home, and has no share in the exultation of many Indian nationalists at the idea of 'a new Pacific culture on the debris of Europe'. Hopes to come over, if only for a few weeks, in the autumn. Andriusha [Kalitinsky] and his wife have decided to move to the USA, and Suhrawardy worries about his friends left behind in Paris.