Autograph letter signed "Destouches", [Copenhagen Prison] Friday, April 5, 1946, to his Danish lawyer
Thorvald MIKKELSEN, and partly for his wife Lucette
Destouches; 2 pages in-4 on pink paper with the letterhead of the prison
Københavns Fængsler, Vestre Foengsel.
Beautiful letter published in Letters from prison to Lucette Destouches and to
Maître Mikkelsen (Gallimard, 1998) [LP39].
He complains that they want to forbid him to receive French newspapers, from which he draws important information for his defense, and which are "my only intellectual contact with my life - real - which is French despite everything - with my language. Let them take away the Times or Politiken, but it would be unfair to take away the French press. He is covered with rheumatism, "the disease of the shadows, the disease of the prisons", he is full of drugs, and is at the end of his strength. "Innocent to boot.
And they want to take away my French newspapers. So let them shoot me right away or send me to France, which amounts to the same thing," or to Spain, where they seem to be willing to accept him. He wants "to get out of this cellar where I am rotting from humiliation, grief and illness"...
The end of his letter is for his wife: he encourages Lucette to look for work in Spain, where they can be free, where he can be published by friends. "The Danes have been admirable to me and I will never forget it", especially if they perform the miracle of sending him to
Spain: "I would like it to happen before I become as twisted as Scarron, whom rheumatism has also reduced to the state of a martyr" ...
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