To Vera Glarner [Letter 497]

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36 East 36th Street
New York 16, New York

February 4, 1963

Dear Vera:

Thank you for your letter and for the lovely Christmas present which you sent us. The chocolates were delicious. It was very nice of you to send them.

I am sorry if you thought that I had forgotten you. I used to send holiday greetings to my friends—but have given up the custom years ago, because of my heavy schedule of work, which is usually heaviest at this time of the year.

Of course I did mean what I told you on the telephone, the day before you left, and I will repeat my invitation: I hope that you will come to New York again, as my guest, and I would be delighted to pay for the passage.

You have expressed very beautifully my own feelings about our meeting: I, too, hope it was not the last event of a dead past, but the beginning of a living future.

I hope that you will visit New York again and that we will have a chance for longer discussions. I know that you do not fully understand my philosophy at present, and I would like to tell you more about it. I believe that it could help you.

I will be glad to send you more copies of The Objectivist Newsletter if you do not find it too difficult to read them in English. If you can read them, would you let me know your reaction from time to time? I would be very interested to hear it.

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2.

Thank you also for the charming thought of adding the Radio City program to the program of the Berlin Music Hall of 1926—and for the interesting reproductions of paintings which you sent us.[*]

I am sorry that Lisette left New York without seeing me, but I know that her time was limited. As I told you, I think that she has serious psychological problems, and I don’t think that I can help her to solve them. I hope that you might help her by discussing her problems frankly and openly, as we tried to do it here.

As to Frank and me, we have been as busy as ever. Frank has rented a studio, where he is working on his own paintings and is doing very well. I am busy with various lectures and writing assignments, among them an article about American businessmen which I was commissioned to write for Cosmopolitan magazine.[**]

Even if belatedly, I wish you happiness, success and peace of mind in this new year.

With best regards from both of us to Henri, Lisette and yourself,

Sincerely,

*When AR left Russia for America in early 1926, she stopped in Berlin and spent her birthday (February 2) with Vera, who was living in Berlin. They attended various events, including the Haller Revue of 1925–26 at the Admiralspalast theater.
**“The Money-Making Personality” was published in the April 1963 issue of Cosmopolitan and reprinted in The Objectivist Forum, February 1983, and in the anthology Why Businessmen Need Philosophy.