Bartók Béla, ifj.: Chronicles of Béla Bartók's Life (Budapest, 2021)
World War II. Second and Third American Tour (1939–1945)
1 944 CHRONICLES OF BÉLA BARTOK'S LIFE 2 December - Letter to A. T. Merritt at Harvard University. 16 December - He travels to Asheville (North Carolina) for a lengthier medical treatment. He stays at Albemarle Inn. His medical attendant is Dr. Kokas. 17 December - He gives Wilhelmine Creel an account of the events of the previous months, among other things of having placed his Romanian and Turkish folk music material in the library of Columbia University, his music manuscripts “with a friend” (with Dr. Viktor Bátor who, after Bartoks death, kept these and established an Archive of the documents under his own directorship). He is preoccupied with the future of Hungary, he writes about it in this same letter: “But what’s worrying me the most is the lagging behind and slow progress on the ‘battlefields’. The end is not in sight - while the destruction of Europe [men and art treasures] goes on without delay, relentlessly. ... And the fate of poor Hungary, with the Russian danger in its back - prospects for the future are rather dark.” He writes optimistically about his health status. 22 and 29 December - He writes his wife in their new flat in New York (309 West 57th Street): “I buried myself in a job, the organising of the Wallach texts. Circumstantial but interesting work, I haven’t yet done anything similar. Dr. Kokas performed the usual examinations, he didn’t say anything special”. He calls his wife’s attention to having put the money from Columbia University in the bank, but it can be touched only when he would already start to work it off. - His estimation of his income for 1944 is an expected 1,002 dollars. 1944 1 January - He writes Boosey & Hawkes. 2 January - He writes his wife that there were no special festivities either 486
