Summerhill School
Leiston, Suffolk

My dear Reich,

1953

June 29, 1953

The Murder of Christ is easily the most important book I have
ever read. I appreciate very much your gift to me, and if I have to "look
a gift horse in the mouth" I must; you would hate me to do otherwise.
Firstly however let me congratulate you on your English style. Short,
sharp, clear sentences... they make me feel how much was lost by
translation in the other books. You have tricks of style, good ones such
as repetition, which makes the argument mount with great force. I
couldn't tell, no one could tell that you were writing English as a
foreign tongue ... a considerable achievement.
So much for the frame. But the picture itself? I grasp it with my
head, my eyes, my ears, but not with my guts. It shows me so clearly
the gulf between the man of talent (me) and the man of universal
insight (you). Do you recall our discussing the idea of my coming out
to run a school in Orgonon? Your idea in 1948. I knew it could not be,
knew that the danger would be that I became your disciple. Your
Garden of Gethsemane, Oranur, was simply a Wiederholung [repetition]
of the evils of discipleship. It troubles me. The seer, whether a Jesus, a
Gandhi, a Reich, cannot contact even his nearest ones; he must stand
alone in essence. Hence, I take it, your scorn of liberalism, a scorn I
think rather unfair. The pioneers, even the minor ones ... folks like
myself, liberals in outlook, at least we do something that never would
be done by the Churchills, Ikes, Trumans, McCarthys, Stalins etc. We

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