Your letter has slowly followed me to Paris, to which I returned last month. I am distressed that you have broken your leg. But it is no doubt a consolation to have arrived at this result with rollerskates: this is much more original than a car, and a gracious sign of youth. I hope you will have completely healed when you receive this late response.
As you have obviously learned, in February I was obliged to determine that our relationship had hardly improved, and that the hesitations and concerns that I had had, to my great regret, often caused you to have a sometimes slightly cold and perhaps even bored attitude. Without going as far as believing that I caused you to become ill, it seems to me that the cares that I unfortunately brought you perhaps aggravated or prolonged certain illnesses. From our last conversation (that is to say: the evening at Galluzio), I even had the impression that, no doubt because of all this, you did not approve of much of my kind of life. And what could I offer to you, other than exactly this kind of life?
Thus I have estimated that it is necessary to cease to trouble your existence; and especially not to insist more clumsily on involving you in the changes that fatique you more than they attract you.[1] I suppose that it is useless to tell you again that I have not counted Giovanni among the circumstances that have rebuffed me: he is certainly the best one among your entourage I have ever met.
As I once told you, several months ago, I prefer above all that you are less unhappy or in any case more tranquil without me; even if it is in conditions that I do not really understand and that do not suit me. I regret, and I am also surprised, that finally I have nothing more to do with you. But, truly, you have not given me much occasion. I am not even sure that you yourself have completely understood at which points you were charming in our several happy encounters. But I am still thankful for them.
I found the winter and the spring of this year in Florence to be beautiful, at least up to Easter and the arrival of foreigners in large numbers. Now I will remain here until the end of work on my film, and I will only return in the autumn to [my place on] the via delle Caldaie, which begins to be sufficiently furnished.
I embrace you. Alice [does], too.[1] Translator's note: It is possible that, among the "changes" that did not attract Mimma, was the change in the way Debord related to women, which was brought about by the kind of sexual relationship he had with his second wife, Alice Becker-Ho. In his letter to Barbara Rosenthal dated 11 December 1974, Debord wrote: "Alice and I, we can love you if you are such that you can love us both."
(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol 5: Janvier 1973-Decembre 1978 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2005. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! March 2007.)