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There is a famous letter of Deligne to C. Soulé in which, apparently, Deligne first formulated the conjecture on the existence of an abelian category of mixed motives, extending Grothendieck's pure motives. For example it is mentioned in the first sentence of Levine - Mixed motives.

The letter seems extremely important but I could not find it online. Is it publicly available?

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    $\begingroup$ I am a little concerned about having anonymous people hunting on a public forum for what would appear to be private correspondences of living people. It seems like a morally dubious thing to be encouraging. $\endgroup$ Oct 3, 2021 at 3:47
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    $\begingroup$ Deligne shares many of his letters on his website ias.edu/math/people/faculty/deligne. If you think this one should be publicly available as well, you should contact him. $\endgroup$ Oct 3, 2021 at 4:32
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    $\begingroup$ @RyanBudney Sorry about the username, I just needed to fill something into the blank. Obviously the letter is not completely private since it is widely distributed and cited by many people, so as I wrote in my question I am just asking if it is publicly available $\endgroup$ Oct 3, 2021 at 4:41
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    $\begingroup$ Thanks @AndyPutman. I would prefer to make sure it is not already publicly available somewhere before bothering Professor Deligne. I know from asking him a similar request before that he maintains a huge collection of all his correspondence and it may be difficult and time-consuming for him to find the letter. $\endgroup$ Oct 3, 2021 at 4:42
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    $\begingroup$ @SándorKovács I don't buy it. Here are three similar questions by anonymous posters: mathoverflow.net/questions/372518/… mathoverflow.net/questions/336825/… mathoverflow.net/questions/249979/delignes-letter-to-millson The problem here is apparently that I used the word "hunter" in my name, which was a joke that I didn't put enough thought into. $\endgroup$ Oct 4, 2021 at 7:18

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