Dear Cyndy,

This, from last week's NY Times.
You may have seen it:

Were I to die, no one would say,
"Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise, depths unplumbable!"
Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
"I thought he died a while ago."
For life's a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.

                         JOHN UPDIKE
==========================================

Thank you for your letter.
I'm appreciative of your cantakerous mood.
Alive and kicking, as they say in Virginia.
That's not a bad state to be in.

Your diatribe against winter brings to mind
a poem of Rilke's, specifically Sonnet No. 13
of Part Two of the Sonnets to Orpheus.

Sei allem Abschied voran, als wäre er hinter
dir, wie der Winter, der eben geht.
Denn unter Wintern ist einer so endlos Winter,
daß, überwinternd, dein Herz überhaupt übersteht.

Sei immer tot in Eurydike, singender steige,
preisender steige zurück in den reinen Bezug.
Hier, unter Schwindenden, sei, im Reiche der Neige,
sei ein klingendes Glas, das sich im Klang schon zerschlug.

Sei, und wisse zugleich des Nicht-Seins Bedingung,
den unendlichen Grund deiner innigen Schwingung,
daß du sie völlig vollziehst dieses einzige Mal.
Zu dem gebrauchten sowohl, wie zum dumpfen und stummen
Vorrat der vollen Natur, den unsäglichen Summen,
zähle dich jubelnd hinzu und vernichte die Zahl.

=======================

It's a remarkable poem, which leads to the boundaries
of language, and possibly slightly beyond.
I tried to translate it, and failed. A translation
that I found on the Internet is so far from doing it
justice, as not to be worth quoting. Perhaps the poem
is genuinely untranslatable. The parting (Abschied)
that the poem refers to is death, the parting from life;
and the advice to anticipate it, and to look back on it
as one might look back at a winter which is even now
departing. (der Winter der eben geht.) The implication
is that life is winter:
Denn unter Wintern ist einer so endlos Winter,
daß, überwinternd, dein Herz überhaupt übersteht.
and so endless a winter that tranversing it (ueberwinternd)
the heart survives (uebersteht) at all (ueberhaupt).
The meaning of "ueberhaupt" is quite indefinite. The
repetition of the preposition "ueber" (over, across)
is suggestive of life as transition. The poem contemplates
the transfiguration of Orpheus, to whom it is addressed.
It asserts the fatality for him of the death of Euridice.
"Sei immer tot in Eurydike" - be forever dead in (with)
Euridice, addressed to him who is the spirit of music:
Sei immer tot in Eurydike, singender steige,
preisender steige zurück in den reinen Bezug."
with song ascend, with praise ascend back (zurueck)
into pure relation. (The account of life as relation
is reminiscent of Kierkegaard who wrote that man is a
relation that relates to itself.) 
Hier, unter Schwindenden, sei, im Reiche der Neige,
sei ein klingendes Glas, das sich im Klang schon zerschlug.
and addressing Orpheus in the real world (hier) among the
dwindling (unter Schwindenden) in the realm of decline
(im Reiche der Neige) literally in the world of dregs,
sei ein klingendes Glas, das sich im Klang schon zerschlug.
be a ringing glass, that shattered itself as it rang.
Sei, und wisse zugleich des Nicht-Seins Bedingung,
den unendlichen Grund deiner innigen Schwingung,
daß du sie völlig vollziehst dieses einzige Mal.
Be, and simultaneously (zugleich) know the condition
of not-being (des Nicht-Seins Bedingung), the infinite
ground of your intimate vibrancy, that you might fully
fulfill it (voellig vollziehst) this single time (dies
einzige Mal) - referring to the fulfillment of death.
Zu dem gebrauchten sowohl, wie zum dumpfen und stummen
Vorrat der vollen Natur, den unsäglichen Summen,
zähle dich jubelnd hinzu und vernichte die Zahl.
and as if life were an exercise in arithmetic:
add yourself jubilantly to the reservoir of bounteous
nature (Vorrat der vollen Natur) - both used (gebrauchten,
recycled), and inchoate (dumpfen) and silent (stummen),
to incalculable sums (den unsaeglichen Summen),
and erase (vernichte, literally make to nothing) 
the result.

I'm not sure that, given the language barrier, I should
expect you to share my fascination with this text, but
as you should know by now, - once I get started, I can't
stop.

The book of Walter Kaufmann's that you recommended to me
three years ago is "From Shakespeare to Existentialism".
I didn't say anything disparaging about it. Worse: I didn't
even get it from the library: I was to busy writing (to you).
Maybe I will now, but I make no promises.

What I have taken out of the library recently, in addition
to two books on computer programming, which won't interest you,
is Ben Bernake's collection of publications on the 1929-1939
economic depression. They are very technical, and I've ended up
skimming them to try to get some idea of the dimensions of my
ignorance (and of his knowledge).

It was probably Bernanke's essays which led me to reflect on
the Depression and on FDR.  I found on the Internet, a very complete
audio archive of Roosevelt's Inaugural speeches and Fireside Chats.
And as I listened I thought I remembered first hearing them as a
child in Konnarock. At the time they were my only link with American
political culture. I was very much taken with Roosevelt's diction
and style, and of course with the substance of his opposition
to Nazi Germany. My admiration for Roosevelt was the mirror image
of the dread and loathing which Adolf Hitler provoked.

I am now embarrassed by the extent that in my youth, I idolized FDR,
much to the distress of the ancient Philadelphia dowager, one Roberta
Jarden, a Germantown Friends School grandparent, who had been recruited
by the school to offer me a place to live during my senior year.
Mrs. Jarden was very fond of me; her hope was that I should marry
her granddaughter who lived in the household. Her name was 
Frederica Jane Nolde.  (It was a confusing family situation,
which to this day, I still don't understand.  In those days. Jane's
father, O. Frederick Nolde, was a high ranking republican Lutheran
Church official, but on the side of the angels, serving as John Foster
Dulles' (Eisenhower's Secretary of State) human rights specialist.
Mrs. Jarden was very respectful of me. As a Christmas present she
gave me, notwithstanding her own disapproval, a biography of Roosevelt;
for graduation, a set of the Temple edition of Shakespeare, which I
still cherish.

In those days, you and I would have found ourselves in agreement
about good and evil. Roosevelt was good, no questions asked.
And Hitler unmentionably evil. As I listen to FDR's speeches now,
I find them less impressive. The voice, not nearly so melodious
as my memory would have had it; somewhat harsh and imperious and
often condescending, teacherish; less poetry in those Fireside Chats
than I remembered. Over the years I've stopped listening to 
political speeches altogether. GW Bush's voice makes me so incomfortable
that I quickly turn down the volume whenever it intrudes into a newscast
yo which I happen to be listening. Curiously, that's what my parents
did in Germany to shield us from Hitler's ranting. I had never listened
to Hitler, I had never read a sentence of Mein Kampf; but now in old
age, and especially where you have challenged me with your Manichean
intimation of Evil, I thought the time had come to extract my head
from under the pillow where I had been hiding and face the facts.
Adolf Hitler, after all, has been for the last sixty years or so,
the gold standard of evil, by which contemporary war criminals
try to excuse their crimes: "Not as bad as Hitler." I don't think
one can be serious about ethics without taking account of - and perhaps
doing justice to - not only ultimate evil but also ultimate good.
Never mind FDR. To chronicle good and evil, it seems to me, is
both the prerogative and the duty of the historian. Clearly I'm
addressing my concerns to the right person. Is it reasonable for
me to ask you for an ordered catalogue of, say, the ten most evil
and the ten most virtuous persons in any historical period of
your choice? I'm ready to listen and to learn.

It's now ten past ten, and since Klemens and I will be starting
out early for Nantucket, I must orient myself to go to bed
before too long. I completed assembling and testing the surveillance
system, and if it works on Nantucket as well as here, the task of
keeping track of the house there will be greatly simplified.
I shall report to you in due time. Meanwhile stay well,
and give my best to Ned.

Jochen