Dear Cyndy,

The Beethoven essay - or speech - which I sent you recently
seems to me to be stamped with the immaturity of its author.
It raises in my mind at least the important and somewhat embarrasing
question of how  - or even whether - one should presume to depict
unhappiness, misfortune, failure, catastrophe, in poetry or in prose,
in essay or in drama. Psychiatry is not a spectator sport.
Contemplating the agony of a stranger without participation
is tainted with the scent of indecency which becomes a stench when,
for example, gladiatorial combat is viewed as entertainment.
How then to come to terms with the fact that traditionally tragedy
has been accorded the highest rank in the hierarchy of theatrical
productions. Isn't that what Aristotle said? Compare the reputation
of Sophocles with that of Aristophanes.  There seems to be a need
to confront the catastrophes that potentially threaten us all.
We contemplate the tragic scene in part in order to be able to say
to ourselves and to our neighbors, in Edgar's words:
the worst is not when we can say, this is the worst.
Perhaps the author of tragedy is fashioning that brazen serpent,
gazing upon which, so Moses was promised, would immunize
against the fangs of the prototype. Yet sadness, suffering, sorrow,
are communicable, be it in painting or in poetry, if at all, only
with embarrassing and mortifying ambiguity. 

The classical representations that come to mind: St. Sebastian pierced
with arrows, The dying Laocoon and his sons entangled in serpents,
Jesus before Pilate: "ecce homo", the many depictions of the crucifixion,
especially the Rembrandt etchings "The three crosses" in several states,
Rembrandt's painting of the descent from the cross, Michelangelo's Pieta.
(All of these are readily accessible on the Internet, if you're interested.)
The chasm between the viewer in comfort and the agony depicted is
unbridgeable.  I'm also reminded that the celebration of suffering
is at the core of at least the Christian religion. Goethe was offended
by the ubiquitous display of the cross; and I can't disagree.
From this perspective my little essay strikes me as embarrassingly naive,
childish, immature. But what else would one expect from a fifteen year old?
If I couldn't help feeling and writing as I did, perhaps my mistake now
is to have unearthed this essay at all.  Wouldn't it be better,
simply forgotten?  That's as far as I had gotten before your two e-mails
arrived.

"What a conscientious teacher!" Margaret exclaimed when I showed her
your protocoll for grading students' essays. Please feel free to correct
the texts that I send you. Blood isn't required, but don't spare the red ink. 
I don't know what quirk of memory made me spell Sam(p)son with a "p".
You were generous not to dock me for my mistake.  I acknowledge my verbosity.
Disconcerting as it may be to the reader, and though it is often the badge of
mindlessness and showing off, verbosity may sometimes have the function of
facilitating/enabling thought.  I learned to speak before I learned to think.
I learned to think by testing words and playing with words, using some that
are unnecessary.  Two nights ago I finished scanning into the computer all
645 pages of my very wordy essay on the Sources of Doubt; in the snatches of
it that I reread I found various ideas that have served me well for
the subsequent fifty years, although today I would try to express them
more succinctly. Nowadays my wordgames are usually deliberate efforts
to clarify my ideas.

The Beethoven essay dates, as you correctly note from 1946, not 1956.
Two years later, (1948), after two years of college, I wrote again about
suffering, this time in a term paper on Aeschylus' Prometheus for
F.O. Matthiessen's course on tragedy, Comparative Literature 3.
As always, I ask that you tell me when you've seen enough of my
high school/college writing.

Stay well, and give my best to Ned.

Jochen