Dear Cyndy,

Before I forget, I need to add to my previous comments,
the observation that the literature on sorrow, suffering,
human catastrophe is so diverse and multifarious
that when one immerses oneself in the texts, one is tempted to
conclude that literary criticism, - or literary theory -, has
been inadequate, and has fashioned a mental cabinet of pigeon-holes,
into which none of the texts that tradition has bequeathed will fit.
Prometheus Bound is a static tableau, where Oedipus Rex is a
dynamic process; and neither is like anything else I have read.
The writings of Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine, Goethe, Schiller,
Kleist, Ibsen, Chekhov, are all different beyond comparison.
What they have in common is the humanness they depict, -
and the labels with which teachers of literature presume to tag them.

If the style in which I write, will sometimes seem - or be - 
verbose, it's because experience is complex and often confused,
and style ought to reflect what exists and not create a simplistic
pseudo-reality of its own. Much of what is to be described defies
simple expression, and must be triangulated from multiple terms
the aggregate of which will seem unnecessary - hence verbose - to
a reader who is intent on simplification at all costs. It's become
habitual with me, when dissatisfied with the precision of a particular
expression, to resort for synonyms, definitions and translations to
Internet dictionaries. When, more often than not, the most appropriate
term is not immediately apparent, multiples that seem redundant to the
(casual) reader, may find their way into the text.

Another characteristic of my writing, of which I have become more
conscious over the years, is an attempt to convey meaning with
sentence structure as well as with the imagery of individual words.
I strive to let the course of the sentence itself recapitulate in
miniature the experience which it seeks to convey. I write for example:
"The telephone just rang. It was Klemens telling me he would be
back a day early, so I'll be leaving Belmont at 6:30 p.m. joining
the evening exodus to New Hampshire to be at the Manchester Airport
in time to await his 8:45 p.m. arrival." This is obviously verbose. 
Why not, instead: "At 8:45 p.m., I'll meet Klemens at the Manchester
Airport."  That says the same thing, or does it? Am I tricking myself
with the conceit that the length, intricacy, and convolution of my
wordy sentence is an image, however faint, of the traffic jams through
which I'll be threading my way as night falls, when the headlights,
like the sentence itself, prove not nearly as crisp as I would like
them to be?

Admittedly the style in which I like to write tends to be decorative
and in that respect is reminiscent of the Baroque, a tradition about which
my feelings are contradictory.  The charm of baroque music, more than any
other experience, expresses for me what it means to be conscious, what
it means to be alive in the interval of time which the music defines.
The baroque graphics of Rembrandt, Ruisdael, Vermeer, dwell, as I see them,
in a temple of their own.  On the other hand, the ornate decorative
extravagances of baroque architecture, especially the functionally
meaningless interior embellishments, - make me feel as if in an alien
environment from which I need to flee.  On a visit so some Bavarian church,
they provoked from Klemens the comment: "This sort of place always makes me
feel as if someone should clean it up." a sentiment that, if I understand
correctly, was institutionalized by the Quakers and the Calvinists. I'm
sympathetic if you have the same reaction to (some of) my writing.

At this point I stopped to await your reply to my previous letter.