Dear Marion, As I lay awake in the early hours of the night, my thoughts danced between the argument in my legal appeal, which won't be due for several months, the red herring letter from you, and the answer to that letter which is shaping up in my mind. In thinking about the appeal, I must be careful to conceal the circumstance that I am having fun with, and making fun of, the legal system. In answering your letter, I must be careful to be as truthful as I am able, without making your life more difficult than it already is: prefacing with an apology, because it's politically incorrect to admit that life is ever anything but easy. Thank you for your letter. I much enjoy thinking about its contents, even when I can't endorse them. "Received" does not necessarily mean "Approved." The circumstance that you write to me at all, means that you are not your mother. I have become high-fallutin' in a way that would make communication with the mother you describe impossible. My intellectual pretensions are of an even higher order than those of my parents and were objectionable even to them. My father often said that Harvard had made me arrogant and contemptuous of him. I accept the fact that sooner or later you too will discover that I am someone impossible to write to, but I take pleasure in the correspondence while it lasts. I try to imagine myself sitting on the floor with my sister following Wagner operas in the libretto? When? Where? Which one? So far as I remember, in Germany none of our 78 r.p.m. records was of Wagner, conceivably I might have forgotten a single disc of "O Du mein holder Abendstern" from Thannhaeuser, - it's the only Wagner melody that comes to mind; but if so, somewhere on the way to Konnarock that disc was lost. Wagner, as you know, was considered a Nazi composer; like so many of his generation, he did not conceal his anti-semitism, and the Nazi bosses liked him. My father was never a Wagner fan; my mother, somewhat, in her youth. But by the 1930's it was all Bach, Beethoven and Schubert. It was Schubert Lieder that held us enthralled. Margrit's favorite: Ich komme vom Gebirge her, es dampft das Tal, es braust das Meer, Ich wand're still, bin wenig froh, doch immer fragt der Seufzer wo, immer wo, Wo bist Du, Wo bist du mein geliebtes Land, Gesehnt, geahnt, doch nie gekannt. The song ends with the lines: Im Geisterhauch toent's mir zurueck, Dort wo Du Nicht bist, Dort ist das Glueck. - a text which considering my sister's restless peregrinations seems not entirely inappropriate for her. As for myself, my favorite was an Anacreontic ditty: An die Leier, whose words: Ich will von Atreus' Soehnen, von Kadmus will ich singen. Doch meine Saiten toenen nur Liebe im erklingen. As for libretti, my mother had bought only volume one of an edition for soprano voice of Schubert Lieder. It's bound in bright red linen, I still have, and treasure it. Unfortunately, this volume does not contain "An die Leier", so I could not have followed the text sitting on the floor, or for that matter, standing up. The comical fact is that I was much taken with the melody, but I had no idea what the words meant. I knew nothing about Atreus or Cadmus; and unacquainted with stringed instruments, I had no notion of "Saiten". I assumed that Saiten meant Seiten, and I imagined ventriloquism of sorts in play, and the lyricism of the music vouched for it all. If I'd had a libretto, I would have understood "im erklingen", but the unavoidable elision made it sound like "in Merklingen", and I assumed Merklingen was a place, perhaps where my electric train with the trade name "Merklin" was manufactured. So much for following the libretto of Wagner operas sitting on the floor. But when you write about lugubriousness and Weltschmerz in my family, you hit the nail on the head: My father's favorite from Die Winterreise was "Auf einen Totenacker hat mich mein Weg gebracht, Allhier will ich einkehren, hab ich bei mir gedacht. Ihr welken Totenkraenze moegt wohl die Zeichen sein, die muede Wand'rer laden, Ins kuehle Wirtshaus ein. Sind denn in diesem Hause, die Kammern all besetzt? Bin matt zum niedersinken, bin toedlich schwer verletzt. Du unbarmherz'ge Staette, was weisest Du mich ab, Nur weiter ach nur weiter, mein treuer Wanderstab." Please don't think for a moment that I disagree with or disapprove of my father's sentiment. The difference: that my expression of the same sentiment would be more sophisticated, masked with the protective armor of irony; my father is more direct and childlike and much more vulnerable to scorn and to derision, like Fritz before the lion-tamer caught him. Don't forget that it is the children, who according to the Sermon on the Mount, have priority for entering the Kingdom of Heaven. As for the little scene between my mother and Mutz, you're correct that it was comedy, but a comedy that benefits from being understood. "Sie sollten ans Theater gehen." was the advice that one of my mother's coworkers in the Deutsche Bank once gave her, because she tended to see life as drama, and assigned to herself the role of leading lady. My father's chronic complaint, that my mother did not take him seriously enough, that he was das fuenfte Rad am Wagen, and subsequently to 1950, when dogs entered my mother's life, that he was the supernumerary, the extra dog whom she ignored. The scene with Mutz was a play, an act put on in part for your benefit. Marga was trying to show you who she was and what she could do. The Mutz whom you had occasion to observe was not a lion, but a stand-in for the humanity, for her family, her associates, her friends, whom she enchanted and captivated with her empathy, by "understanding" them, by knowing their thoughts and feelings better than they themselves. That was my mother, you saw her in action, but you didn't understand what you were looking at and thought it was ridiculous. It wasn't; it was serious and it was real. Your lion-tamer metaphor seems to me the most felicitous of the entirety of our hectic, feverish correspondence. It defines the reality of the lion's world, it specifies his true nature and the family to whom he truly belongs. It reminds me of a poem, not about a lion, but about a panther: Der Panther Im Jardin des Plantes, Paris Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält. Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt. Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte, der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht, ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte, in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht. Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille sich lautlos auf -. Dann geht ein Bild hinein, geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille - und hört im Herzen auf zu sein. Rainer Maria Rilke, September 1903 Make of it what you will. My very best wishes to you. I hope you will find the humor and the energy for a reply. Jochen PS: The image taken in the summer of 1956, in the salon of a steamship whose name I can't remember, in NY harbor. My parents are on their way to a 6 months' visit to Germany. The characters, left to right: two unidentified passersby, Fritz, Grace Ludwig, Rev. Rudolf Fridolin Ludwig, Marga, behind them, the Ludwigs' sons, Rudy, mentally retarded, and Luther. The Ludwigs were friends to whom my parents had a special relationship. Pastor Ludwig who understood German, was of 1st generation Swiss descent, a Lutheran minister whom we encountered in Southwest Virginia. Pastor Ludwig had two stints in Konnarock, - I don't know the dates -. In 1956, he had a parish in Bridgeport CT, and on this occasion made the trip from there to NYC to see my parents off. Mrs. Ludwig was a competent musician; their daughter Anna became a professional flutist. At the Memorial Services for my parents they played from Bach, Cantata #82, (Ich habe genug) the aria "Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen, fallet sanft und selig zu, Hier muss ich das Elend bauen, aber dort, dort werde ich schauen Seel'gen Frieden, stille Ruh."