Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letter and for the additional
Philip Larkin poem "An Arundel Tomb." About a poem
I ask myself not whether I "like" it, but what it means,
and what it means to me. At my age, I'm not very
impressionable, probably because my memory isn't
tenacious enough. What I read is all too soon
forgotten. The poems that come to mind are
those I meditated on twenty or forty years ago.
The poems that are new to me, before they vanish,
remind me of analogous experiences of my own,
often very different from what the poem has to tell.
"Church going", for example, reminded of an excursion
with my father to a village church in Melverode, just
outside Braunschweig, when I was perhaps six or seven
years old. The sexton was pleased to give us a
guided tour. I was much impressed by the Romanesque
architecture. The attached picture shows the little
church as I remember it. Many years passed, before
it occurred to me, how oppressed the parishioners
must have been, and how fortunate I was not to have
to be one of them. An experience very different from
Philip Larkin's loutish impersonation of the minister's
"here endeth".

An Arundel Grave reminded me of the donor statues in
the cathedral at Naumburg, of which my mother was
particularly fond. My parents took me to see them
when I was six years old, and Margaret and I went
back about fifteen years ago, to have another look.
By strange coincidence I encountered plaster casts
of this statuary during my years in college. These
figures, among others, were diplayed in what was then
called the Germanic Museum. I went there regularly
every Sunday morning to hear E. Power Biggs' organ
recitals. It was the going to church of my college
years.  Later, the Germanic Museum was merged with
the Fogg Museum, whose curators must have considered
plaster reproductions beneath Harvard's dignity -
and they disappeared, I presume into some damp and
musty basement.

I hope you don't mind my attaching some pictures of
these Medieval (13th century) benefactors of the cathedral.
They were two brothers, Ekkehard, bold brash and assertive,
and Hermann, unhappy and perhaps depressed.  Their wives
also, obviously very different. Hermann's wife Reglindis,
the daughter of a Polish king, was evidently carefree
to the point of enibriation with herself, - and I can
understand why Hermann makes such a face. Ekkehard's wife
Uta is of a different cast; she turns up her collar against
her husband. My mother thought that she felt oppressed by him;
the historians describe her as very dignified. Had Philip
Larkin visited Naumburg, he would have had something more
to write about.

I'm waiting for the story you have to tell about the
Arundel Grave.

Jochen