Dear Marion,

Most likely this will turn out to be a short letter,
primarily because I conclude that I've been dumping
too many of my ideas on you, and you've taken them
far too seriously. You need a respite. I trust that
the squall of work that overwhelmed you two evenings
ago has blown over.

Margrit seems to be recovering satisfactorily from
her bowel resection and herniorrhaphy. She's much
more contented with us than I had expected. Perhaps
her failure to protest is the result of memory loss.
In any event, it's wonderful to have her here, for
me, a dream come true.

Since I no longer need to make daily visits to the
hospital, I have been spending much time writing.
To what benefit, I don't know; except that writing,
and subsequently reading what I wrote, keeps me on
an even keel. One very important point that I would
like to emphasize to you: I have no answers, no
solutions. All my thinking and writing is exploratory,
and what it discovers is perplexity, aporia. That's
the meaning of Eulenspiegel standing on the Rathauslaube
in Madgeburg flapping his arms like a bird, as if about
to fly. Consider the propositions that I toss out an
analogous flapping of ideas which will not fly.

Today I spent with Mengs and Joachim in Katenus' house
on Main Street on the Island. They are just starting
a grand dinner, - like the ones my mother used to prepare
in Konnarock, an elegant dinner table, with place settings
of heavy silver, with linen napkins, Erdner Treppchen
Moselwein, a scene lit with sixteen candles in four
candelabra. I'm going to let them eat without much talk.
After dinner, the conversation will turn to political
justice, to ethics, and then to the Holocaust. There's
going to be a discussion of Das Siebte Kapitel by an
unidentified author who is otherwise completely unknown.

Much of yesterday I spent translating Das Siebte Kapitel.
I was inspired by the circumstance that this meditation about
a Holocaust observer has been included in a very comprehensive
Internet anthology of international literature maintained
by an Italian company to promote its translation services.
The conmpany calls itself "Logos". Here are the URL's.
However, as of this writing, the logoslibrary server is down.
Maybe the pool into which Narcissus gazed has dried up.

http://www.logoslibrary.eu/literature/literaturewdt.html
http://www.logoslibrary.eu/pls/wordtc/new_wordtheque.wcom_literature.literaturea_page?lang=DE&letter=M&source=author&page=6

Jochen