Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter.

When my grandson Benjamin was here last evening for the usual
Wednesday - when mother is working - supper, he asked if I
would e-mail-forward to him a copy of my notes on Hawthorne's
Scarlet Letter. I include my response so far as I have
completed it. My letters to you, as you understand, are
never formal concoctions, but merely undisciplined reflections
of what happens to be on my mind at the time. So far as
Benjamin is concerned, the invitation to pontificate was
irresistable.

=======================

1. "Literature" is anything that is read. Most literature
is read without further concern about what it means. One
reads the newspaper to find out about "what happened" in
Washington or in Beijing. One reads a mystery story to find
out "who done it". One reads the obituary page to find out
who died. One reads the election returns, to learn "who won".

2. Everything that one reads can have a "deeper meaning."
One may obtain from it a hint of what the author wished to
tell, of what sort of person the author was, and what sort
or a world he or she lived in. One may find, or try to find
in what one reads an explanation of ones own experience,
a clarification of ones own hopes and desires, and sometimes
consolation for ones own disappointments.

3. Reading material in which one expects to find a "deeper meaning"
is traditionally referred to as literature; and to find a "deeper
meaning" in what you read is one of the purposes of your English
courses in high school. Your're being asked to find a "deeper meaning"
in Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. I myself read the Scarlet Letter for
the first time a few days ago. I downloaded the text from the Gutenberg
Project of the World Wide Web, read it in one sitting, in one day,
and being 79 years old, I have undoubtedly already forgotten much that
I read. Your first task, therefore, is to check up on me; make sure
I'm not confused about details of the story, and make sure I don't
confuse you.

4. The Scarlet Letter begins with a very personal theme. Hawthorne wants
you to know that he has moved from the Old Manse in Concord to a new
job at the Customs House in Salem, just 29 miles away. While geographically
it was even in those days just a long days' journey from Concord to
Salem, intellectually for Hawthorne at least, Salem was still haunted
by the spirits of Bridget Bishop, George Burroughs, Giles Corey, Mary Easty,
Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, John Proctor, Philip & Mary English, and all
the other witches who were hung on nearby Gallows' Hill. The Salem Customs
House to which Hawthorne retreated was a world far removed from the Concord
of Emerson and Thoreau.

5. For Emerson, Thoreau and the other Transcendentalists, the salient
issue of existence was the harmony and sometimes the conflict of
society and solitude. In Hawthorne's writing, the salient issue of
existence appears as the battle between good and evil. Hawthorne's
life suggests that when he encountered either of them, he recognized
neither. (He supported both slavery and the fugitive slave law.)

6.  Instead of simply saying: "I became the editor of this tale
when I worked at the Custom-House." Hawthorne writes:

_     "It will be seen, likewise, that this Custom-House
_     sketch has a certain propriety, of a kind always
_     recognised in literature, as explaining how a large
_     portion of the following pages came into my possession,
_     and as offering proofs of the authenticity of a
_     narrative therein contained.  This, in fact--a desire
_     to put myself in my true position as editor, or very
_     little more, of the most prolix among the tales that
_     make up my volume--this, and no other, is my true
_     reason for assuming a personal relation with the public. 
_     In accomplishing the main purpose, it has appeared
_     allowable, by a few extra touches, to give a faint
_     representation of a mode of life not heretofore
_     described, together with some of the characters that
_     move in it, among whom the author happened to make one."

Hawthorne's style corresponds to the content of his story.
Both are neo-gothic. The ornate style as redundant as the
"gingerbread" cornice decorations of Victorian architecture;
the contents as suffused with unchallenged superstition and
unlamented cruelty as the morality of the Puritan divines.

7. When an author writes about a distant landscape he writes
at minimum about the spiritual world in which he is living.
When he describes heroes and villains, more likely than not
he writes about himself. Although it may not be immediately
apparent, when Hawthorne writes about Chillingworth,
he writes also about himself. de nobis fabula narratur.

===================

That's as far as I got in my reflections on Hawthorne.
I'm now confronted with the dilemma that I am inclined
to take Hawthorne's writing more seriously than did Emerson,
Thoreau, or for that matter Hawthorne himself. What 
reconciled those prominent authors to one another was the
success of their publications. Like members of an intellectual
club of some renown, each one derives more benefit
from the public esteem accorded to their community than
from the clear and unvarnished assertion of their ideas.
Their artistic and intellectual perceptions, in the end,
seem calculated to the reaping of the benefits of fame.
The critic who takes them overly seriously makes himself
ridiculous.

Turning now to your letter, and your questions:

> I've been reading a little more in the Glaucoma Letters. 
> Could you tell me again who these essays were designed for? 
> Colleagues?

Like all my writing, the Glaucoma Letters were primarily addressed
to myself. I derived satisfaction from explaining as clearly as
I was able how I was practicing ophthalmology. I didn't expect
any one to read them. One of my colleagues, George Olive (the last
name is anglicized Italian), who often asked me to "cover" his
practice when he was away, told me he regularly slipped the
Glaucoma Letters I mailed to him "into the circular file", meaning
the wastebasket. Another much more sophisticated colleague, Karl
Riemer, stopped me one day in the Eye and Ear Infirmary parking
lot to tell me how much he enjoyed reading them. The academic
colleagues considered me an upstart for not giving them the 
opportunity to squelch me.  The referring optometrists were,
I believe, uniformly impressed.  An occasional sophisticated
patient read the Glaucoma Letter and took it seriously.
Were I not 79 1/2 years old and eager to add to Die Freunde,
I would again try to promote myself by just this method.
To the extent that the writing might be inherently valuable, -
some of it is and some of it isn't -, my efforts would be
worthwhile, even if the publicity failed.  

> It is my impression that physicians tend to be practical people
> who are looking for the quickest, simplest,
> most reliable solution to each of the medical problems they face. 
> But you are taking them in the opposite direction. 

Not really. In a healthy academic environment, questions are
asked, challenges are laid down, although admittedly some of
my reflections were too ethereal to mean much to anybody.

> They start reading, thinking they have in their portfolio,
> some pretty good, dependable methods to treat problems,
> and you exert yourself to convince them
> that their beliefs are mostly illusions,
> that they know almost nothing, that if their patients improve,
> it's as likely to be despite the treatments
> they receive as a consequence of them,
> and it's no use consulting the authoritative writings in the field
> because they are full of pretense and error.

That's your astute conclusion. It's not what I wrote
in the Glaucoma Letters.

> Did you get any feedback from the recipients of the glaucoma letters? 

Yes. Not much but some. As I may have mentioned, initially I sent out
3000 copies, mailing successive issues only to those who requested them,
a substantial number, since there was no cost to the recipients. I had
one appreciative reader in Alaska.

> I had made a point of reading the Letters from Abroad
> so that I could understand "The Whole Truth" (#17)
> which describes your return visit to Professor K. 
> While I greatly enjoy reading about the professor and his environs,
> I couldn't grasp The Whole Truth at all. 
> What are you saying there?

I'm not sure myself. I think this is a fragmentary draft which I
never completed and never sent. I drafted it in response to the
questions posed by some of my more naive readers about the date
on which I had returned home from my trip abroad; "the whole truth"
was intended to answer that question, - albeit ironically, and to
suggest that the story was concocted, was, in other words, a lie. 
Professor K. was none other than myself, his secretary, Margaret,
my wife, the description of his office was a picture of 2 Sacramento
Street in Cambridge where I was then working, complete with an oboist
practicing scales on the third floor. I especially relished the irony
that the only professorship which was ever accorded me, I bestowed on
myself.

> Your approach to knowledge would throw a considerable monkey-wrench
> into the enterprise of science (and technology). 

I respectfully disagree. I believe my interpretation
of knowledge to be ultimately valid and that educational
endeavors which reflected my epistemology would be
optimally effective. - To these comments my father
would have replied: "Eine Bildung muss der Mensch haben."
referring or course to "Einbildung" (conceit).

> The scepticism is good, and important. 
> In fact it is a great weakness of the way science and technology are taught,
> that so much of it is presented as a narrative,
> accepting the background experiments and results as reported,
> without redoing and re-evaluating them. 
> To a large extent, however, this is necessary. 
> Even the most enlightened science education
> would only be able to re-perform a tiny fraction
> of the previous studies that form the foundation of each field. 

> Science and Technology absolutely depend
> on being able to trust the honesty and accuracy
> of the work of at least one's most respected predecessors and colleagues. 
> Depending only on what one can personally do
> shrinks science to a minute project.
> Yet I have to admit that I have encountered instances of fraud
> even from highly respected, major figures in my field. 
> Also poor quality work, and mysterious cases where a respected,
> careful, excellent researcher is unable to repeat his results
> a year after publishing, despite repeated attempts,
> and no one is able to figure out why.

> Of course scientific experiments are hierarchical and interlocking. 
> When one does experiments whose design relies
> on previous work that is faulty,
> there is a reasonable chance that this will be discovered
> (provided the researcher sees what is "actually"
> happening rather than letting herself be deceived
> by assuming that the foundations are correct
> so that the current data must be shaped to fit the expectations.)

All that you write is quite true. Maybe my scepticism, being
somewhat unconventional, has rattled you, and will, on second
thought not seem so subversive after all.

> I read the first page of Chapter 1 of "Die Andere"
> and find myself quickly captivated by Doehring's situation. 
> So I've printed out Chapter 1 so I can struggle with it at home. 
> My dictionary will get a good work-out,
> but my German is definitely improving.

Thank you for the time and effort. It's not obligatory.
I'm not sure how much you will like Chapter 1. I consider
Chapter 41, reading which will give you much pleasure,
the crown jewel of my literary efforts. I'll translate
Chapter 41 for you sooner or later, if you and your dictionary
don't get there first.

Here's a synopsis of the novel, so you don't have to do so much
guessing:

The theme is the midlife crisis of an academic, Jakob Doehring,
whose wife has died, whose enthusiasm has withered,
and who needs a new lease on life. The title "die Andere" -
"The Other One" refers of course to Dorothea, the feminist,
who presumes to take the place of the departed angel Elsbeth.
The novel, all 750 pages of it, is the chronicle of why and how
that doesn't work.

The first chapter which has the calculated effect of discouraging
all potential readers and all potential publishers, is a very
distant parody of Goethe's Faust. It finds Doehring disillusioned
in his study in the University Library, visited by a Ph. D. candidate
Jonathan Mengs, who has hatched a new hermeneutics for which he seeks
his mentor's endorsement. Mengs, who plays no further role in this
novel, but reappears as the protagonist of the sequel "Die Freunde"
argues that the Bible as a book of which one can make sense only by
virtue of ones faith is the prototype of secular books as well, 
because faith of one sort or another is prerequisite for the
intelligibility of anything that is written. Mengs argues further
that the Protestant Reformation transformed religion into the
study of literature, and made literature an exercise in religion.

The second chapter, which I consider the least satisfactory of all,
is an account of Doehring's indecision about what he should do
to extricate himself from the emotional and intellectual morass
in which he finds himself. At the end of that chapter he decides
to take a trip to the Canadian Rockies, to retrace the excursions
that he made there with his deceased wife.

The third chapter is a description of Doehring's flight from Boston
to Toronto and from Toronto to Calgary. It explores the dynamics
and the consequences of the proximity of strangers which such trips
may entail. On this trip Doehring found himself seated next to a woman
much younger than he, named Dorothea, who was on her way to give
lectures at a Womens' Liberation Convention at the Glacier Hotel,
and asks him for his opinions about her project. He is non-committal,
but she invites him to attend her lectures nonetheless.

The fourth chapter is an account of Doehring's landing in Calgary
and his drive across the prairie to Canmore, where he has rented
a cabin.

The fifth chapter describes Doehring's peregrinations through
the Natural History museum in Banff.

The sixth chapter is the account of his visit to the Glacier
Hotel to listen to Dorothea lecture. But since he doesn't even
know her last name, his identity is challenged and he is arrested
as a trespasser and interrogated as suspect of having assaulted
one of the convention visitors.

The seventh chapter, which you have read, described how Doehring
spent the rest of that evening.

Subsequent chapters which I haven read in years, describe how
when Doehring, despondent and depressed is just about to
throw in the towel and fly back to Boston, he makes one last
expedition to Lake O'Hara in Yoho National Park, where he
once more encounters Dorothea, she confides him her troubles,
they spend some days hiking in the mountains, then return
separately to their respective homes. Dorothea starts visiting
Doehring in Cambridge ( the city remains unnamed), starts
keeping house for him, and finally becomes his mistress. He
is prepared to marry her, but cannot contemplate a wedding
ceremony. She wants a child, but none is forthcoming. The
turning point in their relationship is when Doehring tries
to introduce Dorothea to Shakespeare. They study the Winter's
Tale, Doehring reads the part of Polixenes, and when he
declaims the lines threatening to kill their child, Dorothea
becomes so incensed that she stikes Doehring in the face.
It's a dramatic scene and well written. From that time,
their relationship declines. Dorothea, who had taken a
position in the local bank, is seduced, abducted, drugged
with alcohol and raped by one of her clients, - an
ophthalmologist no less, - named Martin Heller, and after
episodes of emotional turmoil, is forced into marriage with him.
Chapter 41, which while not so profound as Chapter 7, is
probably artistically superior, is a description of the wedding
ceremony. You will enjoy reading it. A character whom you
haven't encountered is Murphy, an alcoholic Irishman who is
an admiring friend of Doehring. After the wedding ceremony,
there is a wedding feast in Doehring's house which he does not
attend. Instead he goes to his study in the library (Widener,
of course) and manages to get himself locked in. He spends the
night trying to sleep, but his sleep is interruped by the sound
of fire-truck's sirens, and when he finally makes it back
to Linnaean Street the next day, he finds that it is his 
own house which has been burned out.

> Incidentally, I have no sensitivity at all
> about what you seem to fear would be the danger of proselytizing. 
> Go ahead.  Feel free to say anything. 
> I certainly am interrested in what the life and teachings of Jesus,
> and Christian teachings in general,
> have meant to you at different points in your life.

I'll leave the theology for another letter, and wish you now,
good night.

Jochen