Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter. You wrote:

>  Meanwhile I'd like to just plant a few questions for the future.

Whatever the confusion and uncertainty of my own career choice,
I suspect YOU missed your career when you failed to become a
talk-show hostess or a television anchorperson. "Sixty Minutes
with Marion Meyer", or a stint as hostess of "Face the Nation"
would have made you wealthy and famous. Maybe even now it's not
too late. Grandma Moses only started to paint when she was your
age.
  
>  Have you been disappointed in your career as an Ophthalmologist,

I haven't been disappointed at all. I said to myself: Living and
working in the world of Dostoevsky will be better even than
merely reding about it. From the day I entered medical
school until now, while I am sitting at my office computer in
the old parlor that now serves as my examining room, waiting for
the first of four unique patients, old acquaintances, each of
whom could serve as a protagonist for a novel in his or her own right, -
I've with much deliberation and forethought planned and conducted my
practice as a laboratory in applied humanity if you like, or
in applied philosophy. In this perspective I can't imagine a
more successful career. In a different perspective, I can't
imagine a more delicious distillate of sour grapes.

It will raise your blood pressure and cause your hairs to stand
on end, that my teacher and patron, Karl Vietor once counseled me:
Das Wichtigste fuer einen Mann ist den richtigen Beruf zu finden.
Das Wichtigste fuer eine Frau ist den richtigen Mann zu finden.
As for myself, I'll let Thoman Mann's, Tonio Kroeger speak for me:

"Er ging den Weg, den er gehen mußte, ein wenig nachlässig und
ungleichmäßig, vor sich hin pfeifend, mit seitwärts geneigtem Kopfe ins
Weite blickend, und wenn er irreging, so geschah es, weil es für etliche
einen richtigen Weg überhaupt nicht gibt. Fragte man ihn, was in aller
Welt er zu werden gedachte, so erteilte er wechselnde Auskunft, denn er
pflegte zu sagen (und hatte es auch bereits aufgeschrieben), daß er die
Möglichkeiten zu tausend Daseinsformen in sich trage, zusammen mit dem
heimlichen Bewußtsein, daß es im Grunde lauter Unmöglichkeiten seien..."

"He took the road that was ordained for him, a bit careless and
slovenly, whistling as he went, his head aslant, gazing into the
distance, and if he went astray, that was the case, because for some
there is no proper way. When one asked him, what in the world he
intended to become, his answers varied, because he was wont to say,
(and had already put it in writing,) that he bore within himself the
possibilities of a thousand forms of existence, together with the
secret awareness, that fundamentally all of them were impossible."

>  so much so that you are determined to provide your grandchildren
>  the financial means so they need not choose an occupation
>  that renders sufficient money to support a family? 

That was my plan. It didn't work out as I had hoped. However, if
they learned to live frugally and divested themselves on favorable
terms of all the real estate, Konnarock, Nantucket, the New Hampshire
farm, and the two houses in Belmont, they might just make it.
  
>  Margrit once said something to the effect
>  that you had told her that had you attended Yale rather than Harvard
>  you would not have become a Physician. 
>  Did I understand her correctly?
Almost
>  Did she understand you correctly? 
Almost
>  What did you mean?

It was only when Nathaniel chose Yale over Harvard
because he anticipated Yale to offer him
a more supportive atmosphere for his musical ambitions,
that the thought occured to me: perhaps my career also
might have been different, had I gone to Yale.
To be sure, I found the representative of Yale's Comparative
Literature Department, Rene Wellek, who was a visiting
professor at Harvard, less than inspiring. But the
philosophy department at Harvard was so abysmally intolerant
and dogmatic - they wouldn't even give their students
credit for Jaeger's courses and seminars on Aristotle, -
that Yale couldn't have been worse. Yale had found a place
for Ernst Cassirer, the Jewish refugee from Hamburg,
whose work I have always admired very much, and whose
three volume Philosophie der symbolischen Formen
is right up my alley.  If I had been given a chance
to learn from Cassirer, he might just have provided
the nudge to get me started up the academic ladder.

>  What was your experience in studying Comparative
>  Literature and Philosophy that made you decide
>  on Medicine as a career?
 
The academic pursuit of Comparative Literature or
Philosophy appeared to be dead ends.  Vietor himself
was disenchanted with his colleagues and with his profession. 
He told me there was no future for a person such as myself
in American academia. He told me my decision to go to medical
school was wise. Had I pursued the study of literature,
I'd be teaching elementary German at a community college.

The philosophy department had no use for me
and took no interest in my work.  None of its members
would ever have recommended to Harvard University Press 
the publication of my book length manuscript.
They wouldn't even look at it. 

Werner Jaeger had built his career on his language skills.
He was a philologist who considered not his Paideia,
but his editorial labors on the texts of St. Gregory of Nyssa to
be his crowning achievement. Although he liked and respected me,
Jaeger himself was too much cut off from the local
philosophical and literary establishment to have been
in a position to promote me, even if he had wanted
to give a boost to someone whose ancient Greek was
so inadequate.