Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter. Again, for efficiency's sake,
I annotate.  You write:

> I have been unable to find a translation
> for "erbaermliche" or "erbarmungswuerdige".

Erbarmen means mercy or pity. Erbaermlich means pitiful.
Erbarmungswuerdig means worthy of being pitied.
When I say "Es ist erbaermlich," I mean it's pitiful and I pity it.
That's subjective.
When I say "Es ist erbarmungswuerdig," I mean it ought to be pitied
by somebody, not necessarily by myself.
That's objective.
When I wrote "Die Geschichte ist erbaermlich oder erbarmungswuerdig,"
I introduced an ambiguity. It's not clear whether what is to be pitied
is Margrit for having lived and died the way she did, or Jochen for
having told the story and lied the way he did.

> Can you remind me who Helmut is? 
> I know Margrit talked about her friendship with him,
> but I don't recall the details. 
> Is he the guy who came to live in New York for a year or so,
> hoping to write a novel?

Helmut Frielinghaus is the youngest son of Eberhard Frielinghaus
der Pastor der Bartholomaeuskirche der Evangelisch-Reformierten
Gemeinde in der Schuetzenstrasse in Braunschweig, our family's
contact, connection and conduit with the German Protestant tradition.
Three boys: Eberhard, Dieter und Helmut. Two girls: Heidi und Gisela,
who were born after we left Germany. Eberhard died at age 16 or 17
while serving in the German armed forces auxiliary.  Dieter is a
musician, an organist whose skills I have always envied, who became
a Lutheran Pastor in East Germany. He married, has children,
and recently underwent heart surgery. Heidi is a retired Berlin
pediatrician.  Gisela was an artist who died many years ago.

Helmut is two years younger than I. His family was too poor to send
him to college. He became a bookseller's apprentice and spent years
in Spain. Then he set out to make himself an editor. He wanted to
become a publisher, but those efforts failed. He is disillusioned
with contemporary Germany, and in the Clinton years, was an admirer
of the American political scene and of modern American literature.
He occasionally writes stories for newspapers, has translated into
German at least two of Faulkner's novels, and most recently, with
a smidgeon of help from me, Updike's last volume of poetry, Endpoint.
Helmut's claim to fame is his function as confidante and editor of
Guenter Grass, the most prominent of living German authors. On my
own novel "Die Andere" he turned thumbs down with the explanation
that whatever its literary qualities, it was long since outmoded
and belonged to another century. There was no hope of finding a
publisher for something which no one would want to read. Helmut's
judgments, for which I am very grateful, finally liberated me from
all aspirations to literary prominence. Helmut himself has recently
been ill, but he wrote me that he hopes to make one of his biennial
visits next spring. He comes always only for a day, arriving in mid-
morning, we have lunch together, drive out to Concord to pay our
respects to the ducks and geese in the Great Meadows Wildlife
Refuge or to the ghosts of Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne in
the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Helmut has consistently declined our
invitations to stay with us, but he permits me to drive him
into town to his lodgings at the Jeffries House, which is a small
hotel maintained by the Mass. Eye and Ear Infirmary primarily
to accomodate the families of patients who have come from afar.
When we part he tells me he might come back to Belmont the
following day, if he has time, - but he never does.

> Margrit's letter to Margaret is a mystery to me. 
> It exudes tension, and the sense that the writer feels
> she is likely to be misunderstood, misinterpreted,
> miscategorized as flighty, undependable, ungrateful. 
> In any case that Margrit would feel the need
> to write something like that when living within your family
> with warm relations and free speech available, is bizzarre. 

I read Margrit's letter to Margaret only, as distinct from
a letter to me, or at least to both of us, as another insult,
another explicit rejection of me. It was, after all, not Margaret,
but _I_ who met her at the airport at midnight, who visited her
in the hospital day in and day out, who set up her room with
telephone, computer, television set etc., who changed the dressings
on her surgical wound, who drove her wherever she wanted to go,
and to the airport when she wanted to leave.  I can't help it,
if in the face of such rudeness, her thankyous sound hollow to me.

> Perhaps this was part of a mental breakdown,
> that she couldn't organize her mind to say
> what she wanted to say when you were there in front of her. 
> I did feel, when Margrit phoned me from the road on the way to Detroit,
> that her social consciousness wasn't operating normally,
> in that she was talking about various financial matters
> and about her past love life while seated next to the driver
> who she explained was her good friend now
> though she couldn't quite recall her name.

My mother said often enough "Die ist doch nicht ganz richtig."
I'll postpone my psychiatric analysis for another letter.

> I spent some time with the Rilke poem;
> thankyou for translating it for me. 
> I'm not sure I understand it. 
> Is the basic idea that Rilke is encouraging Orpheus
> to accept his wife's death and thrust himself back into full life,
> yet realizing that it is part of the vigorous life-state
> to deteriorate (increase of entropy),
> like the song-emitting glass that shatters,
> and that he should count himself among this vast running-down life-remnant,
> and let himself be extinguished with the rest? 
> When Rilke urges Orpheus to do it fully this time,
> does he mean live life to the hilt, or carry through to death
> (as he had not done so far)?

The ambiguity of meaning, reflecting as it does the approximations
of language, seems to me to be fundamental to poetry, to that 
ultimate stage where the poetry becomes unintelligible. Ones
interpretation invariably reflects ones own perspective,
ones own bias.  Let me give the Rilke sonnet another try:

	 
Sei allem Abschied voran, als wäre er hinter
dir, wie der Winter, der eben geht.
Denn unter Wintern ist einer so endlos Winter,
daß, überwinternd, dein Herz überhaupt übersteht.
	 
Sei immer tot in Eurydike -, singender steige,
preisender steige zurück in den reinen Bezug.
Hier, unter Schwindenden, sei, im Reiche der Neige,
sei ein klingendes Glas, das sich im Klang schon zerschlug.
	 
Sei - und wisse zugleich des Nicht-Seins Bedingung,
den unendlichen Grund deiner innigen Schwingung,
daß du sie völlig vollziehst dieses einzige Mal.
 
Zu dem gebrauchten sowohl, wie zum dumpfen und stummen
Vorrat der vollen Natur, den unsäglichen Summen,
zähle dich jubelnd hinzu und vernichte die Zahl. 
 

Sei allem Abschied voran, als wäre er hinter
Anticipate all departure as if behind you

dir, wie der Winter, der eben geht.
like a winter poised to take leave.

This sonnet is addressed to Orpheus. The poet presumes
to advise him how to contemplate the loss of Eurydice.
Stay ahead olf all partigs, he advises, as if they were
already behinf you
This sonnet is addressed to Orpheus. The poet presumes
to advise him how to contemplate the loss of Eurydice.
Stay ahead of all partings, he advises, as if they were
already behind you.  To anticipate a loss (parting,
Abschied) as if it were behind you is to immunize yourself
against the pain that it would otherwise cause.
Anticipation of the departure of winter would ordinarily
entail a spiritual transposition into spring. But that's
not what Rilke intends:

Denn unter Wintern ist einer so endlos Winter,
For among winters there's one so endlessly winter,

daß, überwinternd, dein Herz überhaupt übersteht.
that your heart but survives as it hibernates

An endless winter will not depart, and the spirit,
so to speak, is iced in and its existence in a
permanent winter is sheer survival. There is no
vernal redemption. 
	 
Sei immer tot in Eurydike -, singender steige,
Forever be dead in Eurydice -, more melodious ascend

preisender steige zurück in den reinen Bezug.
ascend with more praise into relationships pure.

Hence, speaking to Orpheus, the poet advises:
forever be dead with Eurydice.  Your song is the song
not of life, but of death, melodious praise that ascends
to a Platonic pure relation, - reiner Bezug is a conceit
of Rilkes which is anything but an emblem of life.


Hier, unter Schwindenden, sei, im Reiche der Neige,
Here, where life ebbs, be, in the realm of dregs,

sei ein klingendes Glas, das sich im Klang schon zerschlug.
be a resounding glass, which broke into shards with its sound,
	 
Here among those whose life is ebbing,
in the realm of a chalice drained to the dregs,
Orpheus is heard as a ringing glass,
that shattered itself with its sound.

Sei - und wisse zugleich des Nicht-Seins Bedingung,
Be - and yet know not-being's conditions,

den unendlichen Grund deiner innigen Schwingung,
the infinite grounds of your intimate ringing

daß du sie völlig vollziehst dieses einzige Mal.
which this one time you would fully fulfill
 
The shattering of the ringing glass through the force
of its own vibration is symbolic of the destruction
which life inflicts on itself, symbolic of the fragility
of life, symbolic of the death which each of us,
according to Rilke, carries within him or herself.
To live life to the utmost is to die through living,
the perfection of a living creature is its death.


Zu dem gebrauchten sowohl, wie zum dumpfen und stummen
To the exhausted remains, no less than to inchoate content

Vorrat der vollen Natur, den unsäglichen Summen,
Of bountiful nature, its infinite sums,

zähle dich jubelnd hinzu und vernichte die Zahl. 
be a joyous addition and then cancel the same.

To live is to die. To live is to add oneself,
to integrate oneself not only with the discarded,
exhausted remains, but also with the undefined 
and inchoate provisions of bountiful nature,
and in making the addition to cancel the sum.

> Something that amused me from a past letter of yours
> was when you wrote that although Margrit complained
> now and again about wanting to get back to her own way of life,
> reconnect with her friends, etc.,
> when you observed her in Belmont,
> she generally seemed most content. 
> You concluded that perhaps
> one shouldn't take her complaints too seriously. 
 
Margrit was very ambivalent. She loved me but at the
same time she was offended not so much by what I did,
as by the person that I am. She wanted very much to be
independent of me and yet she needed me both emotionally
and for help with practical matters. She moved to Detroit
to get away from her family, and then she took every bar
mitzvah, every birthday, every highschool graduation as
a pretext for coming back.

> It sounded as though you had found a turtle
> and made it your pet,
> designing a lovely terrarium for it to live in. 
> Though someone told you the turtle would rather live in Nature,
> you doubted that because,
> when you looked in the terrarium,
> the turtle would be happily paddling about
> in the little pond you had made for it,
> or warming itself on the rock under the lamp,
> or munching contentedly on the insects and larvae you found for it. 

That's your interpretation. I thought she needed help from her
family, from Margaret and Klemens and myself. She needed help
to live in old age as healthy and creative a life as possible;
he needed help to avoid dying from a strangulated femoral hernia,
she needed help to understand and to avoid the risks of deep
venous thrombosis which might cause a fatal pulmonary embolus.
She accepted that help only when she was in dire straits.
Otherwise she scoffed at me saying that I was overly cautious
and concerned. And so do you. When I cautioned her, she would
answer that she didn't mind dying. I considered her to be suicidal.
I believe she in fact committed suicide by indirection, and that
the nature of her death proves that my concerns were not unfounded.

> Incidentally, were the difficulties between Margrit
> and your parents primarily about their wanting her
> to abstain from sex outside of marriage
> (admittedly a very big issue at that time,
> and for people with views like your parents),
> or were there a whole series of different kinds of disagreements? 
> Did your parents take pride in Margrit's qualities as a person,
> and in her achievements?

My parents were explicitly appreciative of Margrit's
qualities as a person and took pride in her achievements.
The "difficulties between Margrit and my parents" were very
complex. I have no reason to think that "sex outside of
marriage" was an issue. My parents were in the habit of
writing long letters of which they kept carbon copies.
These copies are now in my files. If I have time and energy
I will review these letters in detail, and after I have done
so, I will be able to give you a more responsible answer.

Jochen