Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter; thank you for your understanding
and affection for my sister; and thank you especially for your
interest in my letters, which, if one printed them in a book
would aggregate 388 pages, assuming 400 words per page. Not
that I deem the letters suitable for publication, but they
constitute, for what they are worth, a monument to my existence
during the last seven and a half months, a repository of
considerations, compelling or vacuous, as may be, which I
could not otherwise have compiled in so brief a period of time.

In the past week after talking about Margrit's death to her
numerous friends, - and that includes you -, and after listening
to what they told me about her - and about themselves, I am
impressed more than ever with the diversity of human nature
and the complexity of human relationships, far beyond my own
experience and far beyond anything that I am able to understand.
I am, however, reasonably certain that Margrit's relationships
to myself, to our parents, to Margaret, to Klemens and even to
my grandchildren are qualitatively different from the
friendships which she made so easily. This qualitative
difference, I believe, extends to Margrit's relationships to 
William Nease, to her protege Hannah, to the daughter of
Isidore Fleischer, and to "Izzy" himself.

The differences in the view that you have of Margrit as her
cousin and friend, and my view of her as her brother are very
striking to me. From my perspective, there is no need to reconcile
these differences, which as I understand them, ultimately reflect
different facets of Margrit's personality. Remember Shakespeare's
assertion that the world is a stage; we are the actors and as such
we play many roles. What I see in Margrit is not so much Margrit
as it is a reflection of my feelings about her, and if I wished to
dissect Margrit's psychoanatomy, my purpose would not be to obtain
a better understanding of her but of myself. The same might be true
for you also. If you wished to explore Margrit's psyche with me, I 
would be willing; but what you would discover rather than Margrit
is yourself.

My own preference is instead to explore the spirits of the various
characters in Die Freunde, Jonathan Mengs, Joachim Magus, Joachims'
bride to be, Charlotte Graupe, Katenus, Elly and the cast of 
auxiliary characters yet to emerge from the props on the stage.
Meanwhile, I have to make arrangements for Margrit's belongings
and for her car. On December 25, a tornado devastated the woods
surrounding our house in Konnarock, interrupting the electric power,
which has still not been restored and blocking the road and the 
driveway with numerous fallen trees.  Fortunately the house itself
is undamaged.

Jochen