Dear Marion,

The car is packed, the timers for the lights are set,
the windows except in our bed and bathroom are shut,
Margaret is making sandwiches for the trip, and I am
confronted with the choice of vacuum cleaning the two
large oriental carpets, the one in the dining room
a 9x12 red Sarouk, the one in the living room of unknown
provenance, but very beautiful and of such size, 11x23
feet, that I have not been able to design space either
in Belmont or on Nantucket to accommodate it. There's
no lint or other debris that requires cleaning; the
purpose of the vacuum cleaning would be to discourage
moths. I assume however that moths require warmth to
propagate; and since the house is unheated all winter,
maybe the vacuum cleaning would be superfluous.  The
alternative: to accept your bait and resume pontificating
about Kultur.

You write:

> Something a bit troublesome to me about the German cultural
> tradition as I experienced it is the aspect of contamination.....
> the sense that along with Kultur came the determination
> to avoid exposure to anything that has not already received
> the cultural seal of approval. I find this narrow-minded,
> stultifying and unnecessary, but it is minor compared to
> the gifts of Kultur.

I think you have it backwards. I attribute the limitation of
my parents' tastes to the circumstances of their upbringing:
although - as I wrote to you last summer, the bookshelves
in the next room contain as the Bar Mitzvah presents for
Ernst Joachim, editions of Schiller, Heine, and Lessing, our
grandfather was scornful of art and music and poetry, which
he stigmatized as Brotlose Kuenste, while my mother had only
an eighth grade education, was self-taught in literature music
and art. Her ethical and esthetic horizons were dictated by
the fanaticism of Huldrich Zwingli to which she was exposed
as a child. Not only Shakespeare's bawdiness, even Goethe's
sophisticated eroticism was more than she could accept. 

I don't know whom else you have in mind, - except perhaps myself, -
but pseudo-pietistic squeamishness is not integral to Deutsche 
Kultur. As I see it, the Germans have been far more interested
in foreign cultures than for example the English, - not to mention
the French. Consider Bach's adaptations of Vivaldi, his French
and English Suites. - Some of Leibniz' most important writings
were in French. Haendel blended effortlessly with 18th century
London. Winckelmann rediscovered Greece. Goethe, Herder and
Schiller were Shakespeare enthusiasts, and the Tieck-Schlegel
translation of Shakespeare is in itself a monumental work of art,
far more authentic than the English bawdlerizations that concealed
Shakespeare from his countrymen for much of the 18th and 19th
centuries. The Scandinavians, Strindberg, Ibsen, Hamsun, Kierkegaard
were welcomed in Germany as enthusiastically as in their homelands,
if not more so. Translations of Russian authors, particularly
Dostoevsky were very influential in Germany. Rilke idolized Auguste
Rodin, wrote a book about him, translated French poets, and even
himself composed poetry in their language.

If I don't stop the moths will get ahead of me.
See you on Monday.

Jochen