Dear Nathaniel,

Thank you for sending me the URL of Michael Tilson Thomas'
interview on NPR. Unfortunately we're technologically too
backward here in Konnarock - only a telephone connection
to the Internet, - for me to be able to retrieve the video;
presumably it will still be accessible when we get back to
Belmont and I'll look at it there.

I was interested in your exchange with Marion. I have found her
an unusually satisfactory correspondent. She is very intelligent
and has a wonderful sense of humor. What she told you about my
squeamishness when asked to listen to Grimm's fairy tales in
kindergarten in Braunschweig is true. I keep searching my 
memory for the street address, in vain, but I have a very vivid 
recollection of the shadowy, high ceilinged room in the stately
house where the kindergarten was held. The teacher's name,
I remember, was Hilde Oelmann. The room had tall glass doors
which fronted on a garden. I remember my dread of the endings
of the terrible stories.  Pretending I had a headache, I asked
to be excused to take a walk among the carefully manicured shrubs.
It was the first, but unfortunately not the last, occasion when
I lied to escape oppression, although if granted poetic license, 
one might redefine "headache" to describe what went on in my mind.

I've never grown up. I still don't go to movies or watch television,
for essentially the same reason. Although for many years I was
addicted to intelligent news broadcasts, William L. Shirer, Elmer
Davis, Edward R. Murrow - are names that you may never have heard,
but during the Bush years I became distressed by the moral obtuseness
of even NPR reporters whose cowardice masqueraded as objectivity,  -
The hummingbird at the feeder in front of this window enjoys my
sucrose nectar and doesn't know what I'm thinking about, -
when they related the crimes and cataclysms of the decade.  So I
stopped listening also to them. It's the virtue of great literature
that it seems to make bearable even the ultimate repudiation of the
faith by which we live. That's how I read Sophocles and Shakespeare
and Kleist. I think often of the closing lines of King Lear:
_
_  Albany. The weight of this sad time we must obey,
_          Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
_          The oldest have borne most; we that are young
_          Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
_                                  Exeunt with a dead march.
_
Lines which lead back to the beginning: music. It has recently
occurred to me that Nietzsche's thesis: the birth of tragedy
from the spirit of music. (Die Geburt der Tragoedie aus dem Geist
der Musik) is possibly more valid than even he realized. I 
understand his perspective to have been historical. As a classical
philologist he was explaining to himself (and his readers) that
Greek tragedy was rooted in the irrational, intuitive, subjective
experience of music; and was subsequently destroyed by the
Socratic-Platonic discovery of the power over language that is
wielded by reason. I would go further and argue that perhaps all
"literature" i.e. all meaningful language is rooted in tone,
in harmony and rhythm; that language spawns logic and reason 
and ultimately mathematics which then in turn poison, make
frigid and infertile the ground from which they sprang. A thought
which is both romantic and autumnal, and brings to mind a poem
of Rilke's which I learned from my parents:

Herr, es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr gross.
Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren,
und auf den Fluren lass die Winde los.

Befiehl den letzten Fruechten, voll zu sein;
gib ihnen noch zwei suedlichere Tage,
draenge sie zur Vollendung hin, und jage
die letzte Suesse in den schweren Wein.

Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.
Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben,
wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben
und wird in den Alleen hin und her
unruhig wandern, wenn die Blaetter treiben.

I'll translate it for you:

Herr, es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr gross.
Lord it is time. Summer was very great.

Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren,
Lay now your shadow on the dials. (sundials)

und auf den Fluren lass die Winde los.
and on the meadows let the winds run loose. 

Befiehl den letzten Fruechten, voll zu sein;
Command the fullness of the final fruits;

gib ihnen noch zwei suedlichere Tage,
give them another southern day or two,

draenge sie zur Vollendung hin, und jage
impel them to perfection, and drive

die letzte Suesse in den schweren Wein.
the final sweetness to the heavy vines.

Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.
Who's homeless now, will never build a house.

Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben,
Who's lonely now will long remain alone,

wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben
will wake, will read, and long epistles write,

und wird in den Alleen hin und her
and in the avenues will wander back and forth

unruhig wandern, wenn die Blaetter treiben.
impatient among blowing leaves.

You must read it aloud to yourself to hear its music.
If you can manage to memorize that poem and a thousand
others like it, you'll know more German than your teachers.

Stay well and forgive my letter. Once I get started,
I don't know when or how to stop.

Jochen