January 16, 2011

Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letter. When I read your mildly reproachful reference to my "terse note" I was reminded of the letters not so long ago in which you introduced to me the concept of "screed." I quoted to myself, inappropriately, I think, considering the context of the original, "The wheel has come full circle." But it continues to roll, - and before we know it, we'll be concerned with screed once more.

I'm trapped in fascination as I reflect on the irony of the current legal situation. The Appeals Court issued a decree in accordance with which it ordered further proceedings. The Town of Nantucket has, so to speak, taken the bit in its teeth, carrying out the spirit if not the letter or the Appeals Court decree, Nantucket showing its contempt for the law by egregious violation - refusing to issue a plumbing permit to a licensed plumber, and refusing to perform the inspection to which it is obligated. In its disdain for the law, Nantucket, while violating the explicit instructions of the Court, has mimicked its example and reflected its spirit. However favorable to me the Appeals Court's conclusions, they were reached, nonetheless, in violation of the Court's most sacred obligation: impartiality. Specifically, when the Attorney General defaulted, instead of ordering the Attorney General to file motions and briefs in behalf of her client (the Board of State Examiners of Plumbers and Gas Fitters), the Appeals Court chose instead to assume the functions of the Board's attorney, precluding all possibility of its being impartial.

Even more significant, when it recognized Nantucket as a constructive intervenor in the case, the Appeals Court disregarded prior misconduct by Nantucket, thereby unavoidably encouraging more of the same. What happens next is anyone's guess.  Most likely, Kimberly Saillant, Nantucket's lawyer, will appear at the February 3, hearing in sackcloth and ashes, - figuratively, not literally, - will make promises and promises which her clients will then ignore. Realistically considered, there's no end to this controversy. It will continue to the day of my death, which may be much sooner than I now anticipate.

Thank you especially for your question regarding my novel. The opportunity to summarize my prospects serves to concentrate my mind and to catalyze the process of writing.  You may remember that my three protagonists, Maximilian Katenus, Jonathan Mengs and Joachim Magus are spending the night as prisoners, locked in the jury deliberation room in the Island Courthouse. It's after midnight and I am engaged in exploring and expanding their dreams, which are as different as are the dreamers. Katenus will dream that he is in Oslo giving an acceptance speech for the Prize in Philosophy. (I know there's no philosophy prize, but that's part of the point, if a point can have a part.) Joachim will dream that his girl friend (who seduced him in the first place) is now accusing him of sexual misconduct, and Mengs is dreaming that he is a professor not of literature but of law and that he has discovered a kind of Rosetta Stone, the secret of adjudication as the systematic encryption of the absurd.

At this juncture, the exposition presents itself as a serious dissertation on jurisprudence, - or, if you like "philosophy of law." Deliberately provocative and unconventional, a consciously presumptuous parody of Plato's presentation of serious argument in the context of familiar conversation. A preposterous project except for the circumstance that I will make no attempt to publish.  How a potential reader might respond is an irrelevant question, because there is no potential reader.

Mengs' dream begins in total darkness. "So this is what it is like to be dead," he says to himself in his dream, and then, connoisseur of poetry that he is, recites to himself Rilke's impressive fantasy of death in his First Duino Elegy.

Freilich ist es seltsam, die Erde nicht mehr zu bewohnen,
kaum erlernte Gebräuche nicht mehr zu üben,
Rosen, und andern eigens versprechenden Dingen
nicht die Bedeutung menschlicher Zukunft zu geben;
das, was man war in unendlich ängstlichen Händen,
nicht mehr zu sein, und selbst den eigenen Namen
wegzulassen wie ein zerbrochenes Spielzeug.
Seltsam, die Wünsche nicht weiter zu wünschen. Seltsam,
alles, was sich bezog, so lose im Raume
flattern zu sehen. Und das Totsein ist mühsam
und voller Nachholn, daß man allmählich ein wenig
Ewigkeit spürt. - Aber Lebendige machen
alle den Fehler, daß sie zu stark unterscheiden.
Engel (sagt man) wüßten oft nicht, ob sie unter
Lebenden gehn oder Toten. Die ewige Strömung
reißt durch beide Bereiche alle Alter
immer mit sich und übertönt sie in beiden.

(What follows is not my translation, - don't blame me, but will give you some idea what Rilke's poem is about, and some guidance if you want to try to decipher the original.)

Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer, 
to give up customs one barely had time to learn,
not to see roses and other promising Things in terms of a human future;
no longer to be what one was in infinitely anxious hands;
to leave behind even one's name, 
forgetting it as easily as a child abandons a broken toy.
Strange to no longer desire one's desires.
Strange to see meanings that clung together once,
_   floating away in every direction.
And being dead is hard work and full of retrieval
_   before one can gradually feel a trace of eternity.
Though the living are wrong to believe
_   in the too-sharp distinctions which they themselves have created.
Angels (they say) don't know whether it is
_   the living they are moving among, or the dead.
The eternal torrent whirls all ages along in it,
    through both realms forever,
and their voices are drowned out in its thunderous roar.


As counterpoint to these lines toying as they do with sublime absurdity, (or absurd sublimity) there came to mind a coarse, crude, well-known poem about Santa's hooded helper, "Knecht Ruprecht" who accompanies Santa Claus on the annual Christmas ride to discipline, terrify, flog, punish, - and in some outdated folk-versions even to swallow wicked children, a poem which in one very transient phase of childhood Christmas, I had been encouraged - not strictly required - to recite under the Christmas tree before being permitted to start unwrapping the gifts. 

Knecht Ruprecht

Von drauß' vom Wald komm ich her;
ich muss euch sagen, es weihnachtet sehr!
All überall auf den Tannenspitzen
sah ich goldene Lichtlein sitzen;
und droben aus dem Himmelstor
sah mit großen Augen das Christkind hervor.

Und wie ich so strolcht' durch den finstern Tann,
da rief's mich mit heller Stimme an:
"Knecht Ruprecht", rief es, "alter Gesell,
hebe die Beine und spute dich schnell!
Die Kerzen fangen zu brennen an,
das Himmelstor ist aufgetan.

Alt' und Junge sollen nun
von der Jagd des Lebens einmal ruhn;
und morgen flieg ich hinab zur Erden;
denn es soll wieder Weihnachten werden!"
Ich sprach: "O lieber Herre Christ,
meine Reise fast zu Ende ist;

ich soll nur noch in diese Stadt,
wo's eitel gute Kinder hat."
"Hast denn das Säcklein auch bei dir?"
Ich sprach: "Das Säcklein, das ist hier:
Denn Äpfel, Nuss und Mandelkern
essen fromme Kinder gern."

"Hast denn die Rute auch bei dir?"
Ich sprach: "Die Rute, die ist hier;
doch für die Kinder nur, die schlechten,
die trifft sie auf den Teil, den rechten.
Christkindlein sprach: "So ist es recht!
So geh mit Gott, mein treuer Knecht!"

Von drauß' vom Walde komm ich her;
ich muss euch sagen, es weihnachtet sehr!
Nun sprecht, wie ich's hier drinnen find!
Sind's gute Kind sind's böse Kind?

Theodor Storm, 1817-1888

Here's a translation, again from the Internet, and again
a text for which I disclaim responsibility:

Out of the forrest I come over here.
Again I have to say Christmas is near.

all over there on all treetops so bright
I saw a shimmering golden light.

And over me there was heavens door,
with big eyes the christchild was looking for more.

As walking through darkwoods of my choice,
It calls me with it?s bright an clear voice.

To old fellow Rupprecht it called: Good luck!
Pick up your legs and hurry up,

the candles begin to burn up again
and heavens door is open and then,

older and younger now shall rest
from the hunt of life and this at it's best.

And tomorrow I will fly down to you
to bring again Christmas the whole world through.

I said: Oh my Lord Christ beloved,
My travel around the earth is enough,

in this little town I have just to go
where children live good and honest and so...

And with you have you got your sack?
I said: The sack is on my back.

As apples, nuts and almondcore,
good children eating more and more.

Have you then your rod with you?
I said: Again the rod is here too.

But for children as they were evil only
the rod is not staying for long time lonely.

Christchild was speaking: You do always right,
Faithfully servant, with god go tonight.

So out of the forrest I come over here.
Again I have to say Christmas is near.

Now say what children in the room here I find,
those with a good or an evil mind?

My own subconscious I keep on a very long leash, and it was some days before I discovered my conclusive interpretation of the Knecht Ruprecht poem, that Santa's hooded helper a.k.a. Beezlebub, whose function was to establish whether the children in the house were "good" children or "evil" children, and who accordingly beat, pickled or swallowed them, was in fact a bailiff of the heavenly court, and that this poem might indeed be considered one of the seeds of the popular conception of justice.

As the distraction of the poems fade, so does the darkness, at least to the extent that Mengs, still dreaming in his sleep, can recognize his surroundings as one of a suite of subterranean basement rooms, the first filled with racks of cardboard boxes, - presumably legal files which Mengs opens one after another and finds to be empty except for occasional scraps of paper. In disappointment and despair he moves to the next of the subterranean rooms symbolic of the human consequences of the judicial process which is filled with piles of debris and garbage. In one corner, installed like a throne high on a pile of ill-smelling wet moldy curtains, rests an extirpated toilet bowl which obviously had not been flushed or emptied prior to its removal. Mengs has almost resigned himself to the fact that it is in this dank and unwholesome cellar where he must die sooner rather than later, when he notices at the furthest perimeter a stair rising into an opening frames into the ceiling joists. He discerns, what he had not seen before, a path leading to the foot of the stairs, and then, as he traverses them step by step to gain his freedom, is seized by the thought that he is uniquely prepared to understand and to interpret the oppressive and dispiriting chaos that he has just escaped, that understanding and knowledge is the answer, is release and redemption, at least for him.

That is the juncture to which the novel has taken me. I'll now indulge myself - and insult the non-existing reader - with a systematic description of the social and psychic facets of justice and adjudication, - both with respect to their origins and with respect to their consequences.  Obviously an ambitious and presumptuous project which may require days or weeks or months and will have as its obligato the continuing Nantucket comedy.

I'm sure what I've just written is more, much more than you wanted to read, and I apologize. Stay well and give my best to Ned.

Jochen

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