Dear Marion,

Correcting my mistakes is like going to confession.

Grille means cricket, not grasshopper. It also refers to an
irrational persistent compulsive notion.
As I get older, the endaural experience of a continuous buzzing,
chirping sound, indistinguishable from the "song" of a cricket,
becomes more and more familiar.
The lack of control over a compulsive irrational notion and
the lack of control over the endaural cricket-like chirping
is sufficient to my mind to explain the identity.
(Compare "buzzword" and "a bee in your bonnet".)
I'm not sure whether I'm reading too much into the poem
"Der Einsame" which I quoted to you, when I ask whether its
reference to Grillen is suggestive also of the endaural phenomenon
as well as indicative of the crickets' chirping around the stove.
Compare the plot of this poem with the plot of Dickens' Cricket
on the Hearth and tell me what, if anything, the difference
indicates about life and society in Germany vs. England in the
mid 19th century.

The circumstance that Die Gedanken sind frei is a prisoner's
consolation, makes the wistful allusion: "... mein Maedchen
vor allen ... ich bin nicht allein" particularly meaningful.

Jochen