Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter. That your sympathies with Margrit,
of which I'm deeply appreciative, might have roots in analogous
daughter-parent relationships has long seemed obvious to me.
Now that it's you who mention the albeit distant similarities 
between Margrit and yourself, I nod in agreement, without
however venturing to comment on phases of your life whose 
difficulties, even at age seventy, may not have been completely
dissipated by time.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I spent much of the day writing
business letters, one on behalf of a glaucoma patient whose
insurance will no longer pay for "Xalatan" inasmuch as the patents
having expired, a generic version latanoprost is now available,
but will not pay for latanoprost because that product has not
yet been included in its formulary. The second letter to an
investment outfit called Columbia Management which declines
to transfer to an account of Leah's, shares of Tri-Continental
Common stock in Margrit's trust, because the barcodes of the
Medallion Stamp signature guarantees provided by Cambridge
Trust Company and Cambridge Savings Bank will not pass a 
"security scan", this being the case because the application
forms prescribed by Columbia Managment have been designed with
too little space for the stamp whose barcode falls on printed
text that, understandably, corrupts the image to be scanned.

Then, having gotten these letters off my desk, out of my mind
and into the mailbox, I thought I remembered the spot where I
might have double-shelved out of view my copy of Karl Vietor's,
my teacher's book: Georg Buechner, Politik, Dichtung, Wissenschaft.
For once, my memory functioned. I found the book in the expected
location. Ashamed that I had neglected it for 61 years, I
interrupted to read the chapter on Woyzeck. If you're in the mood
for a linguistic challenge, take it out from the TC Wilson Library,
834B856DV67 (regular loan). I never  charge for translation or
interpretation.

Reading only a few pages reminded me of the irresistable impression
that the empathy and the elegance of Vietor's lectures made on me.
Vietor was virtuoso in accommodating himself to the role of interpreter.
He appeared as the intellectual and emotional servant of the author
whose works he presented to the students; quite unlike myself who over
the years has found it necessary to challenge, to wrestle, to compete
with the author whose work preoccupies me at the time. I find remarkable
Vietor's enthusiasm for Buechner, the original German realistic
dramatist, while regarding Buechner's successors, such as Gustav Freitag,
Theodor Fontane, Gerhardt Hauptmann with cool indifference, and
emphatically rejecting Berthold Brecht.

Vietor's exegesis of Woyzeck ist straight-forward. He describes Buechner's
affection for the proletarian, for the poor exploited helpless suffering
common man, and uncompromisingly depicts Buechner's corresponding disdain
for intellectual and emotional "refinement", for the now empty values of
the bourgeoisie and nobility. The linkage in the puppet show which you
described between the Bach Cello Sonata and the appearance of the
exploitative physician or captain, seems a valid expression of Buechner's
ethos. Characteristically, however, Vietor does not come to terms with
the paradox that the nobility and elegance of his own style and of his
own esthetic contemplation are irreconcilable with the humility and
humiliation in which Buechner discovers and displays the essence of
humanity. And that is perhaps true also for Buechner himself.

So much for tonight.

Jochen