Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter. This morning I feel overwhelmed
by my tasks, as if I had embarked on too many projects, none of
which I have the time, energy or wit to complete. I begin with
apologies for my misspelling, inadvertently discarding the
italicized "Nico" in favor of the perhaps inappropriately
Teutonic "Niko". I wonder how that came about. Apologies also
for my sloppiness in procrastinating with obtaining the pictorial
content of the file. I finally copied it to a CD from which
Klemens translated it into the pdf format which is more congenial
to the operating system I use. The graphics, especially of Nico's
handwriting, add yet another and perhaps essential dimension
to the account.

The prospect of criticism makes me hesistant. On the one hand,
I discover myself in such awe of the opus and of the author
that criticism will unavoidably boomerang; on the other hand,
I feel, especially to you as the translator, an obligation
to respond in greater depth than mere declarations of approval
and admiration. My initial reaction was perplexity that the
address of Nico's letters "Dear mom and dad" should be in
unconventional lower case. Would not a literal transcription:
"Lieve Poppie en Mommie" have given Nico's letters a persuasive
frame of authenticity, perhaps underscored with astutely
selected Durch phrases in the original inserted into the body
of the text? I don't know, I'm only asking. Shouldn't the
extraordinary political, social and emotional experiences
of the parents, the foster parents and of Nico himself be
more vividly reflected in monologue, dialogue, narrative
and pictorial description, even if only as products of the
author's or translator's imagination? Or is it all there,
and did I read too quickly ans superficially? I missed also, -
and perhaps it was again my fault, - the character changes 
in the parents, the foster parents and especially in Nico
himself, transformations which the ordeals they endured must
inevitably have brought about. Thes correct answer to these
queries is most likely that I should pay attention to my own
writing rather than to meddle in yours and Micha's and
obfuscate my admiration for the work that both of you have done.

The discrepancies in the spelling of "Wozzeck" and "Woyzeck"
as you are most likely aware, resulted from an original
misreading of Buechner's badly damaged and barely legible
manuscript. To your description, which I endorse, of Woyzeck's
deranged mind in a deranged world I would add the footnotes:
a) that Buechner's stated conviction that we cannot know
each others' minds suggests that Buechner was in fact writing 
about himself; b) that the killing of adulterous spouses
is not without precedent in the tradition of European royalty,
don't forget Hermione, Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard ...

In consequence of your mentioning Woyzeck some letters ago, I've
been reading and rereading not only Danton's Tod and Vietor's
Buechner, but also Crane Brinton's "A Decade of Revolution".
I'm impressed with the fragility and transience of our social
and political institutions, with the unreliability of our
expectations of the future. Perhaps we listen to the news
and open the newspaper to reassure ourselves that it's all
still there. Brinton emphasizes the divergence of ideology
and interest on the part of the promoters of the French
Revolution. So far as Buechner's revolutionary activities
are concerned, I construe them as expressions of the circumstance
that while the minds of the old are molded by experience,
the minds of the young are controlled by ideals, by ideas,
by words; and it is language which constitutes the universe
of the child.

Jochen