Dear Marion,

It's been a hectic day. Being a grandfather is sometimes a full-time
job. Benjamin who is heading back to Dartmouth tomorrow, came over -
the first I've seen of him since, some weeks ago, he raked up leaves
for me and, collections being already out of season, he and I took a
minivanful of 20 leafbags to the transfer station. Adolescence, as we
all know, is a time of turbulence and trouble. I'm distressed how
little is the help that I can give. But I do the best I can.

Then there was Nathaniel. I hadn't seen him since the concert on
Friday. Not unexpectedly he hadn't replied to my e-mails. He seemed
rested and tranquil, and reported that yesterday he and Klemens had
taken an 11 mile hike on a recently constructed "greenway" from
Belmont to Waltham and back. I reported to Nathaniel that this morning
a patient, one Mrs Ann Martin, the wife of a Harvard physicist, who
was much taken with Nathaniel's concert, agreed to permit me to designate
$10 of her "co-payment" as seed money for the Charitable Trust I will
set up to receive such donations as may be made to benefit Nathaniel's
efforts. That project is work not at all congenial to me, but something
which I can do that may turn out to be of economic benefit. Like most
efforts in which I involve myself nowadays, it's something I can't
afford not to do. I reviewed with Nathaniel my conclusion that
participation in his orchestra is a quasi-educational experience for
the players, only a small proportion of whom plan a musical career.
Most are "amateurs" who value the opportunity to play in an orchestra
where their efforts are needed and valued. Nathaniel told me that for
a concert next summer, he had been offered the use of Harvard's Paine
Hall. I read with him Goethe's Zueignung (dedication) of Faust, and
Hoelderlin's Der Neckar, Lebenslauf and Heidelberg. We were just reading
the lines:

Wie der Vogel des Walds über die Gipfel fliegt,
Schwingt sich über den Strom, wo er vorbei dir glänzt,
Leicht und kräftig die Brüke,
Die von Wagen und Menschen tönt.

(Like the bird of the woods that flies o'er the peaks,
Over the stream, where it gleams past your banks,
Arches the Bridge, graceful and strong 
Resounding with wagons and men.)

when Benjamin burst into the room, primed to say his good-byes,
offering Nathaniel respite from the arcane German, and giving
him a chance to escape. Presumably he'll be back in the morning
when I will help him load into the minivan the three kettle drums,
now lodged downstairs on the School Street side of the Addition,
to take back to the music school from which they were borrowed.

As for the novel, I glance over what I have written and find that
on December 24, I had completed 9 1/2 pages of chapter 49, and
since then managed to put together another 4 pages. I've also
projected in outline, in which directions my story might turn:

The novel is not the biography of any particular (group of) persons.
It is the image of life itself. As in life, when individual characters
die, they are replaced, and the novel goes on and on.

Aware that his encounter with Charlotte has proved to be another
turning point in his life, Joachim feels the need to reexamine
(the memories of) his childhood, - and he does so in the comfort
and security of the shower. While warm water is trickling through
his hair, down his neck, over his shoulders and his back, Joachim
is recalling, is in fact reconstructing his childhood, ascertaining
explicitly how he has become what he is; establishing a basis for
the further transformations that are about to occur in his life.
That insights so extensive should be accessible in the brief course
of a shower bath will require either a generous allocation of poetic
license or a high capacity hot water tank, or both.

At the same time, Mengs, whose life has been disrupted by the death
of Susanna, discovers that notwithstanding his most fervent efforts,
his relationship with Joachim is also slipping out of his grasp, not
from misunderstanding or disagreement, not from patent or latent
hostility, but in simple consequence of the circumstance that Joachim
is maturing, has evolved from adolescent into an adult, and now has
the capacity and feels the need to live a life of his own. Mengs 
understands and respects Joachim's need for independence, and
concludes that he, Mengs must himself become independent, and to this
end, must turn to his own academic work for satisfaction and fullfilment. 

Mengs has been deeply impressed with the quality of Katenus' thought,
and with the tragic irony that Katenus' insight into human affairs,
knowledge, ethics, esthetics, politics, society and psyche finds no
listeners, finds no readers. Mengs concludes that he has stumbled on
a unique opportunity to promote and publicise the insights and opinions
of his friend Katenus, (to help) to make Katenus famous, while in the
process refining and enlarging on Katenus' ideas. He has convinced
himself that if he is able to seize the opportunity, his interpretation
and publication of Katenus' work will not only bestow on Katenus the
fame that Katenus deserves, but will propel Mengs himself from a
pedestrian full professorship to the eminence of a respected - and much
quoted - intellectual, perhaps a New York Times columnist, will in other
words, make Mengs himself famous.

That's not how it turns out. Katenus' insights that history is fiction
and serves as cultural propaganda, that absent the spirit, natural
science is an empty conceptual construct, that science requires the
subjectivity of the scientist to become meaningful; such wisdom does not
go down well with the academic community.  Just as Thomas Buddenbrook's
intellectual and spiritual encounter with the pessimism of Arthur
Schopenhauer precipitated not only his own demise but the ruin of
his family, so Jonathan Mengs' efforts to assimilate the wisdom and
understanding of Maximilian Katenus lead to the loss by Mengs of his
academic position, of his professorship and ultimately to the
disintegration of his existence, if only because Katenus' scepticism
is subversive and ultimately destructive of both social and individual
existence, incompatible with the Lebensluege (the vital lie) that is
essential for survival.

There is a telling analogy between the downfall of Mengs' teacher
Jacob Doehring, who was destroyed by his unrequited affection for
Dorothea, as I reported in my novel Die Andere, and Mengs who will
be ruined by the confluence of his asymmetrical affection for Joachim
and by his unrealistic reliance on Katenus' philosophy as the ultimate
embodiment of spirit and reason.  The story will continue from week to
week. There is no end in sight.

=============================

At this juncture, Katenus, even though not one of the main characters,
strikes me indispensable to the "spiritual" integrity of the novel,
and I would be disoriented to proceed without him. Reminds me of
Rilke's poem referring to a bridge across the Seine:

Pont du Carrousel

Der blinde Mann, der auf der Brücke steht,
grau wie ein Markstein namenloser Reiche,
er ist vielleicht das Ding, das immer gleiche,
um das von fern die Sternenstunde geht,
und der Gestirne stiller Mittelpunkt.
Denn alles um ihn irrt und rinnt und prunkt.

Er ist der unbewegliche Gerechte
in viele wirre Wege hingestellt;
der dunkle Eingang in die Unterwelt
bei einem oberflächlichen Geschlechte.

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1902/03, Paris

(The blind man standing on the bridge,
gray as a marker of two nameless kingdoms,
perhaps he is the never changing rod,
about which turn remote celestial hours
the silent centerpiece of all the stars.
For everything about him boasts and fades and errs.

He's the immobile man of justice
placed into many convoluted ways,
the sombre entrance to a nether world,
beneath a superficial human race.)

===========================

As you may infer, I'm not at a loss of how to spend my time,
and perhaps this is enough for this evening. Please feel no
obligation to reply, certainly not in great detail. You'll hear
from me from time to time, anyway. Please keep me informed about
your health and accept my wishes for an appropriately "Happy"
New Year.

Jochen