Dear Cyndy,

I forwarded your letter to Katenus, and guess what?!
He was so excited that as soon as he received the forward,
he picked up the 'phone to call me.  As I've mentioned,
I routinely record our conversations, and here's the 
transcript of what recently went on between us:

MK: You lucky dog! You don't know how fortunate you are to
have a correspondent that takes you even half way seriously.
Wish I could say the same.

EJM: Mengs takes you very seriously, and Joachim thinks you're
Socrates incarnate.

MK: Flattery will get you nowhere; but so far as I'm concerned,
to be misunderstood is my certification of being yet alive.

EJM: The last I heard, it was Mengs who failed to understand you.

MK: He has no monopoly. Nothing was further from my meaning when
we last spoke than to make the argument that history is useless.
Its utility, however, can not be correlated with its truth.
I consider the equation of utility and truth as the monumental
gaffe of utilitarianism. Surely you've heard about the "life lie".

EJM: Well, yes, I have. As a matter of fact, I just looked it up at
its source. In Ibsen's The Wildduck (Vildanten) he puts into the
mouth of Doctor Relling these words:
Tar De livsløgen fra e gennemsnitsmenneske,
så tar De lykken fra ham med det samme,
(Take the lifelie from an average person
and with it you take from him his happiness.)
Forgive my parenthesis that the word "lifelie" doesn't sound to me
as if it belonged in the English language. If you permit, I'll
paraphrase it with the term "vital falsehood."

MK: You have my permission, and in addition I give you carte blanche
for all your pretentiousness, including your silly habit of insisting
on quoting the original. Call it whatever you like, livsløgne,
Lebensluege, lifelie, vital falsehood, my point is that every history,
every account, every story we tell of the past is tinged with imperfection,
with unreality, with "falsehood".  But we can't do without history,
even though it's not "true".  History is essential, "vital" to our
understanding of our world and of ourselves.  There is much "truth" in
Disneyland Darwinism, but it's not where the propagandists purport to
find it, in a re-creation with verisimilitude of the inaccessible past; 
instead the truth of Disneyland Darwinism is dialectical. Its impalatable
reliance on fantasy demonstrates the unavoidable imperfections of all
historical narrative.

EJM: I'll convey your thoughts and sentiments to my correspondent, who
will, I suspect, find them more incongruous than ever, but may be too
polite to say so.

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

So much for the most recent dialogue with Katenus. For the past few nights,
I've been sleeping poorly, waking long before dawn, not in any sort of
anguish, but with my thoughts scanning the diverse imperfections of the
world and of old age. During the day then, when I'm not falling asleep at
the computer, I add to my novel. I decided at 24 pages, chapter 49 was
long enough, and I'm testing my imagination with opening paragraphs for
chapter 50. At the same time, I'm still faithful to my resolve to prepare
an English version of chapter 49 in parallel which, as of last night was
about 40 percent complete. There's no denying that reviewing and
recapitulating my notions in English is of help in purging them of some
of their folly.

As for what use Benjamin might have made of my submission about religion
and "spirituality," I have no idea, nor do I understand what exactly the
assignment might have been. I get a whiff of eccentricity on the part
of the professor.  Benjamin is not very communicative and hasn't replied
to my e-mail. Sooner or later he may provide me with more insight.

Please give my best to Ned, and have, both of you, a quiet and
blissful weekend.

Jochen