Dear Marion,

Thank you for your sensitive and insightful comments on subjectivity,
a topic that over the years has proved inexhaustible to me. Obviously,
I owe you an explanation/apology to be forwarding to you my letters
to someone else, in this instance, and again today, Cynthia Behrman.
My defense: it's the ideas which are important and that they should
receive impersonal exposition does not detract from, but only adds to
their value. True personal relationships are inherently meta-epistolary.
They cannot be captured in the letter's sentimental, and often extravagant
reassurances, nor do they require the letters's documentation for their
existence.

In her most recent letter, Cynthia seemed perplexed by your endorsement
of Katenus' cautious interpretation of Darwin's conclusions as theory
rather than fact, and asked would you likewise consider the solar system
as theory. I've given my own interpretation of the fact/theory conundrum.
If you have other ideas, I'd like to hear them.

My determination to control the pain caused by my dental abscess with
auto-hypnosis persuades me to focus my mind all the more intensely on
my novel. I can't invoke the metaphor "killing two birds with one stone"
without articulating my objection to the destructiveness of its literal
meaning. In any case, tonight it's back to a fantasy-land from which
Katenus and Elly, Mengs, Joachim and Charlotte will banish the tootache.  

Jochen