Dear Cyndy,

Here's my answer to your recent letter of which I'm much
appreciative and for which I thank you.

The abscess in my jaw has subsided and I'm now asymptomatic.
In this as in so many other respects, I'll proceed as way opens.
 
My plan with respect to Charlotte is to describe a protracted
and agonizing courtship between her and Joachim which issues
into a difficult marriage. To fashion some manner of bond
between herself and Joachim, Charlotte will unavoidably adopt
some of Joachim's mannerisms and purport to assimilate his
ideas. But as Hofmannthal famously pointed out: "Es bleibt
ein jeder der er ist." (Everyone remains who he/she is.)
Charlotte will soon enough revert to her primary self.
Her own voice may be transiently muted, but in time it
will reassert itself, fortissimo.  It's not yet clear to me
what sort of employment Charlotte will find, how many children,
if any, she and Joachim will have. Her jealousy of Mengs and
his relationship to Joachim will wax with the years, and
ultimately Charlotte will take possession of Mengs' house
and force him out.  Unless I find a woman for him, Mengs
will be very lonely and desolate.  Joachim will be caught in
a conflict of loyalty to Mengs and to himself on the one hand,
and Charlotte's demands on the other, a conflict which may or
may not destroy him.  There are, of course, potentially many
other characters available, both men and women, faculty, graduate
students, acquaintances, friends, .... but whom I shall introduce
to whom and at what juncture I can't forsee. The novel is as
unpredictable as life itself.

My introduction of "philosophy" as an element integral to this
household is a calculated and deliberate provocation. I am a
certified megalomaniac, - and if Plato could get away with it,
there's nothing to keep me from trying. I am convinced that
conversation, discussion, dialogue is the indispensable vehicle
of intelligence which adamantly resists the academic conceit of
"system", lecture, monograph, textbook; and resists also disguise
as "more geometrico" a la Descartes and Spinoza. My estimation of
intellectual history has undergone a "Copernican" revolution.
I once believed that ideas were preserved and transmitted because
they were valid. I now believe the opposite to be true in large
measure. If they have substance at all, it is not their validity
but undefined social and political factors that account for the
preservation and transmission of ideas. It is once more the
megalomaniac in me, that persuades me that what Katenus had to
say would hold it own against any "classical" philosophy if it
were given the chance. By the same token, I convince myself
that a political campaign for prominence and honor is predestined
to failure because it is inherently incompatible with spontaneity
and honesty. I understand however, that this conviction is the
ultimate in the viticulture of sour grapes. Since I refuse all
estimates of the quality of my writing, and have no opinion as
to whether it is worth reading at all, I refrain from sending it
to you, but offer as before the URL where you may find on the
Internet what I've recently been doing, if your really want to know.
http://home.earthlink.net/~ej1meyer/freunde/e049.html
is the English version of Chapter 49, to which I may have
pointed you before, while
http://home.earthlink.net/~ej1meyer/freunde/e050.html
points to the first ten of perhaps 30 pages - yet to be
completed, of Chapter 50 in English.  Caveat emptor!

So far as Judge Macdonald is concerned, I believe him and his
colleagues to be burdened with the spiritually most debilitating
duties imaginable. Consider the burden on your conscience (soul)
of being required week after week and year after year to render
judgments on the basis of an arbitrary, garbled legal code which
will destroy the lives of the human beings at your feet.
There's no way you will be able to survive, unless you become
tough, very tough and totally indifferent to the mayhem you
create day after day. No one understood the judge's dilemma
better than Anton Chekov. On second thought, maybe I'll 
introduce Judge Macdonald to Joachim and to Mengs, if not
indeed to Katenus himself.

You may remember that I caused the present stand-off on
April 28, 2011, when I told Judge Macdonald that mine was not
a plumbing case but a legal case. That although he, Judge Macdonald
knew nothing about plumbing, he understood everything about
adjudication. I explained that Mr. Ciarmataro was a plumbing
judge, and that he, Judge Macdonald knew what it meant when a
plumbing judge tampered with witnesses by threatening any who
would provide evidence that he wished to suppress. If such an
inspector, I told Judge Macdonald, could be trusted to make an
inspection of integrity and fairness, (as required by the Appeals
Court) then he, Judge Macdonald and I would need to invent a new
definition for the word "integrity". Thereupon Judge Macdonald
cancelled the hearing that had been scheduled for June 16, 2011,
and no judge can now be found who is willing to touch my case.
Guess why? As to what will happen? The diagnosis as taught
in medical school is abbreviated G.O.K. (God only knows)

Our best to you and Ned.
Jochen