Dear Cyndy,

Thank you very much for your letter. Its questions about
Katenuses ruminations arrived at the right moment, after
I had just awoken to the thought that under the rubric
of esthetics, Katenus did in fact have much to pontificate
concerning music, architecture, the graphic arts, literature,
language, and in a recursive mode about "philosophy". Imagine:
the philosophy of philosophy, the metaphysics of metaphysics
as the inception of a recursive chain reaction with no end
in sight!

The URL for which you asked is:
http://home.earthlink.net/~ej1meyer/freunde/e052.html
This is the English version of Chapter 52. Last evening when
I stopped writing, I was busy upgrading the original with the
"improvements" that had attached themselves to the English
text. I'm going down for some breakfast now. When I return 
I'll want to start stuffing this letter to you with some of
the thoughts that criss-crossed my mind as I awoke. I hope
they won't all have been washed away by the coffee.

After breakfast: The photo of Nathaniel on Mount Moosilauke
was taken by Klemens. Yesterday at 5:30 a.m. the two of them
set out in the red car, drove the 125 miles or so to Glencliff,
then hiked 5 miles up the old carriage road to the summit.
I felt bad - as I always do - to have been left behind. I felt
worse because my arthritic right hip would never have made it.
If it weren't for Margaret, I'd set out early some morning
nonetheless. Probably long before I reached the summit, I would
come a cropper, and when they found what was left of me frozen
by the side of the trail, I would finally become famous, for
perhaps 24 hours. But then, there's no fame that lasts forever.

As I was having my coffee, I thought about your comments on
Nathaniel and the 9th, about my suggestion to have an organist
substitute for vocalists and chorus. Beethoven's own literary
contribution (as distinct from Schiller's)  "O Freunde, nicht
diese Toene, sondern lasset und angenehmere anstimmen, und
freudenvollere." struck me as an ironic comment on his own
compositions, for, obviously, "die Toene" are the sounds of
the 1st, 2nd and 3rd movements that the audience has just heard,
now to be repudiated for what comes next: that hectic, impassioned,
desperate shout for a joy - which obviously isn't there. A musical
triumph, but a spiritual cropper. It's not a matter of becoming,
but of being. You don't find happiness at the end of the rainbow.
If you have it, you possess it here and now. If you don't, you won't
find it next door, or, for that matter, on top of a mountain. It is
wonderful to be happy, to be joyful. But to my ears, there's always
a note of sadness in the proclamation: "I'm so happy!" Better leave
it unsaid. Happiness is too fragile for trumpets and drums.

The macabre landscape of Beethoven spirit is no place for
Schiller's gentrified drinking song. It can't work, and it doesn't.
Liberated from the words, the music might come into its own.
The registers of the organ promise a wealth of nuances,
ranging from Vox coelestis, Vox angelica, Vox Mystica, Vox humana,
through Vox balenae, this last, the voice of the whale. Also to
be considered: Vogelschrey - Bird Scream, Vox avis, or should it
be Vox alitis.  The critical issue and potentially most rewarding,
it seems to me, is to provide the long overdue divorce of the
mesalliance of sound and meaning which Beethoven had arranged.
Happiness is at best a challenging subject for any musical composer.
Most persuasive, to my ears, is Haendel's rendition of Milton's
L'Allegro. I hear the wonderful musical description of "laughter
holding both his sides."  The descriptions of happiness in Bach's
cantatas (e.g. Freue Dich erloeste Schar, Unser Mund sei voll
Lachens) leave me with much to think about.

Katenus comments that music, pictorial art, architecture, poetry
and prose are each of them so diverse and so rich, that generalizations
are absurd, that the deductive method will take us nowhere, while 
induction, inviting the consideration of thousands of instances,
will lead to no result other than the exhaustion of the investigator.
Katenus points out that neither the catalogue nor the description nor
the analysis will do justice to esthetics, only the specific example
of a work of art, and this, not as an occasion for rationalization, 
but as reference to its own reality. Katenus tells me to go bite the 
bullet, accompany Charlotte to cooking school, experiment with some
of the recipes myself, let her introduce her teachers and her fellow
students, and above all, lay off pretending to be a philosopher. Maybe
I will, and maybe I won't.

Please give my best to Ned, and stay well.

Jochen