Dear Cyndy,

To my mind, it all fits together, Katenuses infatuation
with "ideas", Cantata 106, the vasculitis, the conflicting
medical advice, and not least my own propensity to
pontificate.

a) the vasculitis. - months - years ago I related your
symptoms to Margaret's brother Peter, the Yale hematologist,
and received the answer that the description was very atypical
for Henoch Schoenlein Purpura, and that hes had never encountered
such a pattern of symptoms in his (academic) medical experience.
Katenus, who as you know from reading chapter 52, has opinions
about everything but "knows" nothing, comments 1) that disease is
an artificial construct, and that "diagnosis", as the presumption
to "know" the disease is an academic conceit. 2) that your problem
is not Henoch Schoenlein Purpura but Cynthia Behrman Purpura.
3) that so as each person's life is unique each person's
disease is unique. Specifically Katenus enlarges on Rilke's 
prayer "O Herr gib jedem seinen eigenen Tod" to encompass illness,
and that nothwithstanding the presumption of modern medicine to
assign to us diseases with uniform terminology (ICD-9, ICD-10)
the wise and experienced physician ignores the diagnostic label
and relies on the phenomenology of the disease for his/her advice to
the patient. Inasmuch as the symptoms have subsided, the issues are
i) whether recurrence can be prevented, and ii) whether attempts
should be made to mitigate a recurrence when and if it does happen.
Sometimes it is wisest to leave well enough alone.

b) Cantata 106. Christianity has little to do with it. Formal religions
are, all of them, to my mind, red herrings. The question is not whether
the listener is a Christian, but whether the listener is a human being.
Translate the word "God" with "inwardness" or "specifically my own."
I hear this cantata as instructions not about death, but about life and
how it should be lived in the face of death. Its message, though
somewhat at odds with the conventional wisdom is very congenial to me.
"Bestelle dein Haus," (put your house in order) is what I'm busy with,
all the time.

With respect to Katenuses comments in chapter 52, I consider them
like mathematical equations which may be erroneous and misleading, but
if not, might also be useful and productive.  In their present form,
their denomination as chapter 52 is only temporary. They belong in an
appendix or in a separate essay. I'm interested in the analogy between
life as it is experienced and life as it is recounted in the novel.
If ideas such as articulated in chapter 52 are meaningless then they
should be ignored. I'm interested in the possibility that they are NOT
meaningless and that they can be and should be integrated with the
narrative. I haven't succeeded in naturalizing them, but I believe
it's worth trying.

My response to Rebekah's paper has been to start to reread the Brothers
Karamasov. How far I'll get seems uncertain. I looked first at Ivan
Karamasoff's tale of the Grand Inquisitor.  I was impressed with the
naivete with which Christ was characterized as the worker of miracles.
I was struck by the description of the Inquisitor who had just presided
over the burning to death of 100 infidels, under the auspices of Ferdinand
and Isabella, patrons of Christopher Columbus, as a rational human being.
I thought of "Eichmann in Jerusalem". I infer that Doestoevski endorses
the Inquisitor's elaborate and contrived interpretation of the Temptations
of Christ to which the novelist allots so much space. (My own interpretation
is different.) Would you admit (or assert) that theological abstractions
at such length interfere with the dramatic unity of the novel? My intention
is to integrate Katenuses "philosophy" into the texture of my novel in the
manner in which my own "philosophy" is integral to my life. I haven't begun
to succeed with the literary phase of my project; and I admit that the non-
literary phase may be an illusion.

Please give my best to Ned.
Jochen