Dear Cyndy,

I've had a chance to show Katenus your letter, specifically
the paragraph in which you wrote:

"I have now read Chapter 52.  I think Katenus, much as I love him,
is a bit loony.  He gets so tangled up in words that I think
he misses reality altogether.  But perhaps I misunderstand him. 
I often find myself responding just as Joachim does.
But it's your novel not mine.  I would like more plot and less talk.
Does Kat like music, by the way?  It occurs to me that if he listened,
quietly, to a Bach cantata and just let the music flow over him,
he would be less anxious, and enjoy life more."
 
Katenus was pleased, so much that he started to laugh. "It's wonderful,"
he said, "to be understood. At long last there's someone who recognizes
that what I say, doesn't make sense. I've known that for a long time
but kept it a deep dark secret. I feel the relief of Dmitri Karamasov
or Rodion Raskolnikov when their crimes had finally been discovered.
The allusion to music is eminently relevant. I know a singer with a
wonderful voice and a remarkable memory, who is able to sing all the
notes assigned to either Fiordiligi or Dorabella ex tempore, but who
when I show her the vocal score looks at me in dismay and says: "What
am I to do with this scribbling. It has nothing to do with music."
Katenus paused and thought for a moment. I admit my incompetence, but
I couldn't possibly get through the Goldberg Variations without the
score. My memory just isn't up to it. I think as a matter of fact,
that the notes are integral to the music. Though Bach was able to
improvise extemporaneously, perhaps only Mozart could have assembled
those notes in his mind to play them again without a score, and 
perhaps not even he. Similarly, words are essential to thought.
We can't think without them. Thought that disdains language is
unavoidably shallow. Agreed, the risk of verbal entanglement is
very real. But it's a risk, Katenus said, that I wish to take.
Whether, for the sake of an expanded horizon or a more profound
understanding, anyone else should take that risk of becoming
entangled in words is not for me to decide.  As for myself, I'm
addicted; can't help it.

It was only when I had progressed well into the third chapter
of the Brothers Karamasov that I noticed that Father Karamasov's
first name Fjodor, and Dostoesvki's own first name Fjodr, are
the same. Fjodor Karamasov is denominated in my German translation
as "Possenreisser", which means a trickster, and Th. Mann will
tell you that trickster is a descriptor eminently applicable to
the novelist, in which case Dmitri, Ivan, and Aloisha should be
considered at minimum the author's spiritual children and he
rather than Fjodor Karamasov should be deemed responsible for them.
Something to think about.

Jochen