Dear Marion,

Thank you for your letter. I never expected that I would someday have
an "hiin enkelte" of my own, a phrase from Kierkegaard which I translate 
(perhaps wrongly) as "jene einzelne",that single one, who reads my book(s). 
It's a strange feeling. There's, obviously, no obligation that you should 
continue, not with spring ready to pounce and every morning prepared to 
present a new version of (Homer') rosy-fingered dawn. (rhododaktylos eos). 
As you gleaned from my letter to Cynthia Behrman, of which you have a copy, 
my mind has run dry. No serious thoughts left, and those that once seemed 
important now appear trivial.

I'm much appreciative of your sensitive comments about our grandparents.
I agree that they were under pressure to integrate themselves into the
non-Jewish community. I agree that their nationalism and militarism are
expressive of a necessary effort to assimilate, to be part of the community,
a need to adapt which intellectuals, Einstein, Freud, Rathenau, Simmel,
Gundolf, - to name only those at the front of my mind, - were spared.
The more I reflect on it, the more problematic the "family tree" becomes
for me. The fact that we're related doesn't mean that we're alike; and 
the circumstance that the larger fraction of the family is dead and gone,
makes it possible to fantasize an affinity, an intellectual bond and an
emotional sympathy which could never have become real, which could never 
have been tested, because we lived in different eras. I suspect that most of
us who dabble in genealogy experience a feeling of kinship, even of closeness
to the branches of the family tree and to the ancestors entombed under the
crumbling gravestones. I for my part conclude that the intervention of
death spares us the profound embarrassment of having to admit that we're
not at all like one another, that we don't understand one another, and
when push comes to shove, we don't really like, we perhaps we even vigorously
dislike one another. I don't think they would like me. I don't think they
would read my books unless I had taken shelter under a pseudonym. 

Just now I have nothing more on my mind; but I may write again in a day
or two, - or I may not. That depends not on me but on the demons that impel
me. Enjoy the spring and stay happy. Best wishes for everything.

Jochen