Dear Alex,

Happy New Year! Thank you for your letter. That I treasure your criticisms 
of me, is a confession which you may enter as a debit on my arrogance ledger.
Your saying, or implying, that I am wrong, gives me occasion to review what 
I have done, or what I am; and to try better to understand my deficiencies, 
even if I am incapable of curing them.

As I may or may not have told you, I've hit upon a trove of hand-scripted
19th century letters to my Jewish greatgrandparents Isaak and Emilie Meyer,
and I find it remarkable that letters among those family members are commonly 
closed with the assertion not, "I love you," but "I bless you" (Ich segne Dich),
a somewhat ironic circumstance, since, as I learn from the Internet, "segnen",
the German for "to bless", is derived from the Latin "signum" and refers
to making the sign of the Cross. The Latin word for blessing, of course 
is "benediction" which is a literal translation of the Greek εὐλογήσειν, 
to speak (logesein) well (eu) of a person. That speaking well of a person 
should be deemed equivalent to "blessing" him or her, seems to me the ultimate 
tribute to the power of language. The English word "Blessing" appears to have 
a very different etymology, to be related to the word "blood", and to refer to
sacrifice on some pagan altar which was then co-opted in a less violent 
context as equivalent to "benediction". Subsequent to my family's exile from
Germany, my father closed almost all of his letters to me with a blessing.
I have been particularly fond of the blessing of Aaron (Numbers 6:24-26)
which I quoted in the "program notes" that I drafted for my father's
memorial service 30 years ago:
 
24 The Lord bless thee, and keep thee:
25 The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
26 The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
  
I don't know why I write you all this, except that it's on my mind, and
that I've become habituated to writing what's on my mind, and nothing else.

Yesterday Nathaniel moved into the bedroom on the first floor of the Addition.
He had previously fled from his parents' house to room with the viola player
(CN) whose cell phone call recently interrupted the telephone conversation 
between you and me. Apparently CN was bugging Nathaniel to join him in walking
on the frozen Charles, perhaps even in his stocking feet, as recently did CN.
On that occasion, CN was lured to the bank by the police, who then jumped him 
and took him to the Mount Auburn EW, which released CN subsequent to telephone
assurances from unlicensed psychiatrist Nathaniel, that CN was a danger neither 
to himself or others. Nonetheless, Nathaniel subsequently decided that his 
grandfather was less mentally disturbed than his roommate, and switched abodes.
It was Hamlet who said to his friend:
"There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / 
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." 
 
You may remember in a telephone some weeks ago you mentioned that 
albeit somewhat belatedly, you had complied with Margaret's advice to
read Emily Dickinson's poetry, - and I, not wishing to be left behind,
did the same. Aware that Emily flourished (or languished) at the time
of the American Renaissance discovered (or invented) by F.O.Matthiessen, 
I wanted to know what Matthiessen thought about Emily, and after some 
days of looking for his book, I found the answer: nothing, and now ask:
what, if anything, this answer tells about Emily, about Matthiessen, or about 
the Renaissance. I should mention, that I consider myself an albeit somewhat
remote protegee of Matthiessen's. He was the only one of my non-teutonic
Harvard Professors who gave me a second thought. Although he was very
active in history and literature, I had virtually no personal contact with
him except as a student in his course Comparative Literature 3, where
I received an A not only for the course, but also on an essay about 
Aeschylus' Prometheus, with the comment: "An excellent paper with many fine
insights", the only college essay which was returned to me without even
a single derogatory comment. Matthiessen also gave me the Barrett Wendell 
prize for my essay on Nietzsche. You may remember that Matthiessen committed 
suicide on April 1, 1950, by hurling himself out of an upper story window of 
a downtown Boston hotel. For some reason, I've always thought it was the 
Park Plaza.

As you know, subsequent to Margaret's death, I spent many hours rereading and 
rereading the correspondence between her and myself, and at what time, if ever,
this correspondence might properly be disclosed to you became an issue that
concerned us. Whether one should ever publish, or consent to the publication
of ones most intimate experiences, is a conundrum which continues to perplex
me, to which I have found no answer. Perhaps, there is no answer, since every 
novel worth reading, every poem worth memorizing, every essay worth thinking 
about, is an exposition of its authors inner life, and is "written with blood" 
as Nietzsche said, not "with red ink." It is because real love letters are the 
products of a passion of which few authors are otherwise capable, such letters 
offer insights into human nature, - or if you forgive the extravagance - 
insights into the human soul, not otherwise obtainable. Subsequent to our 
discussions a few months ago, I switched into literature mode to reflect on the
love letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne, of Heinrich Heine to Elise Krinitz,
of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing to Eva König - and now my research about 
F.O.Matthiessen has led me to the remarkable correspondence between Matthiessen
the 24 year old Yale graduate and Harvard doctoral student and Russell Cheney, 
20 years older, an artist, a painter of landscapes. They met on the steamship 
"Paris",crossing the Atlantic from New York to England. There ensued an almost 
daily correspondence between them which in the end aggregated to 3000 letters, 
400 pages of which were published in 1978, 28 years after Matthiessen's death,
by their common friend, Louis Hyde, in a book, "Rat and the Devil," where "Rat"
is the pen-name of Cheney, and "the Devil" is Matthiessen's signature. In the 
Minuteman Library Network, "Rat and the Devil", is available only from the 
Concord Library, and it was from there thatthe Belmont Library obtained it for 
me. I found it so informative that last evening I scanned 200 pages into the 
computer, and before I return the book in a week or two, I expect to have 
scanned the remaining 200 pages, for reference in the coming weeks, months, 
and perhaps years. As yet I've read only a few dozen pages. I've come to no 
conclusion, I have no opinion about the meaning and value of what the 
respective authors of the letters are trying to tell each other. I contrast 
the style and content of Matthiessen's letters with the style and content of 
"An American Renaissance." In each case language creates a pseudo-reality, 
which like the clothes that an author wears, both conceal and reveal who he 
is and what he experiences.

Dear Alex, I'm not at all sure that you wanted to read all this, but all
the surer that I wanted to get it written. I may not even click the "send" 
button, but if I do, I ask you to forgive me.

Love Jochen