Dear Alex, Please excuse yet another letter. Arguably a letter has the advantage over a telephone conversation that while it's embarrassing prematurely to curtail a conversation, there's no apology needed for putting a letter aside unread. I write many letters to various acquaintances and friends, each letter with the explicit assurance that it requires no answer and that I expect no answer. I suppose my excessive writing reflects an abnormality in my DNA. The reason I write again so soon is that I'm troubled by my mistake in oversimplifying when I declared the closing chorus of the St. Matthew Passion, for the reason that one can't weep and sing at the same time, to be noble and edifying theater, That's true only if one fails to understand that life is theater and that theater is life, and if one denies that lamentation is an albeit rudimentary form of artistic expression. Suddenly it occurred to me that, as is recited in the book by that name in the Old Testament, Lamentation has an important place in the history of the Jewish-Christian tradition, subjective and objective, as private experience and a public phenomenon. From very superficial reading on the Internet (wikipedia) I learn that in the original Hebrew Bible, Lamentations are formal, essentially untranslatable poems which were regularly recited, if not indeed sung, in religious ceremony. The St. Matthew Passion must be heard as a parody, (technically speaking) of ancient ritual, calculated, deliberate, explicit lamentation, beginning with the opening summons to the daughters of Jerusalem, "Kommt ihr Töchter, helft mir klagen" (Come ye daughters, help me lament.) through the exhortation at the end of Part I, "O man bewail thy sin so great," to the concluding summons to sit down in tears and call into the grave. This perspective makes me ashamed of what I wrote in my last letter. I'm impressed how understanding is contingent on words, and how ambiguous subtleties of meaning are created by language. The German word for "to lament" is "zu klagen." But "Klage" is also the technical term for a complaint in a court of law. Lawsuits in Anglo-american courts are not considered to be lamentations. Keep in mind the ambiguities of Milton's Il Penseroso, where "melancholy" describes a thoughtful state of mind. So many words, in so many lanuages have approximate overlapping meanings: Ernest (sic), serious, thoughtful, sad, sadness, grief, lamentation, suffering, anguish, torment, melancholy, (mental) depression, not to mention "bi-polar disorder." I ask myself whether lamentation is absolutely contingent on language, or whether symbolic actions such as tearing at ones hair and sprinkling ashes on ones head have an analogous significance, whether moaning and weeping should not be considered rudimentary lamentation. Perhaps lamentation and praise are symmetrical coordinates of "bi-polar" spiritual existence. Perhaps Shakespeare's observation, the worst is not when we can say, this is the worst, (Edgar in King Lear) is as good a definition of tragedy as Aristotle's. Perhaps Numbers 21 recounts the origin of tragedy. 5 And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread. 6 And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died. 7 Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD, and against thee; pray unto the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. 9 And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. Perhaps lamentation should be understood as the construction and contemplation of an image, such as of a fiery serpent, against whose poison whoever contemplates the image becomes immune. Is that what Tchaikovsky had in mind when he labled the last movement of his Pathetique Symphony: adagio lamentoso? Please forgive this letter. There's no need to answer it. Love, Jochen