From: Nicola Chubrich
Dare: November 29, 2020
Dear Dr. Meyer:

So far it seems so (I mean continuing the felicitous course). I find myself tired tonight, and that is probably a good thing. I bought some minerals today, this being consequent of a very insightful session with an astrologer. I say all this with some trepidation, and only out of the impulse of honesty and confession: as I expect these things to be ill-regarded by rational people. It would probably not be of any use to say why I find these things helpful.

I have had some but too little time at the piano, and have enjoyed working on Schubert's glorious D. 959. I have found myself playing surprisingly well, and learning surprisingly quickly. I hope I am able to keep it up; but I don't know where I'll find a piano in Florida, and don't have one in my apartment (a digital piano suddenly seems inadequate, but this is exactly what good pianists say).

I am grateful for your admonition to remain confident. The utter loss of confidence was a portion of what ailed me this summer, and as I turned once again tonight towards examining my uncertain future, the last sentence of your letter was a useful corrective.

I don't know how long I will stay in Florida. I am definitely going with my parents January 8. My proposal to take on household tasks for you remains uppermost in my mind, but I continue to wonder whether it will be permissible to your family as the pandemic goes on growing.

N.I.C.

On Sun, Nov 29, 2020 at 9:11 PM Ernst Meyer <ernstmeyer@earthlink.net> wrote:

    Dear Nikola, Thank yu for your letter with the image of Lushen.
    I have no objection to your disclosing or giving copies of anything I
    write to anyone, at your discretion. I wish that your visit to
    Portsmouth will continue its felicitous course.
    EJM

    On 11/29/2020 01:48 PM, Nikola Chubrich wrote:
    > Dear Dr. Meyer:
    >
    > I shall presently go down and give your regards to my parents. I shall
    > not expect to be understood.
    >
    > I hope it will not be out of place for me to point out how very
    > Xueqinian your proposed Menschendaemmerung is; and still more so, the
    > Debt of Tears to which your leavings for posterity may presumably be
    > subjected. Are not Red Inkstone's manuscripts also tear-stained?
    >
    > At 4 pm I have a call with Lushen. He was disinclined to speak over
    > video, perhaps because, as he had said on previous occasions, he may not
    > be "up for it". He wished to devolve to the literary medium of
    > synchronous text strings, where poetry is waiting in the wings.
    >
    > I bade him compromise on an initial five minutes effaced to effaced,
    > then turning to the written word. I hope thereby to see that noble,
    > symmetric, and strong-jawed face, which in his land of birth is the
    > physiognomy of an emperor; but not in this country the face of a
    > president -- and smile upon it. (And can we say such a thing absent the
    > implicature of being lords of all creation?)
    >
    > lushen-wu-ccc4e5da.jpg
    >
    > Having given you the opportunity to see something of Lushen, I must now
    > confess an indiscretion. He being one other person (perhaps the only
    > other) of my acquaintance who writes or has written the kind of letters
    > I write to you, and (if I may say so without presumption) you write to
    > me, I sent him the letter you wrote concerning silence. I am tempted to
    > send him also the letter I am replying to now. Would this be casting
    > pearls before swine?
    >
    > N.I.C.
    >
    >
    >
    > On Sun, Nov 29, 2020 at 12:40 PM Ernst Meyer <ernstmeyer@earthlink.net
    > <mailto:ernstmeyer@earthlink.net>> wrote:
    >
    >     Dear Nikola,
    >
    >     Thank you for your letter.  I interpret Matthew 7:6, like everything
    >     spoken, as poetry, and as such subject to diverse interpretation. How
    >     _you_ interpret it, will be a reflection of yourself. I read this text
    >     which appears within the Sermon on the Mount, primarily as Jesus'
    >     ironic
    >     anticipation of his own fate. He is doing what he tells his hearers not
    >     to do.  I assert its applicability to myself as incident to the
    >     imitatio
    >     Christi to which each of us is authorized and condemned.
    >
    >     As I review my own life, I begin to understand all my communicative
    >     presumptions, the expectation that I might be "understood" - by any
    >     one,
    >     by my parents, by my existing family, by such "friends" as I have
    >     ... as
    >     illusions. Correspondingly, the expectation that I might learn to
    >     understand looks now like an empty dream. The alternatives with which I
    >     find myself confronted are to reject or to accept, to hate or to
    >     love. I
    >     "understand" that to survive, I have no choice.
    >
    >     This morning I see a vision of the - no not Goetterdaemmerung - but
    >     Menschendaemmerung (human decline) in which my series of novels will
    >     end, a dissolution of the society I have invented, where nothing will
    >     remain "for posterity" except a collection of stories and poems, on
    >     sheets of paper - or should it be DVDs - so damaged by rain - or by
    >     tears? -  as to be illegible.
    >
    >     Please give my regards to your parents. Be confident and well.
    >     EJM
    >