March 14, 2023
Dear Donald,

Thank you for your letter. I admire, referring not only to your self, but also to Jan, your energy and courage in traveling to keep in touch with, and on occasion to provide essential help to friends and to members of your family. As you know my physical condition, specifically the arthritis of my hips, has prevented my leaving the house for so many months or years that I have lost count. The only thing I am able to do for my family, is to make no demands on them other than to bring me groceries. The small refrigerator and a small microwave oven in my room make it possible for me to prepare my own meals. Since any improvement of the taste of canned spaghetti and meatballs in tomato sauce is barely discernable, I could easily eat them straight out of the can and dispense with heating them.

My only visitors are my son and my grandson. My son comes about three times a week. Often he brings his violin to practice so as not to have to waste any time talking to me.  That's known as killing two birds with one stone. Every day at an unpredictable time between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. my grandson brings me a bowl of hot oatmeal and a cup of hot coffee. If I am not asleep, he hands it to me, says to me "have a good day", turns around, picks up the dirty dishes from yesterday which I have put on top of the dresser, and leaves.  If I am asleep, as is sometimes the case, he leaves the food on my table. Rather than going to the trouble of putting it through the microwave, I eat it cold. Every month my visitors spend what cannot be more in aggregate than a few minutes fulfilling their obligations to converse with me. But since I haven't gone to the trouble of getting a hearing aid, and since it's too much trouble for them to speak slowly, forcefully and distinctly so that I could hear, I understand only a fraction of what they say, which doesn't seem to bother them, and which, in all candor, doesn't bother me either. Their other concerns are much more important to them, and as they leave, they are consistently polite in explaining to me that they must go because they have no more time.

If all this sounds as if I were complaining and as if I were sorry for myself, that would be a misunderstanding which even a hearing aid wouldn't cure. I've never been gregarious; I've always felt the need for solitude.  The nightmare of my present existence is the thought of being confined to a nursing home, to a mental hospital, or to some other penal institution and forced to watch football games in the intimate company of my fellow inmates, on a television screen which was never turned off. I still have the letter which I wrote 72 years ago where I described to my parents my anxiety about the loss of solitude if I were to get married. I sent a copy to my future wife, who replied, never mind, that she understood and that we should get married anyway.  Having saved me from myself for 63 blissful years, she died seven years and five months ago today to the day.

So now I spend my time, instead of talking (to myself), writing to myself.  I've long since disabused myself of the conceit that there is such a phenomenon as artistically valuable literature, something to which the Germans refer, with endearing naivete, als "Schöne Literatur." Consider it the apogee of sour grapes delusion, when I say that I find literary success a political event, analogous to winning a political election, where it's obvious that the potential reader buys the book because only semi-literate himself, his self-esteem requires endorsement of his judgment by a best-seller list, just as the cruel, vulgar, insensitive, ignorant and unintelligent MAGA voter derives a sense of personal greatness from playing his game to make America great again.

Since their only incremental overhead for the modest number of megabytes required to store texts of mine in their computers is negligible, amazon.com offers to publish in their "print-on-demand" scheme, anything, no matter how foolish, that I (or any one else) submits to them. For the 6 volumes of my novels which they have had available for the last ten years, they've sent me a total of $1.50 in royalties.  They seem satisfied with the ten dollars, more or less, that they must have profited.

To the questions why I continue to write and what my writing means to me, I have no answer other than the suggestion that writing might be like breathing, a ventilation of the mind analogous to the cycling by the lungs, of oxygen and carbon dioxide. I'm much aware of how, nowadays, my writing reflects the aging of my mind, specifically the fading of memory, with the consequence that unable to remember the previous chapter or the one before, I flounder in disjunction and repetition.

All my life, or at least since age 17, I've been fascinated by the relationship between art and madness, between poetry and insanity. The famous German poets who come to mind are Friedrich Nietzsche and Friedrich Hölderlin. As a college sophomore, I submitted an essay on the Insanity of Nietzsche, for which I received the last prize I ever won.  One of my favorite poems of Hölderlin's was written in the years of his mental breakdown and is entitled "Patmos", the name of the Aegean island where Saint John received his Apocalypse. The opening lines:

Nah ist
Und schwer zu fassen der Gott.
Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst
Das Rettende auch.
Im Finstern wohnen
Die Adler und furchtlos gehn
Die Söhne der Alpen über den Abgrund weg
Auf leichtgebaueten Brücken.
Drum, da gehäuft sind rings
Die Gipfel der Zeit, und die Liebsten
Nah wohnen, ermattend auf
Getrenntesten Bergen,
So gib unschuldig Wasser,
O Fittige gib uns, treuesten Sinns
Hinüberzugehn und wiederzukehren.

I translate as:

Near by
And hard to grasp is the god,
But where there is danger,
The rescuing plant is rooted as well.
In darkness dwell eagles,
And fearlessly the sons of the Alps
Traverse the abyss 
On lightly-built bridges.
Therefore, since heaped all around
Are the summits of Time, and loved ones
Nearby live languishing
On the most separate of mountains —
Give untolled water;
Oh give us wings of loyal intent
For the traverse and for the return.

I construe the entirely unidiomatic phrase "unschuldig Wasser" as a wordplay on the dual meaning of "Schuld" as guilt and as debt, referring to the verse from Revelations 22:17

Lutherbibel 1912
Und der Geist und die Braut sprechen: Komm! Und wer es hört, der spreche: Komm! Und wen dürstet, der komme; und wer da will, der nehme das Wasser des Lebens umsonst.

King James Bible
And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.

I conclude that insanity is contagious.

I end most of my letters with apologies for my thoughts, and this letter is no exception.

My best wishes for health and happiness to yourself and Jan. You should feel free to write to Klemens whatever and whenever you wish.

Jochen