Letter to Lydia
In the envelope that contained the prior two letters, one to Leon, the other to Leon’s wife, Lydia, there’s one other letter that appears to be from this time period that I will transcribe today:
“Dear Lydia,
Thanks very much for your letter. And for the little buffet of the pig’s-bladder it administered (?): this time I promise not even to apologize for my apologies – though I admit the reductio ad infinitum is not without a certain temptation for me. I could eventually apologize my way to such a distance from whatever it was I imagined to be my original offense that I might even experience something like exculpation. Actually, all I was apologizing for was the crime of being born, and yet I realize how inane and exasperating it is to do so to another convict like yourself. [so interesting that that Bob addresses the mother of his late best-friend and future life partner, Kathleen in this way and in this tone]. Guilt, like misery, loves company. How irritating (as if there were some taint of hypocrisy behind it) when Plotinus expresses his shame at having a body. Just another of those fellows who wants to have his cake and eat it to – that is to say, enjoy simultaneously the pleasures of being dead and being alive. By the way, I loved the little poem you sent along [missing along with Lydia's letters]. What an elegant rendering of the condition of being spiritually displaced [could be one of a hundred thousand poems!] Verruckt, as the Germans would say: the word means both displaced and crazy. (Oh, incidentally, Freund does mean friend in German.) Speaking of Germans, I saw Kubler-Ross on TV last night. Much that she said confirmed for me what Yeats says int he chapter of A Vision called ‘The Judgment of the Dead.’ [Those who didn't know him might picture a man reminded of something he once read, pouring over volumes of Yeats or, nowadays, googling the bard, but that wasn't what Bob did. He spoke conversationally just like this, quoting Shakespeare, Yeats, Joyce, Heidegger, Plotinus -- people I never heard of before or since, citing a line or paragraph from memory that was perfectly appropriate for whatever point was being made, which is to say, his memory was encyclopedic]. Particularly the idea of dreaming back or digestive recapitulation of one’s life experiences in the light of the spirit. This is undoubtably what is anticipated by the acute memory for seemingly trivial details, drawn from the whole span of a life, experienced by the dead or dying [is it me reaching or is that what I was just praising Bob for doing all the time?]
May I confide to you my creed? Image-making precedes fact. Images are not generated by matter; on the contrary, matter, which is arrived at by abstract analysis, is a concept derived from the play of images, whose wellspring is the Unfathomable, called by some, God. It is perhaps unfortunate, but we have no good cause to expect to be rid of images when we are rid of our physical husks. [yikes] All that will happen is that Causality and Accident will be replaced by Meaning – as is provisionally and imperfectly the case when we dream. That we happen not to remember anythign from before we were born proves nothing but our forgetfulness, which after all is a merciful ingredient in a universe that goes on forever! Swedenborg, if I’m not mistaken, says somewhere that angels were once men, but that they have been granted the privilege of forgetting this odious circumstance, and thus they seem in their own eyes to have been angels from the beginning of Eternity.
[I have to stop. Sometimes the ideas are just too full, or maybe it's Bob's presence, so wearily missing in the day to day, is back so strong in these words. If you're reading this, and having a reaction of any kind, drop me a line in the form of a comment. I believe Bob would like us to be in some kind of groupalogue over his ideas, even his insecurities, something the blog form seems perfect for. More of this letter tomorrow, good Lord willing and the creek don't rise, as Laurie says.]