TALKING TO GHOSTS

TALKING TO GHOSTS

Theodor Storm: „O bleibe treu den Toten“

O bleibe treu den Toten,
Die lebend du betrübt;
O bleibe treu den Toten,
Die lebend dich geliebt!

Sie starben; doch sie blieben
Auf Erden wesenlos,
Bis allen ihren Lieben
Der Tod die Augen schloß.

Indessen du dich herzlich
In Lebenslust versenkst,
Wie sehnen sie sich schmerzlich,
Daß ihrer du gedenkst!

Sie nahen dir in Liebe,
Allein du fühlst es nicht;
Sie schaun dich an so trübe,
Du aber siehst es nicht.

Die Brücke ist zerfallen;
Nun mühen sie sich bang
Ein Liebeswort zu lallen,
Das nie hinüberdrang.

In ihrem Schattenleben
Quält eins sie gar zu sehr:
Ihr Herz will dir vergeben,
Ihr Mund vermag’s nicht mehr.

O bleibe treu den Toten,
Die lebend du betrübt;
O bleibe treu den Toten,
Die lebend dich geliebt!

A while back I found myself in conversation with certain departed friends + I realized that I had reached the stage of what I call

TALKING TO GHOSTS
and that there are far more ghosts to talk to than living friends or former authors and co-workers of all kind.

These conversations are

continuations...

of prior ones,
emendations

arguments

corrections

recriminations

apologies,

instances take the form

of wanting to make amends

but

in the underlined instances -

if you think of these conversations

in novelistic terms -

they

could be days if not weeks long,

the German word

ausufern

=flooding, breaching of dikes=

comes to mind and there is a novel of a unique kind buried in that idea and buried it will remain since I have volumes to complete but dwell on the notion of some of these conversations then intersecting since these friends in some cases knew each other, or become more closely acquainted in this domain of the imaginary.

The ones I find myself most frequently in conversation with are

Kurt Anschel, the closest Oakwood School Friend

Frank Conroy
a close friend until he cut out to Nantucket
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/07/books/frank-conroy-dies-at-69-led-noted-writers-workshop.html

Jerry Leiber
a near father in law!
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/23/arts/music/jerry-leiber-rock-n-roll-lyricist-dies-at-78.html

Paula Dunaway
I had hoped that the recently - 2017 -deceased Paula 
- love of my life senior year in college and for nearly another year at Stanford -
  toward the ends of our life would have a chance to tell each other what our lives had been like since last we saw each other in the mid 1970s
http://www.mauinews.com/news/local-news/2017/03/wife-of-poet-w-s-merwin-dies-at-their-peahi-home/


the 2016 deceased name-cousin Lee Roloff
a stellar analyst,
of Jungian persuasion
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10462937.2017.1349366?journalCode=rtpq20

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10462937.2017.1346159?journalCode=rtpq20

https://shrinkrapttheater.com/page5.html

http://www.jungchicago.org/images/images/Remembering-Lee-Roloff.pdf

Catherine Wolfman
 deceased  in 2006
with whom I shared extra-ordinary experiences during the 70s in New York

One of my closest and dearest friends,
Paul Sylbert passed several years ago and no one let me know... we had been e-mailing, I knew he was on oxygen and then I was afraid to call to get the bad news
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/movies/paul-sylbert-dead-oscar-winner-heaven-can-wait.html

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt just passed -
we shared Berlin experiences as well
as a New York friendship and a lively
e-mail correspondence

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/obituaries/christopher-lehmann-haupt-dead.html


https://www.welt.de/regionales/rheinland-pfalz-saarland/article186394902/Autor-Edgar-Hilsenrath-mit-92-Jahren-gestorben.html?wtrid=onsite.onsitesearch

The first Anerican writing teacher to make an impression and leave a lasting influence with the marvelous course he taught the Seniors at Oakwood School,  Yoshiro {Yosh} Sanbonmatsu

AND I now add author Larry Birns
"The End of Chilean Democracy"
Continuum Books, 1974 to this growing list

http://www.coha.org/message-from-the-board-and-friends-of-coha-on-the-passing-of-larry-birns/

scroll all the way down this pdf
https://www.oakwoodfriends.org/clientuploads/oak_leaves/OakLeaves-Winter-2017-2018.pdf

I first saw Carl Weber as a soldier in Johannes R. Becher's infamous STALINSCHLACHT at the Berliner Ensemble in 1957, later we became friends and collaborators over his directing my Handke translations and my vetting his Mueller work. If he had faults, and they were serious, it was that he was "pussy whipped", his wife fell ill everytime she did not want him to go somewhere without her, and that he felt obligated to add to his resume the most tenous connection, but he was a terriffic collaborator in the here and now https://news.stanford.edu/2017/01/11/carl-weber-professor-emeritus-drama-protege-director-bertolt-brecht-dies-91/


The other day I found myself in conversation in a dream with John Felstiner, we were discussoing Handke's work which is always on my mind, I was citing the major posts Handke had to pass to be admitted to the cast of classics and John who seemed a bit shorter as he stood there assented to each and every one.
I met John Felstiner in Seattle during one of his readings and we became instant friends, a very rare presence, one of the very few that I encountered during my West Coast Years. Chief connection of course was German-Jewish Poetry, Celan, Nelly Sachs... 

https://news.stanford.edu/2017/03/09/poetry-scholar-translator-john-felstiner-dies/

first a quote from Handke's 

DIE UNSCHULDIGEN 

http://handke-drama.blogspot.com/2014/10/die-unschuldigen-ich-und-die-unbekannte.html

that is entirely apropos

 "Die Toten. Mir geht es mehr und mehr so, daB ich sie anrede,

im s tillen, die Toten: Und es sind das, seltsam, nicht die

schon lange Toten, sondern die Juengstverstorbenen. Und ich

erzahle ihnen dann, was der Fall ist, zahle ihnen den Tag auf,

klipp und klar. Na ja, weder klar noch klipp, und auch nicht,

was der Fall ist. Nein, kein Erzahlen - eine bloBe Wendung

an sie, die Toten. Aber schon in der Wendung an sie, mit ihr"

==================

Excluded are family members.

Only a single truly hated is among the listed, the monstrous Roger Straus,

too bad there's no Hell, sure'd like to run into him there

 while on my way to a stretch in limbo!

OAKWOOD SCHOOL:

KURT ANSCHEL

JOHN ERNST

SALLY WEDGEWOOD

YOSHIRA S0NMBANMATSO
LIBBY LEVINSON-MOROFF
SAM HO

The Newlins
Professor Mason

HAVERFORD COLLEGE +
BRYN MAWR

FRANK CONROY

JOHN MUSSER

DANNY THOMAS

HARRY PFUND

JOHN ASHMEAD
KEN GEIST

ALICE TURNER
PAMELA WYLIE
PAUL DUNAWAY
Caroline Leslie Whitney

NEW YORK:

JERRY LEIBER

ELAINE KAUFMAN

CANDIDA DONADIO

ROBBIE LANTZ

WERNER LINZ

JEFF BROWN

JACK RICHARDSON

BUZZ FARBER

TOM BUCKLEY (NYT)

NICO, THE RESTAURATEUR

SUSAN SONTAG

RICHARD GILMAN

MICHAEL LEBECK

ROBERT PHELPS

BORIS PEARLMAN/ POLICEBAND

MICHAEL LOCASCIO

RUTH LANDSHOF-YORK

HENRY ROBBINS

DONALD BARTHELME

Richard Poirier

DONALD WARD

RICHARD DILOFF​

    JEFFREY STEINBERG
   LEO FELDSBERG​

   Dr. Eugene Schwartz

PETER PEARL, bar keep

DR. MARC VECHSLER

FRED PRAEGER

GEORGE ALDOR

ARTHUR ROSENTHAL, the publisher
Arnold Dolin, editor
Martin Kessler, editor 

Kurt Eisler, the analyst

Roger Straus, Sr. 

-not exactly a friend but a dishonorable thief and I keep saying quite a few things to him!
MARIANNE MADDEN
Mary Hanson (Siff)
Miriam Hansen

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

John Felstiner

Carl Weber

GUS BLAISDELL

L.A. + SEATTLE

FRITZ REDLICH
TOM BARRY
Arnold Heidsick
Richard Sylbert
robert sandel
[name cousin] Lee Roloff, a wonderful Jungian analyst
Ted Dorpat, author of WOUNDED MONSTER, a fine analysis of hitler's trauma

GERMANY + WRITERS + AUTHORS

NELLY SACHS

UWE JOHNSON

GUENTER GRASS

PETER WEISS
CHRISTIAN ENZENSBERGER
FRANZ INNERHOFER
LARS GUSTAFSON
LEDIG ROWOHLT
FRITZ RADDATZ
Theodor Adorno

HUBERT FICHTE

LEDIG ROWOHLT

SIEGFRIED UNSELD
Klaus Piper
SAM SHEPARD
TANKRED DORST

JAKOB ARLOW

WILFRED BURCHETT

BREAST CANCER VICTIMS

The Most Painful, for Beauty to die in that Fashion,

incidentally or rather not: none were lovers, might have beens!

Lacey Fosburgh

LOIS WALLACE

Hannah Wilke

KATHLEEN TYNAN

-------------

September 20 2018

https://www.zeit.de/kultur/kunst/2018-09/fotografin-verlegerin-inge-feltrinelli-gestorben ​AND ANOTHER FRIEND BITES THE DUST. INGE MADE A PASS AT ME AT THE GRUPPE 47 MEETING IN PRINCETON IN 1966 BUT THERE WERE TOO MANY PEOPLE AROUND WHO KNEW BOTH OF US TO OBLIGE, CHICKENED OUT.​ KNEW HER FROM MY AUNT ANNALIE IN HAMBURG WHERE SHE WAS LEDIG ROWOHLT'S SOMETHING OR OTHER. WE STAYED IN TOUCH AND SHE WAS INTERESTED IN MY WORK. X M.R

 PETER MAYER A FEW WEEKS AGO, DID NOT KNOW ROTH, SYLBERT A TRULY CLOSE FRIEND, NO ONE ALERTED ME WHEN HE DIED TO YEARS AGO. I WAS WORRIED, HE WAS ON OXYGEN AND THERE HAD BEEN NO E-MAIL FOR A FEW YEARS AND I WAS TOO COWARDLY TO CALL.WONDER HOW BRUCE JAY FRIEDMAN IS DOING  A TRULY GOOD FRIEND = TWO LOVERS DIED IN THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS. MARY HANSEN AND ALICE TURNER WHO WAS THE PLAYBOY FICTION EDITOR AND FUCKED LIKE THE PROVERBIAL 'SMALL WHALE.' JOHN FELSTINER DIED ABOUT HALF A YEAR AGO, WHAT A TRULY LOVELY SPIRIT, OLD TINE COLLABORATOR CARL WEBER WHOM I FIRST SAW PLAYING A SOLDIER IN J. R BECHER'S STALIN-SCHLACHT AT THE ENSEMBLE IN 1957 IN BERLIN HIS ASHES WERE SCATTERED IN THE PACIFIC EARLY THIS YEAR, BIGGEST LOVE OF MY COLLEGE DAYS, PAULA DUNAWAY LAST MARRIED TO  W.S. MERWIN EXPIRED WITHOUT OUR HAVING A CHANCE TO EXAMINE EACH OTHER'S TRIPS. PAULA SURE WAS THE GIRL TO MARRY OF ALL THE ONES BACK THEN IN JUST ABOUT EVERY RESPECT AND IT IS ONE LOSS I NEVER MANAGED TO GET OVER. Sister Grace/Gisela and her husband Claude, too, passed. It's getting cold and lonely indeed.