User talk:Prof02/Erich Heller

Acknowledgements

The author of the Erich Heller article wishes to extend sincere thanks to all who, directly or indirectly, helped in its preparation, in particular

• the staff of the Special Collections department at the Library of the Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra, Australia
• the staff of the Auswärtiges Amt of the Federal Republic of Germany, Berlin, Germany
• Professor Hermann Bausinger, Tübingen, Germany
• the staff of the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste, Munich, Germany
• the staff of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A.
• the staff of the Department of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts, Bodleian Library, Oxford, England
• the staff of the Referat B 1 a of the Bundesarchiv of the Federal Republic of Germany, Koblenz, Germany
• the staff of the Bundespräsidialamt of the Federal Republic of Germany, Berlin, Germany
• the staff of the Cambridge University Library, Cambridge, England
• the staff of the Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England
• the staff of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, New York, U.S.A.
• the staff of the Consulate-General of the Federal Republic of Germany, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
• the staff of the Dalhousie University Archives, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
• Professor Thomas De Koninck, Université Laval, Québec, Canada
• the staff of the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach, Germany
• the staff of the Edinburgh University Library, Edinburgh, Scotland
• the staff of the Eranos Foundation, Ascona, Switzerland
• the staff of the Goethe-Institut, Munich, Germany
• the staff of the Herder-Institut, Marburg, Germany
• the Right Reverend František Hylmar, S.J., Provincial of the Society of Jesus, Prague, the Czech Republic
• the staff of the Office of University Archives and Records Management, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, U.S.A.
• the Manager and staff of the Manuscript Division of the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland
• the staff of the the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library, New York, New York, U.S.A.
• the staff of the University Archives, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, U.S.A.
• the staff of the Oxford University Press, Oxford, England
• Professor T.J. Reed, Oxford, England
• the staff of the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.A.
• the Administrator and members of the Sudetendeutscher Heimatkreis Komotau, Erlangen, Germany
• the staff of the Thomas-Mann-Archiv, Zurich, Switzerland
• the staff of the Universität Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
• the staff of the Universität Wien, Vienna, Austria
• the staff of the Rare Books and Special Collections department of the Rush Rhees Library, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, U.S.A.
• the staff of the English Department, University College London, London, England
• the Rector and staff of the Univerzita Karlova, Prague, the Czech Republic
• Professor Robert Weisberg, Stanford Criminal Justice Center, Stanford University, Stanford, California, U.S.A.

— Prof02; e-mail: <hellerarticle@yahoo.com>.

Image

To the best knowledge of the author of this article, there are no photographs of the subject in the public domain. A reference to the photographs known to exist has been incorporated in the last paragraph of the article. The use of those photographs is restricted, however. -- Prof02 07:14, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Is there any chance you may be able to obtain permission from the copyright holder to use one of these photos under a free license? Are there any students or friends of Heller who have private photos and would be wiling to release one under a free license? u p p l a n d 08:25, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I will try, and have already initiated steps in this direction. ---- Prof02 07:12, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Good news, the University authorities have graciously released to me one photograph from his Estate, a really excellent likeness, with permission to use it here, on condition that ownership be clearly acknowledged. In technical terms, I am not sure I know what to do next (i.e., how to put it up; I am not an expert in computing). ---- Prof02 09:15, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Please walk me slowly, in very very simple non-technical language, through all the steps I have to take in order to upload an image (as you have requested) to illustrate this article. -- Prof02 10:01, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Please see: Wikipedia:Uploading images for a steep to steep guideline Brian | (Talk) 10:19, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I have replied with a guide to how to upload a picture at User talk:Prof02. I don't now if it is any better than the one already in existence. u p p l a n d 10:38, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Request for feedback

The writer of the present article would like to hear from its readers concerning the article's comprehensiveness, clarity, and usefulness. ---- Prof02 08:16, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi, please use Requests for feedback, Wikipedia:Requests for Expansion, or Wikipedia:Peer Review. Thanks, Tangotango 16:51, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I would advice putting this up for peer review, even though I have to warn that not all peer review objects get much of a response. After a week or two you may move it to the Featured article candidates page, where the discussions tend to be more active. If you have problems with how to go about technically to do this, I can help you with that. u p p l a n d 08:25, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Uppland, you are most helpful now, as you have been in the past. The problem is that very few people are really competent to write about his thought; his influence is nowadays most perceptible outside the English-speaking world, in Japan, in India, and other areas that enjoy vibrant intellectual life. He might have been a bombshell in the 1950s and 1960s in the U.K. and the U.S., but now has been to some extent neglected. This is partly due to the fact that new issues have emerged in recent times that have a claim on our attention: the clash of civilizations, the role of religion in civil society, the nature of Islam. Heller does not address these issues as such. However, underlying problematic is the same now, it seems to me, as it was in his day: the concept of Evil, of co-existence of diverse populations, etc., with the possible new (or rather just expanded) role of religion in certain societies. And the role of religion preoccupied him too, of course. Hence I see his relevance to the present-day issues. In this, however, I am rather alone. ---- Prof02 10:10, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

With respect to Bishonen's posting on the article's History page, dated May 13, 2006, at 20:47 ('Beginning... sentence; Prof02, please WP:NPOV this sentence, I'm not sure how. But both "most" and "important" have to go!'), I am not quite ready to capitulate to the ultimatum. Heller was the only known thinker on the human condition in the latter part of the 20th century; hence calling him one of the most important thinkers on the human condition is not a bias, or even a value judgement, but a fact. Everybody of course thinks on the human condition at some time of his or her life, but what makes Heller one of the most important thinkers on the subject I hope emerges from the article (study the section entitled 'Supplementary references' ---- most of which document the reception of his thought by others, as well as its general influence on the discourse up to our own day). I should add that the article is still in progress, and what you see posted is not perhaps its final shape. I might also mention that I have since created five or six additional articles, ALL of them in some way supplementary to this one (sc. either providing information on the people or concepts mentioned in the Erich Heller article). ---- Prof02 10:10, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Very interesting article! I should have written more at large on this page to make my meaning clear, instead of trying to squeeze it into an edit summary. Sorry if I sounded peremptory! I didn't mean to give an ultimatum, but rather a caution--oh, sheesh, that sounds worse--anyway, what I meant was that those are words that'll set off clanging warning bells in many experienced editors' heads, and will give you endless trouble, say on Peer Review, and especially on WP:FAC. It doesn't really help that a case for the claim is implicitly made--"emerges"--further down. Especially not when it only emerges if the reader spends a day in a library with the supplementary reference list. That's too late. IMO the first sentence needs to be rewritten so that it ascribes the opinion of his importance to a source; or rather, considering the largeness of the claim, preferably to several major sources. The way it is now, it sounds like the opinion of Wikipedia; that's not good.

For me calling it an opinion: I'm not quite ready to accept it as fact on the strength of your argument that all the other 20th c thinkers on the human condition were active in the first part of the century. Playing devil's advocate here, couldn't that just as well be a sign that the philosophical mainstream had moved elsewhere, leaving Heller high and dry, and a lone voice on the subject, marginalized rather than important? Less important than a whole crowd of human-condition thinkers of the early 20th century? I don't mean to offend, and I'm certainly not saying it's the case--I'm in no position to--I'm just teasing out certain equally possible implications of what you say here. Anyway, since you have so much documentation of the reception of his thought by others, it shouldn't be a problem to point to some of it in the introduction. That wouldn't only satisfy the NPOV hounds, but add a valuable perspective in its own right. Bishonen | talk 11:08, 14 May 2006 (UTC).

I deeply appreciate what you are saying. No doubt, he is marginalized, yes. Much of that marginalization is due to the very facts that constituted the core of his critique of the Zeitgeist: the pedantic preoccupation of the academia with minutiae of no consequence to the detriment of a broader picture that portends naked horror, horror that is already clearly visible in the offing. They do bear him a grudge, as a consequence, except, as I say, in distant lands where his accusations are not taken personally.

The writing of this article has been rather arduous on account of the fact that I am on a visiting assignment in an area without access to the very sources which I am citing, and have to rely on my notes. I cannot at present even re-read some of his books, which are out of my reach. Once I manage to put my hands on things, the article will undoubtedly grow. I will think about the opening sentence, and will revise it or flesh it out with references as you request. Thank you again for responding. ---- Prof02 06:36, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Incidentally, it would be very helpful both for yourself and later editors if you filled in the edit summary field, below the edit window, to indicate what kind of edit you've made. When you save a change, this summary becomes part of the History page, the way mine are. (The History page cannot be edited directly.) Please see Help:Edit summary for how it works. Bishonen | talk 18:25, 15 May 2006 (UTC).

Dear friend, I have not been filling the edit summary notes because I am not editing this article, but still composing it. It is a work in progress, by the 'original major contributor'. I wish to add that, whenever I visit, in the course of working on my contribution here, the articles written by others, and either see some mistakes or misspellings in them (e.g., a single letter in the Marcel Reich-Ranicki article!) or wish to add to them links to my article, I always scrupulously note the change(s) I institute. -- Prof02 09:15, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I suppose I used "edit" in a Wikipedia jargon sense, sorry. The window in which you're composing the article is the "edit window", and anything you change there, and confirm by hitting "Save", is "an edit". Editing means any writing in the encyclopedia — addition, subtraction, rewriting, or original composition. Oh, and we're all "editors", too! I guess I've become so used to this specialized use of the word on this site that I forgot how confusing it really is. Anyway, I don't mean to go on about it, but for an argument about the usefulness of filling in the edit summary field for any "editing", perhaps you'd like to take a look at Help:Edit summary and see what you think? Bishonen | talk 11:57, 16 May 2006 (UTC).

Does the rephrased opening sentence, 'a British essayist and thinker on the human condition — particularly as it appeared in the light of the climacteric events of the twentieth century', meet with your approval? -- Prof02 12:52, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Very good idea, very NPOV. (I guess I'd rather use "climactic", as more common and with fewer alternate meanings, and a comma rather than dash, but that's me.) I do like it, but perhaps you'd like to elaborate on it, like mention the Holocaust? The Lead section is supposed to summarize all the major parts of the article — to be the article in little — and to be as clear and accessible as possible, for instance for a very young reader. It should "summarize the primary reasons the subject matter is interesting or notable" (see WP:LEAD), and it seems to me that being more specific about the 20th-century events would go more to notability than the biographical details do. In fact, come to think of it, and if you don't mind my saying so, I don't think the biograpical paragraph is ideally placed in the Lead. I would move most of it to the article proper, i. e. move it below the Table of Contents by giving it a heading, as a biographical section (the first section), and spend the freed-up Lead space on Heller's thought, since that's what makes him notable. Bishonen | talk 13:32, 16 May 2006 (UTC).

On the subject of the article's organization, your point is well taken (and now implemented). 'Climacteric' and 'climactic', however, are not synonyms; nor is either word polysemantic. -- Prof02 09:50, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

The opening segment is not yet complete (merely repositioned from other paragraphs); as I said I am still rereading the sources (and dealing with all kinds of stress). How much more extensive do you think that opening section should be? Is it clear as it stands? -- Prof02 07:50, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Charles Matthews on edit summaries

Can I emphasise the importance of using edit summaries, and of marking minor edits as such? It makes it much harder to edit collectively, in the absence of such clues to the way the article is moving. Charles Matthews 11:30, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

In a nutshell, no, you can't, Sir. Seeing your previous 'contribution' to my article on 11 May 2006, I would like now to go public by inviting you to disinterest yourself in it. If you are this website's owner, or administrator (in addition to being the owner of a copywriting agency in Cambridge), and I therefore cannot reckon without my host and work without the kind of interference you dish out, I will then be forced to ask that this article be taken off this site to allow me to work on it offline, and only decide whether or not I wish to have it posted here (together with the photograph which is posted at my discretion) when and if the article is finished.

I am not asking for your response and instructions on mode of conduct. I am fully aware that being a guest in these pages I must expect some sort of collective input, and being a writer I welcome it. Bishonen and other good people helped me to make this article better. In fact, I was the first to ask for feedback. Your mininstrations, however, are of a different order: you offer no feedback, but self-important interventions that betray lack of any competence in the subject (removal, as 'editorializing', of matter that stems from the opinions of the subject of this article, through incomprehension of what is at stake, etc., etc.; and your changing of my 'smart quotes', input with some difficulty from the section of special sorts (typographic sorts, Sir) at the bottom of the edit page, into straight typewriter strokes approaches vandalism, whether deliberate or not). I repeat I welcome input from readers of my article. Arbitrary changes of substance must have grounds to validate them, however.

This article has taken three months of research in three countries on two continents, conducted without any compensation, and bolstered with 30 years of scholarly notes on the subject. (This period may be longer, or not much shorter, than the span of your life at present.) If you do not have a single good word of gratitude for my labour or appreciation for its results, may you at the very least spare me the stress that your interest in my contribution provokes? There is a plethora of 'stubs' and incomplete articles on this site, sorry pieces that require cleaning, etc. (there is even a special page dedicated to the listing of them), and you can practically get a life dealing with those. -- Prof02 07:32, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I should point out that you have some basic misunderstandings here.

• There is no ownership of articles on Wikipedia (Wikipedia:Ownership of articles). This is fundamental.
• There is a perfectly good way for you to draft an article without edits from others, which is to make it a subpage of your user page (User:Prof02/Heller, for example). This is a recognised way. If you place an article in the name space others are entitled to edit it, just as much as you are.
• We have a policy on edit summaries, and you are politely being asked to conform to it.
• We have a policy on civility (Wikipedia:Civility), and a strong policy on no personal attacks (Wikipedia:No personal attacks).

It is particularly important that you understand that personal attacks on editors are not to be used to discourage edits. This is fundamental.

You should also note that encyclopedic style here rigorously avoids 'editorial'. I think you will find no support for your views on that.

I am grateful to have an article on Heller. If I turn my head to the left, I can see The Disinherited Mind on a shelf that has also works by Broch, Prawer, Canetti, Sebald, Hamburger, Hofmannsthal, Joseph Roth amongst others. You have really no basis for your comments. I edited in line with house style, and with explanations: I was reverted unceremoniously, which is out of order. The high horse is not a place from which to comment, here. Charles Matthews 07:58, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Prof02, re your question about the lead section: bluntly speaking, I think it's a bit long in relation to the article, and a bit too unique in content, i. e. not enough of a summary of the whole. The subheading and the long quote are kind of non-standard. A good way to get a feeling for the house standards of leads might be to take a look at a few Featured articles. As you've probably noticed, a randomly picked article is pretty likely to not conform to wiki guidelines, since editors' wiki expertise varies so much; but the Featured articles, as "the best Wikipedia has to offer", always do conform on that level, however individual they may be in other ways. You may care to browse a little in Featured categories like for instance culture and society or philosophy.

I'm sorry to see that you are under stress. Being new to the principles of Wikipedia while making major contributions is a stressful business. It must be unfamiliar to you, and perhaps seem disrespectful, that other people edit your texts. However, at Wikipedia, editing is collaborative. This serves the encyclopedia well, as new editors who have much to contribute are most often not used to writing in the encyclopedic style, and often have a tendency to editorialize. Experienced editors such as Charles Matthews can help them conform to site policy, and I'm sorry you found it necessary to revert his excellent copyedit of May 11. I'm sure you'll agree that a website is entitled to its own conventions and practices, and CM's edits brought the article into line with the Wikipedia practices: NPOV writing, the encyclopedic style, which is distinct from the essay style, the non-editorializing style. I see that you were upset at his request for edit summaries, but the use of them is indeed policy (for many good reasons); that's why I also requested them before, and someone else on your talkpage in April. Altogether, I can only endorse what Charles Matthews tells you: he's simply giving you information. Btw, I notice that he also very properly avoids pulling rank as Wikipedia top management; he's a member of the Wikipedia:Arbitration committee, in other words something of a policy specialist, so you may safely take his advice. Best wishes, Bishonen | talk 21:52, 18 May 2006 (UTC).

Ease of editing section break

I regret I am unable to submit myself to your demands.

(1) Edit summaries. No court of law anywhere in the world, not even in the post-Orwellian world, would legitimize the doublespeak whereby the author of a work-in-progress could be considered to be his own ‘editor’ for the purpose of defining his rights vis-à-vis his own work. If however, as the author of the work-in-progress in question, I am asked to provide ‘edit summaries’, I am in reality being asked to provide you and others, not with any ‘editorial’ details that might help anybody with anything, but rather give you a privileged insight into my creative process, disclose my work methodologies, organization of material, priorities given to certain aspects of the subject, the direction in which I am going with the article, etc., etc. No one has any right whatever to this information, and insistence that I divulge it constitutes an invasion of my privacy as the author. While such an invasion may not violate Wikipedia’s internal guidelines and policies, it is against the law of my country (which is also the country where Wikipedia was founded). By becoming a guest on this website and by using your facilities I did not, voluntarily or involuntarily, implicitly or explicitly, surrender the rights vested in me by the law of the land. Their infringement is an offence. Whatever Wikipedia guidelines might say, they do not supersede the law of the land, whether they are pressed ‘politely’ or ‘impolitely’.

(2) Other Wikipedia guidelines. While you cite Wikipedia guidelines on civility, you say nothing about guidelines on vandalism. Should a user who vandalises an article by removing from it matter which he, in the ignorance of the subject matter he presumes to meddle in, considers to be ‘editorialising’ while it is in fact primary source material (because unable to admit his ignorance he doesn’t wish to ask the author for clarifications, as he should), or who removes, for reasons better known to himself, an author’s special sorts and replaces them with common sorts -- should a user guilty of such an intervention not be barred from Wikipedia, by having his access blocked whoever he happens to be, the site’s owner, founder, administrator, high member of the management committee, a president of a country, or a simple visitor? Are some people here more equal than others with respect how the Wikipedia guidelines are implemented, or, being judges themselves, consider themselves immune from charges of their violation? What constitutes simple vandalism if not something like this?

(3) Vandalism. I point out that I have borne the vandalism of May 11 quietly, without a single word of complaint, and even incorporated into the text one or two of your stylistic emendations (e.g., 'Heller's own tout court for 'Heller's tout court) wherever they were valid, although the shock produced enough bad taste in my mouth to prejudice me against you sufficiently to dismiss you wholesale. I have not yielded to the temptation. (No one, by the way, has to take me at my word: the record is there for all to see, just a mouseclick away, by comparing versions on the article’s History page.) Now you add insult to injury by perorating to me from what platform I don’t know, since you do not disclose it. (Bishonen provides additional information on your position within Wikipedia as an arbitrator.) But this crosses the line, in my book, however important the person might be.

(4) Article as such. The article is not being written for any one person in particular (to be ‘glad to have’ or otherwise), whether as my host or whatever. It is addressed to a broad cross-section of the general readership. It is not a piece of meat thrown in for a member of the management committee to carve according to his own tastes and preferences, whether now or in the future, but intended as sustenance for many. This alone justifies the investment that went into creating it. The fact that someone is the owner of a book written by the subject of the article (and even the acquaintance with that book’s content, if he has it) does not create any special relationship between that person and the article, beyond the relationship that he might enjoy with any other article on the website, including the incomplete ‘stubs’ with which I suggested he might profitably employ himself. I am sorry that you value Wikipedia so low as to consider such a suggestion an uncivil affront; it was intended as a constructive guidance to you, which, if implemented, might prove profitable to the site’s users (including myself).

(5) Civility. I stand accused of high horsemanship. I am sorry to point out the Ontological Invalidity of such an accusation. It is not a trespass to ride a horse, high or low, if one has one. Such a statement has no leg to stand on as an accusation in the public arena, which this site is, except as an invective ad personam. What can be legitimately asked is whether, in the course of my riding the high horse, I have tread on anybody’s toes. And the answer is no. You however have tread on my toes without apology, and now with the brazen defiance of an added invective. Again, perhaps you consider yourself immune from compliance with the very guidelines on civility which you cite to me. On what grounds are you above them, pray?

As I indicated, I wish for no engagement with you, and pray to God you may choose to unlatch yourself from me. I now am obliged, however, before I decide what to do next, to remove the article from the open pages to the user subpage (as is suggested); I lack however the technical knowledge of how to do this. Can Bishonen or someone please help. -- Prof02 09:12, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm responding to the {{helpme}}. I'm not sure it's a good idea to move the article to userspace now, because other editors have contributed. As eluded to above, the process would be to start the article in your userspace, eg User:Prof02/Erich Heller, and then move (using the "move" button, to the right of the "edit this page" button) the article to its article space location when you are ready. --Commander Keane 10:33, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Let's wait until Bishonen comes back and hear what she has to say. She is usually good at handling all kinds of things, and she is also the one editor other than Prof02 who has done most on the article. But all contributions by other users, including those of Bishonen, are very minor, so that really shouldn't be a big problem at least for temporarily moving it to userspace. It would certainly be a great loss if the article were to be entirely deleted. u p p l a n d 10:54, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, if I change your mind about my diplomacy, Tups, so be it. I've hardly contributed to the article at all — a few wikilinks. After Prof02, Charles Matthews' edits are the most substantial contributions, and, bluntly, it's a great pity they were reverted. The rewriting CM did of editorializing phrasing such as "The present writer feels encouraged in bringing in this reference", "It is fair to say", "One cannot fail to detect here", "It is in this context that Heller’s best-known quotation must be understood", "if it is appropriate to employ here a term"; or writerly opinions like "unquestionably", "in reality", "memorably", etc. certainly improved the text as encyclopedia article, though possibly not as essay. The expressions quoted are not offered as "matter that stems from the opinions of the subject of this article", surely?

Anyway, Commander Keane, though I suppose you're formally very correct, I hope we can oblige the wishes of a new user as far as possible, as wikipedia culture and policy mandate. I'll be glad to move the article to the userspace, provided it's all right by Charles.

Prof02, I ask you to reconsider accusations such as "vandalism" and "invective". (Where is this invective?) They are very serious. "Vandalism", especially, is not a charge to be thrown lightly at any good-faith contributor. Please take some time out to consider. Bishonen | talk 16:37, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

A move to user space seems the best short term solution. I feel User:Prof02 has simply got off on the wrong foot here, so it is better to allow a draft to be completed; and then we can return to this in the not-too-distant future. An alternative would be one of those 'work in progress' tags on the page, left up for a few days. Charles Matthews 16:40, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

The article is now on a subpage in your "userspace", Prof02. It's new name is User:Prof02/Erich Heller. I'll put a link to it on your own talkpage to make sure you can find it. (And this talkpage is User talk:Prof02/Erich Heller.) Bishonen | talk 16:54, 19 May 2006 (UTC).

Thank you

Thank you for the article on Erich Heller, whose books I have read and re-read since hearing him lecture on Thomas Mann at Northwestern University in 1986, just a few years before he died. For me, he was a model thinker who understood that literature could not be separated from religion, philosophy and politics. He was a model writer as well: Not merely clear, but graceful and beautiful. What has provoked this interest in Erich Heller? Will new information be added to the present article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gpanetta (talk • contribs)

Dear friend, I have just seen your comment, but have no idea when it was posted (I have not been checking this page for some time). Therefore, since you had written, you may have already seen some additions (most recent of which is the mention of his Flucht aus dem zwanzigsten Jahrhundert, a book not available at Northwestern U. Library). I feel that he is undeservedly neglected today, hence this article. Please write again (your observation that he, and indeed MAN, could not be compartmentalized hits the nail on the head). -- Prof02 08:48, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm delighted that you saw my previous message -- I hope you will see this one as well. Your article inspired me to pick up a copy of "The Artist's Journey into the Interior," which I found in a second hand bookstore in San Franscisco a few weeks ago. You are right that Heller is undeservedly neglected -- the bookstore owner wasn't even aware she had copy of the book, which she told me probably would have been discarded because of its age! Unfortunately, I took only one class with Heller when I was at Northwestern in 1986 -- the one about Thomas Mann. Already retired, he would occasionally lecture at the university, and I fear that he was quite burnt out on the university system, which he likened to a mass production factor. I found his lectures -- really, extemporaneous monologues, weaving together allusions to depth psychology (which he was dubious about) to Goethe -- absolutely enthralling. After class, I was speaking (moved by something Heller had said in a lecture) to a fellow student about Nazism, and Heller overheard: "Young man you are mistaken! Nazism was a revolutionary movement! They closed the churches. I was there! Thank God, you were not." "I was there" came back to me years later when I was re-reading the dialogue at the end of "The Disinherited Mind." His writing fascinates me because I think he saw something in his time in Europe -- something that had to do with culture exhausting itself, with the intellect giving up, with reason going about as far as it could go and re-bounding. I'm curious about Heller's time in Great Britain during the 1940s and 1950s. Many of his essays appeared in the Times Literary Supplement (sorry, I don't have the books handy to double check that) and are more in the spirit of personal reflection than scholarly argument. Is there an equivalent publication today in the United States? An equivalent audience somewhere? Also: How did Heller move from a degree in law -- the same one that Kafka took -- to teaching literature? You may, if you get this message, respond directly to me via e-mail at gpanetta@pjstar.com

Dear friend, what you say belongs to the category of invaluable first-hand witness, and I must thank you again very much indeed for writing. Naturally, I will respond to you directly at the earliest opportunity, but please give me a few days. About his 1940s and 1950s spent in Britain, I have now included for your benefit a reference to the personal relationship with Kenneth Williams, which dates to this period. As to the segue from the law degree to literary studies, there was really no segue here: the law degree had to be taken in those days as a routine that assured a decent job (Kafka took it exactly for the same reason, even while considering himself, as you know, a writer all along — I am sure you have read Max Brod): the degree in question was granted in those days by examination (three fairly strict sittings, but no written dissertation of any kind — should I include this info in the article itself? — hence there is no literary deposit from Heller in Prague at all). Secondly, is there anything now that may compare with Heller’s endeavour? Yes. While the Geistesgeschichte-type of writing is out of favour, currently (for you see, intellectuals are victims of fashion and trends to a far greater degree than they would acknowledge), this discourse undoubtedly continues, if on a slightly different track. The difference however is only apparent, not real, I think. The writings of people like Francis Fukuyama, who argues in his The End of History and the Last Man not an end of history but an end of ideology, is a continuation of Heller’s thought, and perhaps (although I wouldn’t like to be too eulogistic) its vindication (see in this regard the opening paragraphs of my article, where Heller is thinking the same). I wonder if Fukuyama read Heller. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose... — Prof02 14:05, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I tried to respond to this post recently, but the page was cutoff -- so I apologize if there are any redundancies here. I'm interested in picking up a copy of Fukuyama's book, if it indeed represents a continuation of Heller's thinking. The biographical additions to the Heller article were fascinating, especially his connection to Roman Catholicism (although he never converted). Actually, before I learned of Heller's Jewish background, I had assumed he was a Catholic. For me, his writing is infused with a distinctively Catholic sensibility -- his instinct for order, for organic wholeness, for grasping the essence of a thing. The sense of tradition in the church must have appealed to Heller, who was at heart a conservative in a sense that is much profounder than the use of that word suggests today. This conservative bent put Heller in a good position to analyze 20th century literature and thought as well as their 19th century antecedents such as Nietzsche. It is the source of a skepticism against all "-isms" -- both those of the Left that call for progress and those of the Right that call for a return to idyllic past. I always wondered whether this irony, this detachment and willingness to entertain opposites, concealed a deeper faith, though perhaps not of the orthodox variety.--Gpanetta 16:35, 27 July 2006 (UTC)gpanetta@pjstar.com

Your last question is of course of fundamental importance; it is, in a sense, almost asking too much, in that it aims at a final assessment, at the Ultimate Verdict, and I am not sure that I have the right to try my hand at it. One may spend an entire lifetime with someone and still not be sure what that person is thinking at a particular juncture, never mind people one has known much less well... And yet what you say cannot somehow be ignored: your tone has a naturalness and cogency that seem compelling. I suppose the question can be treated on three different levels. In the first instance “faith” can be taken in its simplest sense, that in which it is understood by the man in the street, and on this level the question has been answered in the article (third paragraph, currently) almost from the beginning, in what might be called the “tentative negative”, which is what I believe the word “agnostic” always trends towards. In this case it is not just an assessment. You could have heard it from the horse’s mouth if it were given you to be close enough to him. If, on the other hand, “faith” is to be understood on a slightly different (and higher) plane, in the terms which the expression “system” connotes, then I have now endeavored to answer it for you in the article itself, if in a somewhat indirect way, by way of a hint as it were, which you will find in the most recent additions to the text, additions made since your last posting here. I will leave it at that for now — we may discuss this later in private. Then there is a third level on which your question can be entertained: the level involving the congruence of the opposites you mention. If there is any suggestion in this of antinomian ambivalence then the answer must be a resounding No. There is evidence for this. Keep in mind that this article is at present only one-third or one-fourth complete, so there is a lot here that is missing. Once all the relevant materials are presented, it will become clear why the last interpretation is just not possible.

Your surprise at Heller’s Jewishness puts me in a lighter mood. Heller used to tell a story how once he was riding the L to the windy city and sat next to a girl, most probably a NU student, holding an open book in her lap. When, during the journey (interminable as you know), he happened casually to glance at the text she was reading he realized to his astonishment that it was a handbook of the Czech language. Unable to constrain his curiosity he introduced himself as a person hailing from “the linguistic area in question” and asked her point-blank why she wanted to learn Czech. “Oh, it’s quite simple”, said the girl, “I want to be able to read Kafka in the original”. (I hope you’ll forgive me the levity.) — Prof02 14:09, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the anecdote and for the thoughtful reply. One point you raised in your article -- and something that I think is relevant to our discussion -- was about Heller's view of culture as a kind of restraint or check on the temptation to misuse power. I'm curious about exactly what you think Heller was driving at. I immediately thought of this quote from Heller's essay on Karl Kraus: "What corresponds to his impatience with the wrongdoers is his infinite patience with language, and to his relentless ethical determination his compassion for the maltreated word." It is a short step, I suppose, from maltreated words to maltreated bodies; a debasement of language is a debasement of culture, a step toward disintegration. But what does Heller mean by culture? How does it relate to that ineffable order that the Speaker mentions in his dialogue with the Listener -- "an order that embodies the incalculable and the unpredictable, transcending our rational grasp precisely where it meets the reasons of the heart"?

I must apologize for my obtuseness. Yes, some days after my last post, I see the passage on Holderin and what appears to be your "hint." I do understand, I think. I have no interest in prying into the personal lives or relationships of anyone, so let's leave it at that. I do hope that one day you are able to gather Erich Heller's writings and persuade someone to publish them in a fresh new edition all under one cover. Lionel Trilling's essays have recently been published -- why not Erich Heller's?

You are not obtuse, my friend, far from it; what you are is Pure, Innocent — all potential disadvantages to be sure in a world, both within and without academia, that is populated by halfwits unaware of their being instruments in the hands of Evil, but otherwise cleverized to the marrow of their bones, a condition that gives them their self-confidence. In a world full of clever Dicks, Toms, and Harries who never had a chance to grow into normal, full maturity that is culture because they had to elbow their way brutally hard to their place in the sun (that elbowing unwittingly coming to form the underpinnings of all their subsequent mental processes) and who fail in the Moral Obligation to be intelligent… — in a world like this Purity doesn’t pay; that is the predicament that we are facing. It is to be hoped Heller’s writings point to a solution. I haven’t thought of a fresh edition, until now, since you put it like that. There would surely have to be a grant, however (this article alone entailed enormous costs so far). — Prof02 07:13, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Prof02: I went back to the Erich Heller page, and I am saddened by talk of deleting the article. I've found your comments about Heller very enlightening; if for some reason this page is lost, please e-mail at gpanetta@pjstar.com. I'm curious about who you are and what your connection to Heller is; however, if you wish to remain anonymous, please feel free to do so. I'm not interested in violating anyone's privacy.