Dear S,
Thank you for your reply.
I have been so hin und her gerissen regarding your reception of my Humanity Sentence as so unduly irreverent so as to disqualify me from the field of Deutsch Denkertum. Then, that you referenced as leading Denker someone for whom there is no Simple English Wikipedia entry, well... talk about flippant!
How can I even begin to take this struggle seriously? is where I ended up until I had spent an evening with a particularly long, circular nightmare, whereupon I found myself by the light of the moon in my sleeping chambers in a cold sweat, forced to further considered the, as you stated it, 'urgency to the issue'.
So pack my bags I did, with the expectation that I would be spending a good ordeal of time in the land of the supremest court of them all, Karlsruhe. And what an adventure it led me on! But not what you might have expected.
To wit (or to cut to the chase): I did as you instructed, as far as circumstance would allow. I fed that disgusting pig the wieners so, and, frankly, was surprised at how willing and enthusiastically — and in what manner — he cooperatively gorged himself. If I had not known better, I would have thought he had for this purpose taken the form of a tweenty-something Japanese schweinefleisch-obelisk fressing, gut busting competitor. No. He was still fat and smelly — pungent as only a oily man of Western tenure never having had his tweed cleaned could be.
I was at the ready with my blunt instrument (a cricket bat somehow seemed most appropriate and, ironically, was the easiest for me to come by, as it was mounted on the professor's wall directly behind him, for, you see, I had forgot this one detail of your detailed instructions (though I must tell you as an additional aside that being a left-hander for me and for a good many left-handers whom I have befriended, many an acquaintanceship as the result of my subscription to Lefty, means having so unconsciously integrated myself into the whirled of the righty, that the most natural pose for me was to feed with the left, strike with the right)) when the Herr Doktor began to choke his last choke, forsaking the point of my coup de grace. He was dead within seconds.
I do not suppose I have to tell you — a decent man not unlike myself who is not prone to the kingdom of the moral relativism of our recently departed anti-hero — that flushing through my mind as I restored the cricket bat to its previous position was the relief of a Denker who had done a good deed without having had to resort to violence.
No sooner had I gedacht these Gedanken, did several secretaries, assistants, colleagues, and the like, come rushing into the office to see what was the ruckus, for this corpus did make a remarkably loud thud as it arrived to meet with the polar bear rug upon which was scribed the List of Beings' Rights.
I had not even been able to consider a defence before this not unmotley crew hoisted me upon their shoulders and paraded me back through the entry hall to the eventual jubilation of the assembling academy. At the edge of my field of vision I noticed a diligent pair forcibly removing, shard by shard, the portrait of the freshly late Doktor from its altar. I could do nothing but clearly make out the überbig superscription as another pair hastily hung the replacement portrait of his successor: 'Deutschlands Top Denker'.
I am doubly ashamed to admit that I was swelling with pride, for, as you may recall, I believe neither in pride, nor shame.
But alas. This ineffable level of self-indulgent elation was extinguished in a moment when I saw the cartoon-like visage in what I had assumed would be my rightful place of Nachfolgership. It was that of Bernard-Henri Lévy!
'But he eats foie gras!' I protested to no avail. It seems they had made up their minds long before the conception of my deed. I hope you will forgive me when I tell you that it occurred to me, albeit fleetingly, that you might have had foreknowledge of this eventuality.
I hope one day to be able to enjoy the solace of having played an instrumental part in the fate of Denkness in general, but now it just smarts.
Bitterly yours in Freed Rich's Hine,
davidly
Thank you for your reply.
I have been so hin und her gerissen regarding your reception of my Humanity Sentence as so unduly irreverent so as to disqualify me from the field of Deutsch Denkertum. Then, that you referenced as leading Denker someone for whom there is no Simple English Wikipedia entry, well... talk about flippant!
How can I even begin to take this struggle seriously? is where I ended up until I had spent an evening with a particularly long, circular nightmare, whereupon I found myself by the light of the moon in my sleeping chambers in a cold sweat, forced to further considered the, as you stated it, 'urgency to the issue'.
So pack my bags I did, with the expectation that I would be spending a good ordeal of time in the land of the supremest court of them all, Karlsruhe. And what an adventure it led me on! But not what you might have expected.
To wit (or to cut to the chase): I did as you instructed, as far as circumstance would allow. I fed that disgusting pig the wieners so, and, frankly, was surprised at how willing and enthusiastically — and in what manner — he cooperatively gorged himself. If I had not known better, I would have thought he had for this purpose taken the form of a tweenty-something Japanese schweinefleisch-obelisk fressing, gut busting competitor. No. He was still fat and smelly — pungent as only a oily man of Western tenure never having had his tweed cleaned could be.
I was at the ready with my blunt instrument (a cricket bat somehow seemed most appropriate and, ironically, was the easiest for me to come by, as it was mounted on the professor's wall directly behind him, for, you see, I had forgot this one detail of your detailed instructions (though I must tell you as an additional aside that being a left-hander for me and for a good many left-handers whom I have befriended, many an acquaintanceship as the result of my subscription to Lefty, means having so unconsciously integrated myself into the whirled of the righty, that the most natural pose for me was to feed with the left, strike with the right)) when the Herr Doktor began to choke his last choke, forsaking the point of my coup de grace. He was dead within seconds.
I do not suppose I have to tell you — a decent man not unlike myself who is not prone to the kingdom of the moral relativism of our recently departed anti-hero — that flushing through my mind as I restored the cricket bat to its previous position was the relief of a Denker who had done a good deed without having had to resort to violence.
No sooner had I gedacht these Gedanken, did several secretaries, assistants, colleagues, and the like, come rushing into the office to see what was the ruckus, for this corpus did make a remarkably loud thud as it arrived to meet with the polar bear rug upon which was scribed the List of Beings' Rights.
I had not even been able to consider a defence before this not unmotley crew hoisted me upon their shoulders and paraded me back through the entry hall to the eventual jubilation of the assembling academy. At the edge of my field of vision I noticed a diligent pair forcibly removing, shard by shard, the portrait of the freshly late Doktor from its altar. I could do nothing but clearly make out the überbig superscription as another pair hastily hung the replacement portrait of his successor: 'Deutschlands Top Denker'.
I am doubly ashamed to admit that I was swelling with pride, for, as you may recall, I believe neither in pride, nor shame.
But alas. This ineffable level of self-indulgent elation was extinguished in a moment when I saw the cartoon-like visage in what I had assumed would be my rightful place of Nachfolgership. It was that of Bernard-Henri Lévy!
'But he eats foie gras!' I protested to no avail. It seems they had made up their minds long before the conception of my deed. I hope you will forgive me when I tell you that it occurred to me, albeit fleetingly, that you might have had foreknowledge of this eventuality.
I hope one day to be able to enjoy the solace of having played an instrumental part in the fate of Denkness in general, but now it just smarts.
Bitterly yours in Freed Rich's Hine,
davidly
