Letter, or: objects that let
Writing Law and Literature
My personal interest in letters is conditioned by something I owe. I owe Hania Siebenpfeiffer an apology for a failure on a text for a manual. I owe Roberto Ohrt an apology for being tardy concerning the book on Aby Warburg. I failed to write a text, that i promised to Hania Siebenpfeiffer - and as this failure is part of a polarity, that i don't want to be privatized but that i have to respect as concerning me. The writing about such an awfull owe with its awesome attraction is itself falting and halting. It is resting, it is a rest.
I promised her to write about Bildlichkeit in a Handbook on Law and Literature. I failed by drowning in the material - too late, much too late i realized, that i am still unable to measure and administer the time it takes to write a manual about something, that always stays too much, too soon. I failed in contracting and distracting. There is nothing to romanticise, i brought Hania into difficulties. I do not coquet: i don't know, how to appear in her presence. I would love to cite Thomas Melle but that does not excue anything, it just serves some oft the elements of excuses: references. If you ask a polar explorer how he is doing, the answer is only partially reliable.
My contribution to the project about letters may be, it shall be a strange and secret letter to Hania Siebenpfeiffer, whose work and whose being around I value and admire. It may and shall be a strange letter to Roberto Ohrt, who invested and still invests his time to bring me in contact to and to teach me lettrism and to open archives I did not know, that they exist. Roberto Ohrt is an example for everything, that is worth imitating and worth copying as long as one is interested in generosity and lavishness, luxury and excess. I owe him as I owe her. Though the currency is different i might transfer some of it by letters.
