Letters to his Wife: 1915-1970 Review

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(More customer reviews)The book is quite interesting about Martin Heidegger personally, both for what it says and what it doesn't say, which is why I wanted to read it.
It doesn't cast much light on his philosophy, but then I never expected it to do that.
I was wondering about the extent to which his philosophy carried over into his daily activities, and you can tell from the book that it did. He was definitely sincere in his philosophy of Being. His deep attunement to Being (vs beings) in fact sheltered him from the most horrible events of the day. This is not to say that he was unaffected through it all, but it seems rather minimally so. At least not affected enough to write about it, not to mention take action.
It's amazing he (and his wife) kept the marriage going through it all. His relation with his wife was a combination of revelation and concealment ironically analogous to his view of truth. Certainly in his case it is true that behind every successful man is a strong woman. He was the (not so humble) servant of Being thought it all and everything else was more or less a means to that end.

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'There is something absolute about the letters between you & me; … The letter is a form of communion of the soul-spirit – … one that is faded & yet unimpeded, complete', wrote Martin Heidegger to his fiancée Elfride Petri shortly before their wedding. In the course of a marriage that lasted almost sixty years Martin and Elfride were often apart, and the letter thus remained a vital means of communication right through to the final years.
The letters he sent her are snapshots of the ups and downs, the crises and everyday minutiae from Heidegger's life: their engagement, the building of the Cabin at Todtnauberg, the part he played in the two world wars, the difficulties of his early professional career, their financial problems, his dealings with women, and his constant concern with expounding his ideas.
Apart from three letters now in the hands of the German Literature Archive in Marbach, Elfride Heidegger kept all of the countless letters and cards from her husband locked away in a wooden chest. After reading them one final time, in 1977 she gave the key to this chest to her granddaughter Gertrud Heidegger on condition that she should not open it until after Elfride's death. After years spent deciphering, transcribing and ordering the letters with the help of her father and her uncle, Gertrud Heidegger has here made a selection of them available to the public and added a commentary that provides relevant background material.
This selection from the many letters written by Martin Heidegger to his wife provides an invaluable insight into their life together, their friendships and relationships, and sheds fresh light on the ideas and beliefs of one of the twentieth century's greatest philosophers.

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Gustav Mahler, Vol. 4: A New Life Cut Short, 1907-1911 Review

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(More customer reviews)This final installment of Henry-Louis de La Grange's massive four volume biography advances the idea that Mahler was not a death-driven broken man in his final years; rather he was about to embark on a "new life" that was cut short by an unexpected illness. Thus the unfinished 10th Symphony should be heard as a new beginning whose final bars are a paean to love, not a farewell.
I will not pretend that I've read the entire book so soon after publication (it is actually 1758 pages! not the 1072 that Amazon lists). I will focus on the chapter that describes Alma Mahler's "betrayal": by doing so I will hopefully give an idea of rest of the book. The style of writing and presentation is identical to previous volumes. De La Grange assembles what seems to be every fact he could discover about Mahler and weaves them into a chronological narrative. The chapter covers July and August 1910 and is 118 small print pages long, including 411 footnotes of even smaller print. De La Grange quotes extensively from recently unearthed letters between Alma Mahler and the budding architect Walter Gropius (the lover with whom she betrayed Mahler) to further show how willfully deceiving Alma's published memoirs were about the affair. These give insight into the depth of Mahler's despair when he discovered what had happened through a letter that Gropius, in writing to Alma, mistakenly addressed to Mahler himself. De La Grange attempts to give an in-depth analysis of Alma's personality, quoting from unpublished diaries and letters. He also spends 40 pages on Mahler's interview with Sigmund Freud, quoting extensively from all the available sources in which Freud discussed the meeting, as well as present-day psychologists and analysts who have commented on it. Though the psychologist sources he quotes apparently disagree, this does not prevent de La Grange from advocating his belief that Mahler emerged from this crisis a stronger, more life-affirming artist - not as many would like to believe, a broken man.
Following de La Grange's narrative, filled as it is with what one might describe as excruciating detail and exhaustive psychological analysis, can be daunting, but he does manage to keep the narrative flowing. The recitation of fact after detailed fact, as in the other volumes, can be numbing, but one is drawn completely into Mahler's world during the process. This kind of total immersion may not be what the average reader wants, but it is exactly suited to a Mahler freak. And a Mahler freak is whom this book is for.
The bulk of the book (1277 pages) is devoted to the narrative of Mahler's life during these final years. There are 440 pages of appendices and a 35 page index. The appendices include 236 pages of detailed analysis of Das Lied von der Erde and the 9th and 10th Symphonies, an updated catalogue of works, a list of all of all the performances of non-operatic repertoire conducted by Mahler (one wonders why the operas weren't included), essays on the Mahler piano rolls, the order of movements in the 6th symphony, Mahler myths, and the recipe for Mahler's favorite dessert (to list just a few).
While this is the long awaited volume IV of the biography, de La Grange assures us in his introduction that the revision to volume I (published in 1973 and out-of-print) is soon forthcoming: "readers of this biography may be confident that they will not have to wait as long for the new Volume I as they have had to for Volume IV."
My only negative comment regarding this long anticipated volume is the price - nearly 10 times more than what I paid in 1973 for the first volume.

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When the earlier volumes of de La Grange's monumental study of Gustav Mahler appeared, they were hailed across America--in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and many other publications--as an indispensable portrait of one of the greatest figures in the history of music. Here at last is the final volume of this magisterial work. The fourth volume illuminates the composer's American period, when he was conductor for the Metropolitan Opera in New York. It contains a treasure trove of new material, in particular many unknown letters from Alma Mahler to her lover, Walter Gropius, and many articles and interviews about the composer and the performances he conducted while in New York. This detailed biography of the composer also includes new and valuable insights into the final year of his life, when he returned to Europe to die. The crowning point of a decades-long project, during which the author has personally translated each volume from his original French into English, this scrupulously researched and insightfully written biography brings to a triumphant close the definitive account of Mahler's life and work.

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