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sorties in strange lands includes my sojourn in Germany and of course my heritage in that culture as far as it goes. Like Nehru, I feel strange but not uncomfortable everywhere, the least comfortable where I grew up and which place I shall take pains to avoid. I see a great deal of Sebba and I am going to suffer his making a life mask of me next week, an ordeal I do not look forward to with pleasure in the least. I am sure I shall be uncomfortable in his house from then on hanging before my own eyes alongside Goethe, Anne Pavlovna and Auguste Rodin.

If I think that some future art student may have to draw from that I get the creep and knowing you as I do I imagine you feel even more strongly about it. I am going through with it for two reasons only. I am ashamed to back out and my vanity is flattered. Didn't Charles V witness a rehearsal of his own funeral. Now I know why.

The head of the Philosophy Dept. here is a nice fellow whom I call "The man without an opinion." He wants to buy a large picture from me (I'm ashamed to take the money so I will probably think up an excuse of some kind because I won't give it to him either.)

Pfuetze (that's his name) was his opinions made for him by is associate Gotesky, who is a friend of your friend Herberg, and who is a nice enough melancholy honest Jewish bluffer who is a goat getter (if you let him), a semanticist and a rabbinical ass. He is a problem to me because he is so goddamned friendly, but he is dangerous company inasmuch as he tries to tell you what to do and he knows from nothing about art.

There are some students here who will catch fire. I have already affected a number of them in my class. This week about four or five caught a glimpse of what it's about and Paul Burkin's pupil, who is a zoologist and a special student in my class, is haranging his classmates about the "war" that is the artist's life. He is a handsome Italian ex-Navy flier from New Jersey, who has that Latin realism so alien to the local degenerate descendants of Anglo-Saxon stock.

I will tell you in person what he said and how he said it when we meet. It is quite amusing and filthy as Hell.

Whether an artist of artists can lead these malcontents of materialism I don't know. TO date only a religious movement (and that is why Toynbee stresses it) has been able to snowball a handful of disciples into a mass. Perhaps enough partisans can be mustered to take care of our mundane existence (an important