Letter: Bazelow to Blücher [1969?]
Heinrich:
Once you asked me if someday I hoped to write books on philosophy and I remember having told you that I did not know if I would ever be able to write a book but that what I wanted most in my life was to be able to keep certain ideas alive, even if this could only be in my own very small way.
It was with great disappointment that I came to discover that despite the many years of your life that you devoted to teaching at Bard, there exists no transcripts of any of your lectures or anything you have ever written with the exception of several tapes which were made several years ago of your Commons [sic] Course lectures. These tapes however are in danger of being destroyed and I discovered that several of them were damaged in parts almost beyond repair.
It was for these reasons that I have gathered togethered [sic] the tapes as well as my lecture notes from last years Senior Symposium and transcribed them onto paper, a task which I hope to complete by the time of my graduation next year. After the notes have been transcribed they will be gathered together into six small volumes and placed in the philosophy section of the Bard Library so that future generations of Bard Students will be able to read them, and be able to share in the asking of those questions, the nature of which alone justifies our existence in this universe.
What follows here is the first of those small volumes, the transcription of my notes which were taken during your lectures of last year. The ideas that you brought forth then have gone through many moments of reflection in my own mind. Some of them I came to feel were true in the light of my own experience; others I have come to disagree with, and still others I must wait since their meaning I do not entirely understand; and yet I hope that the existence of these small volumes will give other students the chance to take pause for reflection. Perhaps it may in the end be true that any expression of the deepest and most genuine questioning spirit in man must be destined to failure or at the most deafness at the hands of the majority of mankind, and yet I think it significant that the words of all those who have given voice to this spirit be kept alive and that we must constantly, as Camus believed, "when in the presence of such a human being tell him from our hearts that he is not alone and that his efforts are not meaningless."
It is with a feeling of the deepest gratitude in having been one of your students and the consciousness of the many inspiring as well as angry and frustrated moments that your ideas have given me, that I would wish for you to accept this gift.
Alexander Bazelow