Today I turned back in to the library: the CD recordings of the Haydn opus 76 quartets, which I had listened to over and over, and which were due back; and the Berg violin concerto and the Schoenberg Variations for orchestra, which I had not listened to at all, and which weren't due for another couple of weeks. After all, why hoard them like a dog in the manger, despising and, yes, fearing them, and not listening to them, when it is possible that persons with less knowledge and taste than myself might find them enjoyable? I doubt even that, but I admit that they might think or imagine them to be enjoyable; and though imaginary (or mistaken) enjoyment is the only enjoyment that subjects of his Imperial Majesty (le Roi Nu)ever have--be it never so little--I certainly wouldn't want to deprive them of it. Another consideration in returning the Berg and Schoenberg CD's unheard, before their due date, is that, had I kept them around, I might actually have put them in my CD player and listened to them, and so inflicted mental anguish on myself in my sacred private space; which, by the tenets (No Unpleasantness in the Home) of my religion, would constitute an abominable profanation. But/and, yes, the most appalling possibility is that I might have enjoyed them (as so many, though wrongly, have done) and so have had to put aside my deepest and most cherished rational/critical prejudgement; which, of course, I would rather die than do.

Who I'm reminding myself of, in this my late hand-wringing pother over having objectively to acknowledge the existence of twelve-tone/atonal "music," are the ingenuous butch miners in Nevada that Oscar Wilde gave lectures to in the 1880's (as described in a letter of Wilde's to his friends back in England); who heard with pleasure and approbation Wilde's fruitiest and poofiest espousal of lily-in-hand estheticism, but who rose as one man when Wilde was describing certain tendencies in modern painting (probably the impressionism practiced by his friend James MacNeil Whistler), and shouted, "This must not be!"