Margaret Mikulska wrote, in response to Pablo Massa wrote:

>Unfortunately, I can't agree with you that S.  makes "solid deductions".
>His logic is so flawed - not only in this particular example - that it's
>simply appalling.  What is persuasive is his style of writing.  He has a
>way of presenting one possibility of many in a way that makes the reader
>think there are no other options.  First time I read his book, years ago,
>I was fooled - it sounded persuasive.  Later I read other literature on
>Beethoven and realized that I was fooled.

Yes, that also happened to me.  It sounded so persuasive.  I really didn't
doubt his conclusions.  Until I read Goldschmidt's magistral "Um die
unsterbliche Geliebte", published in the same year as Solomon's biography.
Goldschmidt pointed to all the weak sides and all the incorrect conclusions
of Solomon's hypothesis.  However, even he considered it good enough to put
Antonie on his very short list of candidates, together with only one other
candidate, Josephine Brunswick.  Half a decade later he had changed his
mind and he published a too often overlooked short but excellent article,
totally devoted to an attempt to identify the mysterious A in Beethoven's
diary.  The result was that he moved away from the Antonie hypothesis, more
and more into the direction of Josephine.  He convinced me.  Nevertheless
it's a fact that to this day the identity of the woman is still a mystery.
Without more knowledge it's jumping to conclusions to talk about "the
solution of the riddle", like Solomon far too optimistically did.  There's
no solution.  Not yet.

Joyce Maier
www.ademu.com/Beethoven