Part 4

I clench my teeth and mock my misery, and mock doubly and triply those who might say I should resign myself, and because it simply cannot be otherwise.—away with these straw men from my neck!—I roam about in the woods, and when I come to Lotte and Albert is sitting with her in the little garden beneath the arbor, and I can go no further, then I am wildly foolish and begin all manner of pranks, much confused nonsense.—“For God’s sake,” Lotte said to me today, “I beg you, no scene like last night’s! You are frightful when you are so merry.”—Between ourselves, I watch for the time when he is busy; then I’m off, and it always does me good when I find her alone.

August 8

I beg you, dear Wilhelm, it was surely not of you I spoke when I called those people intolerable who demand of us resignation to unavoidable fate. Truly I did not think that you could hold a similar opinion. And at bottom you are right. Only one thing, my dearest! In this world it is seldom accomplished with a mere either-or; feelings and ways of acting are shaded as variously as there are gradations between a hawk-nose and a snub-nose.

You will therefore not take it ill if I grant you your whole argument and yet seek to slip through between the either-or.

Either, you say, you have hope regarding Lotte, or you have none. Very well; in the first case seek to press through, seek to embrace the fulfillment of your wishes: in the second, take heart and seek to rid yourself of a wretched feeling that must consume all your strength.—Dearest! That is well said, and—soon said.

And can you demand of the unhappy man whose life is gradually, inexorably wasting away under a lingering illness, can you demand of him that he put an end to his torment at once with a dagger thrust? And does not the evil that consumes his strength also rob him at the same time of the courage to free himself from it?

To be sure, you might answer me with a kindred simile: who would not rather have his arm amputated than endanger his life through hesitation and timidity?—I know not!—And let us not bite at one another with similes. Enough—yes, Wilhelm, I sometimes have such a moment of springing up, of shaking off courage, and then—if I only knew where to, I would gladly go.

Evening

My diary, which I have neglected for some time, fell again into my hands today, and I am astonished how knowingly I stepped into all this, step by step! How I always saw my condition so clearly and yet acted like a child, now still see as clearly, and there is yet no appearance of improvement.

August 10

I could lead the best, happiest life, if I were not a fool. Circumstances so beautiful rarely unite to delight a human soul as those in which I now find myself. Ah, so certain it is that our heart alone makes its own happiness.—to be a member of the lovable family, to be loved by the old man like a son, by the little ones like a father, and by Lotte!—then the honest Albert, who disturbs my happiness through no capricious ill-humor; who embraces me with cordial friendship; to whom, after Lotte, I am the dearest thing in the world!—Wilhelm, it is a joy to hear us when we walk and speak to one another of Lotte: nothing more ludicrous has been invented in the world than this relationship, and yet often tears come to my eyes over it.

When he tells me of her righteous mother: how on her deathbed she gave over house and children to Lotte and commended Lotte to him; how since then a wholly different spirit has animated Lotte; how she, in care for her household and in seriousness, has become a true mother; how no moment of her time passes without active love, without labor, and yet her cheerfulness, her light spirit never left her.—I walk beside him thus and pluck flowers by the way, fit them very carefully into a nosegay and—throw them into the passing stream and watch them drift gently down.—I know not if I have written you that Albert is to remain here and receive an office with a decent income from the court, where he is much liked. In orderliness and diligence in business I have seen few his equal.

August 12

Certainly, Albert is the best human being under heaven. I had a strange scene with him yesterday. I went to him to take leave; for the desire came over me to ride into the mountains, from whence I now write to you, and as I walk up and down in the room, his pistols catch my eye.—“Lend me the pistols,” I said, “for my journey.”—“By all means,” said he, “if you will take the trouble to load them; with me they hang only pro forma.”—I took one down, and he continued: “since my caution played me such an uncivil trick, I’ll have nothing more to do with the stuff.”—I was curious to know the story.—“I stayed,” he related, “about a quarter year in the country at a friend’s, had a pair of unloaded pocket-pistols and slept quietly. One rainy afternoon, as I sat idle, I know not why it occurred to me: we could be attacked, we could need the pistols and could—you know how that is.—I gave them to the servant to clean and load; and he fools with the girls, wants to frighten them, and God knows how, the gun goes off, with the ramrod still in it, and shoots the ramrod into a girl’s hand at the thumb and shatters her thumb. Then I had the lamenting, and to pay the doctor besides; and since then I leave all firearms unloaded. Dear friend, what is caution? Danger cannot be learned away! Though.—Now you know that I love the man dearly except for his ‘though’; for does it not understand itself that every general proposition suffers exceptions? But so just is the human being! When he believes he has said something hasty, general, half-true, he never stops qualifying, modifying and adding and subtracting, until at last nothing at all is left in the matter.

And on this occasion he went very deep into text: I finally paid no further heed to him, fell into reveries, and with a startled gesture pressed the muzzle of the pistol to my right eye at the forehead.—“Fie!” said Albert, pulling the pistol down from me, “what is that for?”—“It is not loaded,” said I.—“And even so, what for?” he retorted impatiently. “I cannot conceive how a person can be so foolish as to shoot himself; the mere thought awakens my distaste.”

“That you humans,” I cried, “must, in order to speak of a thing, straightway say: ‘that is foolish, that is wise, that is good, that is evil!’ and what does it all mean? Have you therefore examined the inner relations of an action? Do you know with certainty to unfold the causes why it happened, why it had to happen? Had you that, you would not be so hasty with your judgments.”

“You will grant me,” said Albert, “that certain actions remain vices, happen from whatever motive they will.” I shrugged and granted it.—“Yet, my dear,” I continued, “here too there are some exceptions. It is true, theft is a vice: but the man who, to save himself and his from present starvation, turns to robbery—does he deserve pity or punishment? Who lifts the first stone against the husband who in just wrath sacrifices his unfaithful wife and her worthless seducer? Against the girl who in a blissful hour loses herself in the irresistible joys of love? Our very laws, these cold-blooded pedants, let themselves be moved and withhold their punishment.”

“That is quite another thing,” answered Albert, “because a person whom his passions carry away loses all power of reflection and is regarded as a drunkard, as a madman.”—“Ah, you reasonable people!” I cried smiling. “Passion! Drunkenness! Madness! You stand so calmly, so without sympathy, you moral people, scold the drunkard, abhor the fool, pass by like the priest and thank God like the Pharisee that he has not made you like one of these. I have more than once been drunk, my passions were never far from madness, and both I do not regret: for I have learned to comprehend in a measure how all extraordinary men, who wrought something great, something seeming impossible, had from of old to be cried out upon as drunkards and madmen. But also in common life it is intolerable, to hear almost everyone, at a somewhat free, noble, unexpected deed, call after: ‘the man is drunk, he is foolish!’ Shame on you, sober ones! Shame on you, wise ones!”—“Those are again among your whims,” said Albert, “you overstrain everything and at least here surely are wrong, that you compare suicide, of which we now speak, with great deeds: since one can hold it for nothing other than a weakness. For certainly it is easier to die than to bear a torturous life with fortitude.” I was about to break off; for no argument puts me so beside myself as when one comes on with a trivial common saying, when I speak from my whole heart.

Yet I composed myself, because I had heard it often and been angered at it oftener, and answered him with some liveliness: “You call that weakness? I beg you, let not appearance mislead you. A people that sighs under the unbearable yoke of a tyrant—dare you call it weak, when it finally ferments and tears its chains? A man who, in the terror that fire has seized his house, feels all his powers strained and with ease carries loads that in calm mind he could scarce move; one who in the rage of insult takes on six and overcomes them—are those to be called weak? And, my good friend, if exertion is strength, why should overextension be the opposite?”—Albert looked at me and said: “Take it not ill, the examples you give seem not to belong here at all.”—“It may be,” said I, “I have more than once been reproached that my way of combining sometimes borders on raving. Let us then see whether we can represent in another way how the man feels who resolves to cast off the otherwise pleasant burden of life. For only insofar as we sympathize do we have the honor to speak of a thing.”

“Human nature,” I continued, “has its limits: it can bear joy, sorrow, pain up to a certain degree and goes to ruin as soon as that is exceeded. Here therefore is not the question whether one is weak or strong, but whether he can endure the measure of his suffering, be it moral or physical. And I find it just as strange to say the man is cowardly who takes his life, as it would be improper to call a coward him who dies of a malignant fever.”

“Paradox! Very paradox!” cried Albert.—“Not so much as you think,” answered I. “You grant me we call that a mortal sickness whereby nature is so attacked that partly her powers are consumed, partly so put out of action that she cannot recover herself, is capable through no happy revolution to restore the usual course of life.

Now, my dear, let us apply that to the spirit. Consider the man in his limitation, how impressions work upon him, how ideas fix themselves in him, until at last a growing passion robs him of all calm power of sense and ruins him.

In vain the composed, reasonable man overlooks the condition of the unhappy one, in vain he exhorts him! Just as a healthy man who stands at the sickbed can inspire in him not the least of his strength.”

To Albert this was spoken too generally. I reminded him of a girl who had shortly before been found dead in the water, and repeated her story to him.—“A good, young creature, who had grown up in the narrow circle of domestic occupations, of weekly fixed labor, who knew no prospect of pleasure other than perhaps on Sundays to walk about the town with her likes in finery scraped together bit by bit, perhaps once on a high holiday to dance, and otherwise with all liveliness of heartiest interest to chat away many an hour over the occasion of a quarrel, an evil rumor with a neighbor—whose fiery nature now finally feels more intimate needs, increased by the flatteries of men; her former joys become by degrees distasteful to her, until she finally meets a man to whom an unknown feeling irresistibly carries her, on whom she now casts all her hopes, forgets the world around her, hears, sees, feels nothing but him, the only one, longs only for him, the only one. Not corrupted by the empty pleasures of an inconstant vanity, her desire draws straight to the goal; she will become his, she will in eternal union find all the happiness lacking to her, enjoy the union of all joys for which she longed. Repeated promise, that seals to her the certainty of all hopes, bold caresses that increase her desires, embrace her whole soul; she floats in a dull consciousness, in a presentiment of all joys, she is strained to the highest degree, she finally stretches out her arms to embrace all her wishes—and her lover leaves her.—Petrified, senseless, she stands before an abyss; all is darkness around her, no prospect, no comfort, no presentiment! For he has left her, in whom alone she felt her existence. She sees not the wide world that lies before her, not the many who could replace her loss, she feels herself alone, abandoned by all the world,—and blind, pressed into the narrowness by the dreadful need of her heart, she throws herself down, to stifle in a death encompassing her all her torments.—See, Albert, that is the story of many a human! And say, is that not the case of sickness? Nature finds no outlet from the labyrinth of entangled and contradictory forces, and the man must die. Woe to him who could look on and say: ‘the fool! Had she waited, had she let time work, the despair would have laid itself, there would have been found another to comfort her!’—That is just as if one said: ‘the fool, dies of fever! Had he waited until his powers recovered, his humors improved, the tumult of his blood laid itself: all would have gone well, and he lived to this day!’”

Albert, to whom the comparison was not yet vivid, raised some objections, and among others: I had spoken only of a simple-minded girl; but how a person of understanding, who is not so limited, who overlooks more relations, might be excused, he could not comprehend.—“My friend,” I cried, “man is man, and the bit of understanding that one may have comes little or not at all into account when passion rages and the limits of humanity press upon him. Rather—another time of that,” said I and reached for my hat. O my heart was so full—and we parted without having understood one another. As indeed on this earth no one easily understands another.

August 15

It is yet certain that in the world nothing makes man necessary but love. I feel it from Lotte, that she would ungladly lose me, and the children have no other notion than that I would always come again tomorrow. Today I had gone out to tune Lotte’s clavier, but I could not get to it, for the little ones pursued me for a story, and Lotte herself said I should do their will. I cut them their supper, which they now almost as gladly take from me as from Lotte, and told them the little chief tale of the princess who is served by hands. I learn much thereby, that I assure you, and I am astonished what impressions it makes on them. Because I must sometimes invent an incidental point that I forget the second time, they straightway say it was different last time, so that I now practice reciting to them unchangeably in a singing syllabic cadence on a little string. I have learned from this how an author through a second, altered edition of his story, and were it poetically ever so much better, necessarily must harm his book. The first impression finds us willing, and man is made so that one can persuade him of the most adventurous; but that also sticks so fast at once, and woe to him who would scratch and erase it again!

August 18

Must it then be so, that what makes man’s blessedness becomes again the source of his misery?

The full, warm feeling of my heart at living nature, that overflowed me with so much delight, that created around me a paradise of the world, now becomes to me an intolerable tormentor, a torturing spirit that pursues me on all paths. When formerly from the rock over the river to those hills I surveyed the fruitful valley, and saw everything around me sprouting and welling; when I saw those mountains, from foot to summit clothed with tall, dense trees, those valleys in their manifold windings shaded by the loveliest woods, and the gentle river glided between the lisping reeds and mirrored the dear clouds that the soft evening wind wafted across the sky; when I then heard the birds about me enliven the forest, and the million swarms of gnats danced boldly in the last red ray of the sun, and its last quivering glance freed the humming beetle from its grass, and the humming and weaving about me made me attentive to the ground, and the moss that wrings its nourishment from my hard rock, and the brush that grows down the barren sandhill, revealed to me the inner, glowing, holy life of nature: how I grasped all that in my warm heart, felt myself in the overflowing fullness as if deified, and the glorious shapes of the infinite world moved all-quickening in my soul. Immense mountains surrounded me, abysses lay before me, and thunder-showers plunged down, the rivers flowed beneath me, and wood and mountain resounded; and I saw them work and create within one another in the depths of the earth, all those unfathomable forces; and now above the earth and under heaven swarm the generations of manifold creatures. All, all peopled with thousandfold shapes; and then men gather in little houses and nestle and rule in their sense over the wide world! Poor fool! Who esteemest all so little, because thou art so small.—from the inaccessible mountain over the wilderness that no foot trod, to the end of the unknown ocean, breathes the spirit of the Eternal-Creating and rejoices in every mote that perceives him and lives.—ah, in those days, how often have I, with the wings of a crane that flew over me, longed to the shore of the measureless sea, to drink from the foaming cup of the Infinite that swelling life-bliss, and for one moment in the limited power of my breast to feel a drop of the felicity of the Being that brings forth all in itself and through itself.

Brother, only the memory of those hours does me good. Even this effort, to call back those unspeakable longings, to speak them again, lifts my soul above itself and then lets me feel doubly the dread of the condition that now surrounds me.

It has drawn away before my soul like a curtain, and the stage of infinite life transforms itself before me into the abyss of the eternally open grave. Can you say: This is! when all passes away? When all rolls past with the swiftness of storm, so seldom enduring the whole force of its existence, ah, is torn into the stream, submerged and shattered on rocks? There is no moment that does not consume you and the dear ones around you, no moment in which you are not a destroyer, must be; the most harmless walk costs a thousand poor worms their lives, a footstep destroys the laborious buildings of the ants and stamps a little world into a shameful grave. Ha! Not the great, rare distress of the world, these floods that wash away your villages, these earthquakes that swallow your cities, move me; my heart is undermined by the consuming force that lies hidden in the All of nature; that has formed nothing that does not destroy its neighbor, not itself. And so I stagger, frightened. Heaven and earth and their weaving forces about me: I see nothing but an eternally devouring, eternally ruminating monster.

August 21

In vain I stretch my arms out to her, mornings, when I dawn from heavy dreams, in vain I seek her at night in my bed, when a happy, innocent dream has deceived me, as if I sat with her on the meadow and held her hand and covered her with a thousand kisses. Ah, when I then still half in the reverie of sleep grope for her and thereupon rouse myself—a stream of tears breaks from my oppressed heart, and I weep hopeless toward a gloomy future.

August 22

E is a misfortune, Wilhelm, my active powers are tuned to a restless listlessness, I cannot be idle and yet can do nothing either. I have no imagination, no feeling for nature, and books disgust me. When we fail ourselves, we lack all. I swear to you, sometimes I wished to be a day-laborer, merely to have on awakening in the morning a prospect on the coming day, a drive, a hope. Often I envy Albert, whom I see buried over the ears in documents, and fancy it would be well with me if I were in his place! Already several times it has occurred to me to write to you and to the minister, to apply for the post at the legation, which, as you assure me, would not be denied me. I believe it myself. The minister has loved me for a long time, had long been concerned that I should devote myself to some business; and for an hour it is also well with me to care for it. Afterwards, when I think of it again and the fable of the horse occurs to me, that, impatient of its freedom, lets saddle and gear be laid on and is ridden to ruin—I know not what I shall do.—and, my dear! Is not perhaps the longing in me for change of condition an inner, uncomfortable impatience that will pursue me everywhere?

August 28

It is true, if my sickness could be healed, these people would do it. Today is my birthday, and early in the morning I receive a parcel from Albert. On opening it, one of the pale-red ribbons immediately falls to my eye, which Lotte had worn when I made her acquaintance, and which I had since asked her for several times. There were two little duodecimo volumes with it, the small Wetstein Homer, an edition I had so often asked for, so as not to drag the Ernesti about with me on walks. See! Thus they anticipate my wishes, thus they seek out all the little kindnesses of friendship, which are a thousand times more worthy than those dazzling gifts whereby the vanity of the giver degrades us. I kiss this ribbon a thousand times, and with every breath draw in the memory of those beatitudes wherewith those few, happy, irrecoverable days overfilled me. Wilhelm, it is so, and I murmur not, the blossoms of life are but appearances! How many pass by without leaving a trace, how few set fruit, and how few of these fruits ripen! And yet there are still enough; and yet—o my brother!—can we neglect ripened fruits, despise them, let them rot unenjoyed?

Farewell! It is a glorious summer; I often sit in the fruit trees in Lotte’s orchard with the fruit-breaker, the long pole, and fetch the pears from the top. She stands below and takes them when I let them down to her.

August 30

“Stories of the world, in your language.”