April 19th
For your information:
Thank you for both letters. I did not reply because I left this letter unfinished until the time of my departure from court. I was afraid my mother might appeal to the minister and make it more difficult for me to go through with my plans. But now it is all over, and the time for my departure has come. I don’t want to say how reluctant they were to let me go or what the minister wrote—you would only break out in renewed lamentations. The young duke gave me twenty-five ducats as a farewell gift, with a few words that moved me to tears, so my mother need not send me the money I asked for recently.
May 5th
Tomorrow I leave here, and since the place of my birth lies only six miles away, I want to visit it again and recall those happy, dreamlike days. I want to walk up to the gate through which my mother rode with me when she left that beloved, familiar place after my father’s death to incarcerate herself in the unbearable town she lives in now. Adieu, William. I shall report on the trip.
May 9th
I undertook the journey to my former home with all the reverence of a pilgrim, and was gripped by a few quite unexpected emotions. I had the carriage stop beside the tall linden tree that stands about a quarter of an hour’s drive from the city in the direction of S. I got out and told the postilion to drive on so that I might enjoy every memory on foot, vividly and renewed, according to the dictates of my heart. There I stood, under the tree that was once goal and limit of my walks as a boy, and how changed I was! In those days I longed with a happy ignorance to go out into the unknown world where I hoped to find so much nourishment for my heart, so much delight for my yearning soul.
And now I have returned from the wide, wide world, oh my friend, with so many shattered hopes and ruined plans. Stretched out before me I saw the mountains that had been the objective of my longing a thousand times. I used to be able to sit there by the hour and yearn for those mountains and lose my whole being in the woods and valleys that presented themselves to me in such a pleasant twilit fashion. And then, when I had to return at a certain time, with what reluctance I used to leave the beloved spot!
I approached the town and greeted all the old familiar little houses, thought the new ones were repulsive, also all over innovations. I walked in at the gate and at once found myself again—all of me! Dear friend, I don’t want to go into details. It was an enchanting experience, but would only fall flat in the telling.
I had decided to take lodgings on the market square next to our old house. On the way there, I noticed that our former schoolroom, where an honest old woman had crowded all our childhood together, had been turned into a general store. I recalled the restlessness, the tears, the dullness and fear that I had experienced in that little room. I could not take a step that was not worthy of note. A pilgrim in the Holy Land would not find so many places with sacred memories, nor could his soul possibly be filled with more reverent emotions. One more example will suffice: I walked downriver to a certain farm.
It used to be a favorite walk of mine and a place where we boys tried to see how many times we could make a flat stone ricochet on the water. I could remember vividly how I used to stand sometimes and watch the water, with what a marvelous feeling of reverie I would follow its course, and in a highly adventurous spirit, imagine the regions into which it flowed, until I soon found that my imagination had gone as far as it could—still it had to go on and on until I was lost utterly in invisible distances. Yes, my dear friend, that is how restrained yet happy our glorious ancestors were; their feelings and poetry were childlike. When Ulysses speaks of the boundless sea and the never-ending earth, it is so true, so human, so sincerely felt, so close and mysterious. Of what use is it to me that I can now recite with every schoolboy that the earth is round? A human being needs only a small plot of ground on which to be happy and even less to lie beneath.
So now here I am at the Prince’s hunting lodge. Life with him is pleasant, and we get along well. He is honest and simple and surrounded by very odd people whom I can’t even begin to understand! They don’t seem to be rogues, yet they don’t impress me as being honest, either. Sometimes I feel they are sincere; still I can’t trust them. Another thing I regret is that he speaks often of things he has only heard or read about, and then from the other person’s point of view, and he seems to value my mind and my various talents more than this heart of mine, of which I am so proud, for it is the source of all things—all strength, all bliss, all misery. The things I know, every man can know, but, oh, my heart is mine alone!
May 25th
I have had something on my mind that I did not want to mention to you until I had gone through with it. Now that nothing has come of it, it is just as well. I wanted to enlist and get into the fighting. My heart has been full of the idea for some time. It is the main reason why I came here with the Prince. He is a general in the service of —. While out for a walk, I disclosed my intention. He advised me against it, and it must have been a caprice on my part rather than a sincere desire, for I heeded his argument.
June 11th
Say what you will—I cannot stay here any longer. What is there for me to do here? Time hangs heavy on my hands. The Prince sees to it that I am well cared for, as well as could possibly be; still I do not feel at home. He is a man of intellect, yet there is nothing extraordinary about his mind; being with him is no more entertaining than reading a good book. I shall stay another week; then I shall start wandering again. The best thing I have done here are a few sketches. The Prince has a certain amount of understanding for the arts and would be even better at it were he not fettered by distasteful scientific ideas and commonplace terminology. Sometimes it sets my teeth on edge when I point out nature and art to him with my heartfelt imagination, and he feels suddenly that he must do the correct thing and ruins everything with a platitude.
June 16th
Yes, I am a wanderer on this earth—a pilgrim. Are you anything more than that?
June 18th
You would like to know where I am heading? Let me inform you, confidentially…I have to stay here two weeks more; then, I tell myself, I want to visit the mines in —. Of course there’s nothing to it, really, but that I want to be near Lotte. And I have to laugh at my heart as I do its bidding.
July 29th
No, all is well, all is well just as it is. I…her husband! O God, Who didst make me as I am, hadst Thou but granted me this bliss, my whole life would have been a paean of praise to Thee! But I shall not remonstrate, and I beg Thee to forgive my tears and my vain desires. Lotte…my wife! If only I could say that I had held the most beloved creature under the sun in my arms! It makes me shudder, William, to think of Albert putting his arms around her slender waist.
And—do I dare say it? Why not, William? She would have been happier with me. He is not the man to fulfill all her desires. A certain lack of sensitivity, a lack…oh, put it any way you like…his heart does not respond to certain passages in a book over which Lotte’s and mine would meet, and on a hundred other occasions…when we are talking about someone else’s behavior…oh, my dear William, of course he loves her with all
