“But he eats out of my mouth too,” she said, and let him take a few crumbs from her lips. She was smiling, radiant with the joy of an innocent love. I turned away. She should not have done it. She should not incite my imagination with such exhibitions of heavenly innocence and bliss; she should not rouse my heart, which the indifference of life sometimes rocks to sleep. And yet, why not? She trusts me. She knows how much I love her.
September 15th
It is enough to drive one mad, William! To think that there are people who have no feeling at all for the few things on this earth that are of real value! Do you remember the walnut trees under which I sat with Lotte when we visited the good vicar in St. —? Those magnificent trees that, God knows, always delighted me…how snug they made the rectory courtyard, how cool, and what marvelous branches they had! And the memories that went with them, back to the worthy vicar who had planted them so many years ago. The schoolmaster mentions his name often; he has it from his grandfather. What a good man he was, and his memory was sacred to me always under those trees. Let me tell you, there were tears in the schoolmaster’s eyes yesterday when we spoke about how they had been cut down. Yes, cut down!
The very idea drives me crazy! I could murder the dog who drove in the first ax. I, who would grieve if I had a pair of trees like that in my yard and had to see them die of old age…I have to see the thing happen! But, my dear friend, there is another side to it—human reaction. The whole village is grumbling about it, and I hope the vicar’s wife will be made to feel, by a lack of butter and eggs and the dearth of other little friendly gestures, how she has wounded the town. Because it was done on the orders of the new clergyman’s wife (our dear old man died), a gaunt, sickly woman who has every reason not to participate in the life going on around her because it wants no part of her. She is a crazy creature who pretends to be very learned, dabbles in new interpretations of the Scriptures, shrugs off Lavater’s ecstasies, and occupies herself with the moral-critical reformation of Christianity that is currently fashionable. She is thoroughly unhealthy and therefore knows naught of the joys on God’s earth.
Only a person like that could have cut down my walnut trees! You can see—I can’t get over it! Just imagine—the falling leaves, she says, messed up her yard and made it dank. The trees took away the light, and when the nuts were ripe, the boys threw stones at them, and that made her nervous! I suppose it disturbed her profound thoughts as she weighed the merits of Kennicott, Semler, and Michaelis. When I saw how upset the villagers were, especially the older ones, I asked, “Why did you let it happen?” “When the bailiff wants anything done,” they said, “what can we do about it?” But I can report on one act of justice: the bailiff and the vicar—who wanted to see some gain from his wife’s whim; they don’t usually fill his larder—thought they would divide the profit of the trees between them. But the chamberlain got wind of it and said, “It goes into our coffers!” According to him, his office holds claim to that part of the parsonage on which the trees stood and will sell them to the highest bidder! There they lie. Oh, if I were prince, I would see to it that vicar’s wife, bailiff, and chamberlain—prince? Ah me, if I were prince, of what concern would the trees on my land be to me?
October 10th
If only I can look into her dark eyes, then all is well with me again. And do you know what grieves me? I don’t think Albert is as happy as he…hoped to be…as I thought I was when…
I don’t like all these pauses, but can’t seem to express myself in any other way at this point…and am expressing myself clearly enough, I think, anyway.
October 12th
Ossian has replaced Homer in my heart, and what a world it is into which this divine poet leads me! Oh, to wander across the heath in a blustering windstorm, by the light of a waning moon, as it conjures up the ghosts of our ancestors in clouds of mist! Oh, to hear, above the rushing of a forest stream, the half-fading groans of specters issuing from caves in the hillside, and the keening maiden weeping herself into her grave beside the four moss-clad, grass-o’ergrown stones of her noble, fallen hero—her beloved.
When I see him—the roving, hoary bard—seeking the footsteps of his forefathers on the wide moor only to find their gravestones; and he looks up, lamenting, at the gentle star of eve about to sink into the rolling sea and times gone by revive in his heroic soul, times when a friendly light still guided the brave man in his peril, and the moon cast its serene light on his garlanded ship, sailing home victorious…when I can read the profound sorrow on his brow and see this last, forsaken, magnificent one reel exhausted to his grave, still finding a melancholy yet glowing joy in the powerless presence of the shades of his departed ones, and can hear him cry as he looks down upon the cold earth and tall waving grasses, “The wanderer will come, will come, who knew me in my glory and will ask, ‘Where is the bard, oh, where is Fingal’s7 admirable son?’ His footsteps cross my grave and he asks in vain for me on earth!” Ah my friend, then, like a noble armiger, I would like to draw my sword and in a trice free my liege lord from the agonizing torment of a life that is a gradual death and send my own soul after the liberated demigod!
October 19th
Oh, this void, this dreadful void in my breast! Often I think—if just once I could press her to my heart, it would be filled!
October 26th
Yes, I am growing certain, dear friend, more and more certain, that the life of a human creature is a negligible factor, a very negligible factor. A friend came to see Lotte; I went into the next room to find a book—and couldn’t read. Then I picked up a pen to write. I could hear them talking softly about unimportant things, new happenings in town, a wedding, someone was ill, very ill…she has a hard dry cough and every bone in her face shows, she faints…“I wouldn’t give a penny for her life,” says Lotte’s friend. “I hear that N.N. is not well either,” says Lotte. “He’s so bloated,” says her friend.
And my lively imagination carries me off to the bedside of these poor people. I can see with what terrible resistance they turn their backs on life, while she—William, my girl speaks about it the way…the way one talks about such things…a stranger lies dying. And when I look around me and see this room—Lotte’s clothes, Albert’s papers, the pieces of furniture that have by now become my good friends, even this inkwell here—I think: see what you mean to this house. All in all, your friends respect you; you are a joy to them; your heart tells you that you could not do without them; and yet…if you were to go now, if you were to leave this aura…would they…and how long would it take them to fill the gap your loss would tear into their destiny? How long? Oh, man is so transient that he can be blotted out even where he feels quite sure of his existence, where he leaves the only true impression of his presence on earth—in the thoughts and souls of his loved ones. From them, too, he must vanish—and so soon!
October 27th
Often I would tear my breast and bash my brains in because we can mean so little to one another. Ah, the love, joy, warmth, and ecstasy that I cannot contribute and will therefore never receive from anyone else! With a heart full of joy I cannot make happy the man who stands before me, helpless and cold.
October 27th, Evening
I have so much, yet my feeling for her devours it all. I have so much, yet without her all of it is nothing.
October 30th
A hundred times, at least, I have been on the point of taking her in my arms. The good Lord knows what it means to see so much graciousness passing to and fro before one’s eyes and not be allowed to grasp it, for grasping is the most natural urge of mankind. Don’t children try to grasp anything they can think of? And I?
November 3rd
God knows, I go to bed often with the wish—yes, sometimes in the hope of not waking up again; then, in the morning, I open my eyes to the sun and am miserable. If only I could be moody and put the blame on the weather, or on some third person, or on a project that has failed, then the unbearable burden of my ill humor would be only half mine. But alas, I know only too well that it is all my fault, my fault. Suffice it to say that the source of all misery is within me just as I formerly bore within myself the source of all bliss. Am I not still
