Yours Otto W.
Nuremberg, Tuesday evening. (5th August, 1902, according to the postmark. )
Dear heartily loved friend!
Do not be angry with me for writing a postcard to you when in Löwenbräuhaus, where the beer is much worse than in Pschorr, Hof and Spatenbräuhaus. I just thought of you and had a card with me and nothing else. The thought that your good Madam mother or your Miss sister could have read the end of that card and said “You see, Weininger is nevertheless a reasonable man! He has gained his doctorate, etc. ”, is certainly embarrassing.
Please assure me that this was not the case.
I think of you often, but your present situation makes this rather painful for me. And now I can do nothing at all for you! While you, from your snug corner, carry concern not only for my clothing, but also for my nourishment.
I will surely eat the salami in Bayreuth, but unfortunately alone . . .
I will stay in Bayreuth perhaps only till Friday evening, then Dresden.
I would like to ask you one thing: do not expect to hear too much from me about myself. For me it is a very bad time now, as bad as hardly ever. Not only great unfruitfulness, not only purely crippling notions demanding crutches of me, and these few enough; but something else altogether. Perhaps someday I will tell you of it. I lead, besides the life that you know, always yet two or three others, of which you do not know. To this I draw your attention; I cannot say more to you, but please, do not inquire into it in any way.
I can certainly tell you something about Munich and Nuremberg, if you want. Now end! Live well!
Yours Otto W.
Bayreuth, 8th August, 1902 11 pm.
Dear friend!
I hope the beautiful card pleases you. Admittedly I have sent the same picture to two others, but it was not the same act for me.
The words Wagner has written in front of his house would have led your thoughts back to your own self.
Don’t believe that I don’t fully understand your sufferings. It is only because I understand them that I cannot write anything about and against them. I know that for you at the moment, and also on the other side of the state examination, nothing lies but endless, bleak fog. Otherwise you would yet be able to learn indeed. . .
You lack something for consummate greatness, that’s right; and if you had this, so would even this alone keep you from thinking so much of your future. Because that is the unfortunate with you. There are people for whom, according to their inner and outer conditions, it would have to go just as badly as for you, and who are nevertheless not so unfortunate. What you lack, is precisely the religious, or philosophical, or metaphysical. You have a terrible, burning desire in you, whose object you do not know, and for which you still demand and demand. You are longing for your home and suspect not, that you carry it only in yourself.
I have something more to put right in you. You do not completely lack the other, I know that from that night about which we have not spoken again. I would be happy if I could contribute upon my return to helping this other, this single source of a possible satisfaction of mind for man, to flow.
I am writing nothing to you about Bayreuth and Parsifal. For only then will you understand that. Tomorrow I go to Dresden.
Yours O. W.
Much to see, little time, also little desire for telling, therefore no long letter.
Dresden, 12th August, 1902
Dear friend!
Thus the fate of the sausage, which I have repeatedly inquired after with keen interest in Bayreuth, has fulfilled itself. It has regretfully returned to its origin. Was it still edible? Hopefully you have tried it once around 10 o’clock in the morning!
To gradually step up from the sausage: The man is a certain Dr. Mario C. , whom I, at the time still as a philosophy student, had fleetingly acquainted myself with at the psychology congress in Paris. He is of course small, very dark, with a proportionately sharp countenance, intelligent eyes, which seem to observe. He gave me the impression of a very serious and not very happy man. I talked less with him than in his presence with his friend, a philosophising mathematics professor from Lower Italy, who spoke to me in the international painting exhibition just as I had sated myself viewing Klimt’s “Philosophy” there in great haste, and stepped up to the dais.
Now you know all that I know . . .
Please write to me about what, especially, there is to see in Saxon Switzerland50. But I may be a bit more critical than you have thought, to ask you to consider: In the Munich secession are three pictures which do not annoy one, and in Nymphenburg, that you recommended to me nonetheless, are none at all. I certainly know how beautifully a person who, like you, lives a great deal in his past, nightly gilds any memory, even the most irksome; I do likewise; but one should be wary of allowing the eternally unfulfillable wish of reliving through others to satisfy one: otherwise they will come back and want to spoil one’s pleasure for everything, don’t you think?
I intend to leave Dresden early on Wednesday. About ten o clock I am in Berlin (poste restante) and the next morning travel immediately onward toward Stralsund (poste restante) and the island Rügen (Sassnitz, poste restante). I am likely to pass a longer time there. I am very pleased at that.
On the return journey, I want to remain longer in Berlin and visit Saxon Switzerland, if you earnestly recommend it to me.
By the way – upon Nature one need place no claims, it fulfills simply all. I only ask you whether I will receive impressions there, which P51. does not offer. Saxon enthusiasm, to me, always belittles things.
With pleasure, I take it from the rhythm of your last letter that it begins to go better with you. Indeed you already spit upon the state examination, upon Zurich!?
I am doing somewhat better today – I now have the conviction that I am yet born to be a musician. Yet at least preferably. Today I discovered a specifically musical imagination in myself, of which I would never have thought myself capable, and which has filled me with a great reverence.
50 Region of Germany on the Czech border near Dresden. [Trans] 51 Pürkersdorf. [Trans]
One thing: Write and say nothing to anyone of what now goes around in your head and you exhort. Not to Sch52. either, and certainly not to me at all.
Are the B. s in P. ?53 (Forgive me! A long chain of association!) And what does one hear about Ms. K and Count Good-for-nothing? And . . . write me yet something about this year’s P. and your relationship to it, what you are doing if you are not learning. – I have now seen the real Sistine Madonna. She is – beautiful. But not meaningful; not magnificient, somehow not moving. And the people before it! I amused myself heartily. There are far more outstanding paintings here.
One have I found, a deep knower of Woman: Palma Vecchio. I don’t know whether you have seen his pictures. It interests me however, what you think of Raphael’s Madonna.
See you!
(Stenographed) 15th August 1902 In a train carriage to Sassnitz.
Hearty thanks for your letter that was forwarded to me from Dresden.
After you yourself brought the conversation upon the topic that I, making allowance for your mood, was avoiding addressing, so will I only remark, that I have predominantly contradicted you in one point, which I appear to have rightly maintained . . .
That she is lustful, mendacious, coquettish, that she immediately springs into action as soon as anyone seems to take less note of her, that she will leave standing anyone who courts her naively and admires her openly – indeed that she has all of the prostitute in her, is not so new to me as you seem to think, and has also stirred me less than the observation I made shortly before I left, that in all these qualities she does not suffer, and does not control them, does not hold herself in check.
You have much too good an opinion of me, which I see again and again. Admittedly even this confession that I make to you is again accompanied by my accursed vanity.
The feeling of not being able to love again, I unfortuantely know very closely. I cannot fully believe that of you. I hope you are agreeable with this first shorthand.
52 Schiffmann. [Trans]
53 Possibly refers to a family surname beginning with “B”, who have returned to Pürkersdorf. [Trans]
Picture postcard Bad Altfähr (Rügen ) 16th August 1902
The sea . . . .
Crampas, 17th August, 1902 Saturday evening
Dear friend!
It pleases me very much to have come to the fore in your wishes. Already at noon today I sent you a picture – the best to be had – of a place on an island to which I let myself be ferried instead of waiting for the departure of my train in Stralsund. Hopefully you already have it now.
I will send you everything, which says something.
The mail is an institution of which I am now thankful. It brings me your letters; and I also have a strong need for a telephone to you.
How long will I be away? I still have 55 marks and
