From the cradle to the bier
It will take but fifty year
Then death will claim his share.
You decline and you deteriorate
You despair and you disintegrate
And dammit you even lose your hair.
Your ancient teeth are moulding
And against your manly chest
There is no young lady pressed—
It’s just a Goethe novel you are holding.
But one more time ere I depart
Let me embrace one of those girls
With sparkling eyes and tumbling curls
Whom I can hold against my heart
Kissing her lips, her face, her breast
And helping her to get undressed.
After that, in God’s name then
Death can come for me. Amen.
One dies so damnably slowly, and piece by piece—every tooth, muscle and bone says its own goodbye, as if one had a special relationship with each of them.
From an undated letter
We have to torment ourselves and eat many bitter fruits before we lie still and rot … A rocket has a much better life—it goes whoosh, and is off at the peak of its powers.
From a letter written on
25th April 1916 to Ernst Kreidolf
By youth we are forsaken
Our health too has declined.
The foreground now is taken
By the contemplative mind.
The older one gets and the less reason one actually has for clinging to life, the more stupidly and fearfully one shrinks away from death. And the more greedily and childishly one falls upon the last crumbs of the meal, the last few pleasures. And one keeps on hoping, and one keeps on finding grounds for hope. Today, as the fifty-year-old’s fatal lust for life keeps me busy, I hope for the time to come, for the stillness and detachment of the age that lies beyond these critical years.
From März in der Stadt
(March in the City), 1927
I long for death, but not for a premature, immature death, and in all my yearning for maturity and wisdom I remain deeply and utterly in love with the sweet and capricious foolishness of life. We want both together, dear friend—lovely wisdom and sweet folly! We want to walk together and stumble together over and over again, for both should be delectable.
From a letter written on 20th
January 1917 to Walter Schädelin
I’m often surprised by the extreme toughness with which our nature clings to life. Compliantly, though by no means willingly, we adjust to circumstances which just two days ago would have seemed to us totally unbearable.
From a letter written in March
1956 to Peter Suhrkamp
Coming to terms with physical pain, when it lasts for some time, is certainly one of the hardest things to do. Those who are heroic by nature resist pain, try to deny it and grit their teeth like Roman Stoics, but admirable though this attitude might be, we still tend to have our doubts about whether pain can be truly conquered. As for me, I’ve always coped best with sharp pain when I have not resisted it, but have given myself over to it as one gives oneself over to inebriation or adventure.
From a letter written in
February 1930 to Georg Reinhart
Between fifty and eighty one can enjoy lots of nice experiences—almost as many as in the earlier decades. I would not recommend going past eighty, though—then it’s not nice any more.
From a letter written in
April 1961 to Gunter Böhmer