The moment had arrived. I caught a glimpse of the aunt on the street and thus knew that she was not at home. Edward was at the customhouse. In all likelihood, Cordelia was home alone. And so she was. She was sitting at the sewing table busy with some handiwork. Rarely did I visit the family in the morning; therefore, she was a little flustered at seeing me. The situation became almost too emotional. She was not to blame for that, for she regained her composure rather easily, but I myself was at fault, for despite my armor plating, she made an unusually powerful impression upon me. How lovely she was in her plain, blue-striped calico housedress, with a freshly picked rose on her bosom. A freshly picked rose—no, the girl herself was like a freshly picked blossom, so fresh was she, so recently arrived! Indeed, who knows where a young girl spends the night—in the land of illusions, I believe—but every morning she returns, and this explains her youthful freshness. She looked so young and yet so fully developed, as if nature, like a tender and luxuriant mother, had this very moment released her from her hand. To me it was as if I were a witness to this farewell scene; I saw how that fond mother embraced her once again in farewell, and I heard her say, “Go out into the world now, my child; I have done everything for you. Take now this kiss as a seal upon your lips. It is a seal that guards the sanctuary; it cannot be broken by anyone if you yourself do not want it to be, but when the right one comes you will know him.” And she pressed a kiss upon her lips, a kiss, unlike a human kiss, which subtracts something, but rather a divine kiss, which gives everything, which gives the girl the power of the kiss. Wonderful nature, how profound and enigmatic you are! To man you give words, and to the girl the eloquence of the kiss! This kiss was upon her lips, and the farewell upon her brow, and the joyous greeting in her eyes—therefore she simultaneously looked so much at home, for she was the child of the house, and so much the stranger, for she did not know the world but only the fond mother who invisibly watched over her. She was truly lovely, young as a child, and yet adorned with the noble-minded virginal dignity that inspires respect.
Soon, however, I was dispassionate again and solemnly obtuse, as is befitting when one is about to cause something full of meaning to happen in such a way as to make it mean nothing. After a few general remarks, I drew a bit closer to her and came out with my petition. A person who talks like a book is extremely boring to listen to, but sometimes it is rather expedient to talk that way. That is, a book has the remarkable characteristic that it can be interpreted as one pleases. If a person talks like a book, his talking also has the same characteristic. I kept very strictly to the usual formulas. She was surprised, as I had expected; that is undeniable. It is difficult for me to give an account of how she looked. Her expression was multifarious—indeed, just about like the still unpublished but announced commentary on my book, a commentary that contains the possibility of any and every interpretation. One word, and she would have laughed at me; one word, she would have been moved; one word, she would have escaped me—but no word passed my lips; I remained solemnly obtuse and kept precisely to the ritual. —”She had known me for such a short time.” Good lord, such difficulties are encountered only on the narrow path of an engagement, not on the flowery path of love.
Very strange. When I was deliberating on the matter during the preceding days, I was resolute enough about it and sure that in her surprise she would say “Yes.” There one sees how much all the preparations help; the matter did not turn out that way, for she said neither “Yes” nor “No” but referred me to her aunt. I should have foreseen that. But luck was actually with me, for this result was even better.
The aunt gives her consent; of that I have never entertained the remotest doubt. Cordelia follows her advice. As for my engagement, I shall not boast that it is poetic, for in every way it is utterly philistine and bourgeois. The girl does not know whether she should say “Yes” or “No”; the aunt says “Yes,” the girl also says “Yes,” I take the girl, she takes me—and now the story begins.
The third
So now I am engaged; so is Cordelia, and that is just about all she knows concerning the whole affair. If she had a girl friend to whom she would talk honestly, she would very likely say, “What it all means, I really do not understand. There is something about him that draws me to him, but I cannot make out what it is. He has a strange power over me, but love him, that I do not and perhaps never shall, but I shall surely be able to endure living with him and thus also be quite happy with him, for he will probably not demand too much if one only sticks it out with him.” My dear Cordelia! Perhaps he will require something more, and in return less endurance. —Of all ludicrous things an engagement is still the most ludicrous. There is at least meaning in a marriage, even if this meaning does not suit me. An engagement is a purely human invention and is no credit whatsoever to its inventor. It is neither one thing nor the other and has as much to do with love as the ribbon the beadle wears down his back has to do with a professor’s academic gown. Now I am a member of this respectable society. It is not without significance, for as Trop says: Not until you become an artist yourself do you earn the right to judge other artists.50 And is not an engaged man also a Dyrehaug artist?51
Edward is beside himself with indignation. He is letting his beard grow, has hung up his black suit—which tells much. He wants to speak with Cordelia, wants to describe for her all my cunning. It will be a shocking scene: Edward unshaven, disheveled, and speaking loudly with Cordelia. If he will only not dislodge me with his long beard. I try futilely to bring him to reason; I explain that it is the aunt who arranged the match, that Cordelia perhaps still entertains feelings for him, that I shall be willing to bow out if he can win her. For a moment, he hesitates about whether he should have his beard trimmed a new way, buy a new black suit—the next moment, he heaps abuse upon me. I do everything to keep up appearances with him. However angry he is with me, I am sure he will take no step without consulting me; he does not forget what benefit he has had from me as his mentor. And why should I tear his last hope from him, why break with him? He is a good man; who knows what may happen in time.
What I have to do now is, on the one hand, to organize everything so that the engagement is broken in such a way that I thereby secure a more beautiful and significant relationship to Cordelia; on the other hand, I must utilize the time to the best of my ability to delight in the loveliness, all the lovableness, with which nature has so abundantly equipped her, delight in it, but nevertheless with the restraint and circumspection that forestall the anticipation of anything. When I have brought her to the point where she has learned what it is to love and what it is to love me, then the engagement will break like a defective mold and she will belong to me. Others become engaged when they have arrived at this point and have the good prospect of a boring marriage for all eternity. That is their business,
Everything is still in statu quo, but scarcely any engaged person can be happier than I; no miser who has found a gold coin is happier than I. I am intoxicated with the thought that she is in my power. Pure, innocent womanliness, as transparent as the sea, and yet just as deep, with no idea of love [Kjœrlighed]! But now she is going to learn what a powerful force erotic love [Elskov] is. Just like a king’s daughter who has been elevated from the dust to the throne of her forefathers, so she will be enthroned in the kingdom to which she belongs. And this will take place through me; and in learning to love, she will learn to love me; as she develops the rule, the paradigm will sequentially unfold, and this I am. As she in love becomes alive to her entire meaning, she will apply this to loving me, and when she suspects that she has learned it from me, she will love me two-fold. The thought of my joy overwhelms me to such a degree that I am almost losing my senses.
Her soul is not diffused or slackened by the vague emotions of erotic love, something that keeps many young girls from ever learning to love, that is, definitely, energetically, totally. In their minds they have a vague, foggy image that is supposed to be an ideal by which the actual object is to be tested. From such incompleteness emerges a something whereby one may help oneself properly through the world. —As erotic love now awakens in her soul, I see into it, I learn to know it by listening to all the voices of erotic love in her. I make sure of the shape it has taken in her and form myself in likeness to it; and just as I already am spontaneously included in the story that love is running through in her heart, so I come again to her from the outside as deceptively as possible. After all, a girl loves only once.
Now, then, I am in legitimate possession of Cordelia and have the aunt’s consent and blessing, the congratulations of friends and relatives; surely it will last. So now the troubles of war are over and the blessings of peace begin. What foolishness! As if the aunt’s blessing and the friends’ congratulations were able to give me possession of Cordelia in the more profound sense; as if love made such a distinction between times of war and times of peace and did not instead—as long as it exists—announce itself in conflict, even though the weapons are different. The difference is actually in whether the conflict is cominus [close at hand] or eminus [at a distance]. The more the conflict in a love relationship has been eminus, the more distressing it is, for the hand-to-hand combat becomes all the more trifling. Hand-to-hand combat involves a handshake, a touching with the foot—something that Ovid,52 as is known, recommends just as much as he most jealously rants against it, to say nothing of a kiss, an embrace. The person who fights eminus usually has only the eyes on which to depend, and yet, if he is an artist, he knows how to use this weapon with such virtuosity that he achieves almost the same result. He can let his eyes rest on a girl with a desultory tenderness that has the same effect as if he casually touched her; he can grasp her just as firmly with his eyes as if he held her locked in his arms. But it is always a mistake or a disaster if one fights eminus too long, for such fighting is always only a symbol, not the enjoyment. Not until one fights cominus does everything acquire its true meaning. If there is no combat in love, then it has ceased. I have almost never fought eminus, and this is why I am now not at the end but at the beginning; I am taking out my weapons. I am in possession of her, that is true, that is, in the legal and bourgeois sense, but that means nothing at all to me—I have much purer concepts. She is engaged to me, that is true, but if from that I were to draw the conclusion that she loves me, it would be an illusion, for she does not love at all. I am in legitimate possession of her, and yet I am not in possession of her, just as I can very well be in possession of a girl without being in legitimate possession of her.
Auf heimlich erröthender Wange
Leuchtet des Herzens Glühen
[On a secretly blushing cheek
Shines the glow of the heart].53
She is sitting on the sofa by the tea table, I on a chair at her side. This position has a confidentiality and yet a dignity that distances. A great deal depends upon the position, that is, for one who has an eye for it. Love has many positions—this is the first. How royally nature has equipped this girl: her clean soft figure, her profoundly feminine innocence, her clear eyes—all this intoxicates me. —I have greeted her. She approached me, happy as usual, yet a little embarrassed, a little uncertain—after all, the engagement must make our relationship somewhat different, but how, she does not know; she took my hand, but not with the usual smile. I responded to the greeting with a slight, almost unnoticeable pressure of the hand; I was gentle and friendly, yet without being erotic. —She is sitting on the sofa by the tea table, I on a chair at her side. A transfiguring ceremoniousness sweeps over the scene, a soft morning light. She is silent; nothing breaks in upon the stillness. My eyes glide softly over her, not desiringly—that would truly be brazen. A delicate fleeting blush, like a cloud over the meadow, fades away, heightening and fading. What does this blush signify? Is it love, is it longing, hope, fear, for is not red the color of the heart? By no means. She wonders, she really wonders—not at me, for that would be too little to offer her; she is amazed—not at herself but within herself. She is being transformed within herself. This moment craves stillness; therefore no reflection is to disturb it, no noise of passion is to disrupt it. It is as if I were not present, and yet it is my very presence that is the condition for this contemplative wonder of hers. My being is in harmony with hers. In a state such as this, a girl is adored and worshiped, just as some deities are, by silence.
It is fortunate that I have my uncle’s house. If I wanted to impart to a young man a distaste for tobacco, I would take him into some smoking room or other in Regensen;54 if I want to impart to a young girl a distaste for being engaged, I need only to introduce her here. Just as no one but tailors frequents the tailors’ guildhall, so here only engaged couples come. It is an appalling company in which to become involved, and I cannot blame Cordelia for becoming impatient. When we are gathered en masse, I think we put ten couples on the field, besides the annexed battalions that come to the capital for the great festivals. Then we engaged ones really enjoy the delights of being engaged. I report with Cordelia at the assembly ground in order to give her a distaste for these amorous tangibilities, these bunglings of lovesick workmen. Incessantly, all night through, one hears a sound as if someone were going around with a fly swatter—it is the lovers’ kissing. In this house, one has an amiable absence of embarrassment; one does not even seek the nooks and comers—no, people sit around a large round table. I, too, make a move to treat Cordelia in the same way. To that end, I really have to force myself. It would really be shocking if I allowed myself to insult her deep womanliness in this way. I would reproach myself even more for this than when I deceive her. On the whole, I can guarantee perfect esthetic treatment to any girl who entrusts herself to me—it only ends with her being deceived, but this, too, is part of my esthetics, for either the girl deceives the man or the man deceives the girl. It would certainly be interesting if some literary drudge could be found to count up in fairy tales, legends, folk ballads, and myths whether a girl is more often faithless or a man.
Repent of the time Cordelia is costing me, I do not, even though she is costing me a great deal. Each meeting often requires long preparations. I am experiencing with her the emergence of her love. I myself am almost invisibly present when I am sitting visible at her side. My relationship to her is like a dance that is supposed to be danced by two people but is danced by only one. That is, I am the other dancer, but invisible. She moves as in a dream, and yet she is dancing with another, and I am that other one who, insofar as I am visibly present, is invisible, and insofar as I am invisible, is visible. The movements require another. She bows to him; she stretches out her hand to him. She recedes; she approaches again. I take her hand; I complete her thought, which nevertheless is completed within itself. She moves to the melody in her own soul; I am merely the occasion for her moving. I am not erotic; that would only arouse her; I am flexible, supple, impersonal, almost like a mood.
What do engaged people ordinarily talk about? As far as I know, they are very busy mutually weaving each other into the boring context of the respective families. No wonder the erotic vanishes. If a person does not know how to make erotic love the absolute, in comparison with which all other events vanish, then he should never let himself become involved in loving, even if he marries ten times. Whether I have an aunt named Marianne, an uncle named Christopher, a father who is a major, etc. etc., all such public information is irrelevant to the mysteries of love. Yes, even one’s own past life is nothing. Ordinarily a young girl does not have much to tell in this regard; if she does, it may very well be worth the trouble to listen to her—but, as a rule, not to love her. I for my part am not looking for stories—I certainly have enough of them; I am seeking immediacy. The eternal in erotic love is that in its moment individuals first come into existence for each other.
A little confidence must be awakened in her, or, more correctly, a doubt must be removed. I do not exactly belong to the aggregate of lovers who out of respect love each other, out of respect marry each other, out of respect have children together, but nevertheless I am well aware that erotic love, especially as long as passion is not set in motion, demands of the one who is its object that he not esthetically offend against morality. In this regard, erotic love has its own dialectic. For example, while my relationship with Edward is far more censurable from the moral standpoint than my conduct toward the aunt, it will be much easier to justify the former to Cordelia than the latter. It is true that she has not said anything about it, but nevertheless I found it best to explain the necessity of my acting in that way. The cautiousness I have used flatters her pride; the secretiveness with which I handled everything captures her attention. Surely it might seem that here I have already betrayed too much erotic polish, so that when I am obliged later to insinuate that I have never been in love before I shall be contradicting myself, but that makes no difference. I am not afraid of contradicting myself if only she does not detect it and I achieve what I wish. Let it be the ambition of learned doctoral candidates to avoid every contradiction; a young girl’s life is too abundant to have no contradictions and consequently makes contradictions inevitable.
She is proud and also has no real conception of the erotic. Although now she probably submits to me intellectually to some degree, it is conceivable that when the erotic begins to assert itself she might take it into her head to turn her pride against me. From all that I can observe, she is perplexed about woman’s real significance. Therefore it was easy to arouse her pride against Edward. But this pride was completely eccentric, because she had no conception of erotic love. If she acquires it, then she will acquire her true pride, but a remnant of that eccentric pride might easily supervene. It is then conceivable that she would turn against me. Although she will not repent of having consented to the engagement, she will nevertheless readily perceive that I obtained it at a rather good price; she will see that the beginning was not made correctly from her side. If this dawns on her, she will dare to stand up to me. Good! Then I shall be convinced of how profoundly she is stirred.
Sure enough. Even from far down the street, I see this lovely little curly head leaning out of the window as far as possible. It is the third day I have noticed it. —A young girl certainly does not stand at the window for nothing; presumably she has her good reasons. —But I beg you for heaven’s sake not to lean so far out of the window; I wager that you are standing on the rung of a chair—I can tell from your posture. Think how terrible it would be if you fell down, not on my head, because I am keeping out of this affair until later, but on his, his, because there certainly must be a he. —No! What do I see! Way off there, my friend Hansen, the licentiate, is coming down the middle of the street. There is something unusual about his behavior. It is a rather uncustomary conveyance; if I judge rightly, it is on the wings of longing that he is coming. Could it be that he is a regular visitor to the house and I do not know it? —My pretty little miss, you disappear; I suppose you have gone to open the door to receive him. —You can just as well come back; he is not coming into the house at all. —How can it be that you know better? Well, I can assure you—he said it himself. If the carriage that passed had not made so much noise, you yourself could have heard it. I said, just en passant: Are you going in here? To which he answered with a clear word: No. —So you may as well say good-bye, for the licentiate and I are going out for a walk. He is embarrassed, and embarrassed people generally are talkative. I am going to talk with him about the pastoral appointment he is seeking. —Good-bye, my pretty miss, we are on our way to the customhouse. When we arrive there, I shall say to him: What a damned nuisance—you have taken me out of my way. I am supposed to go to Vestergade.
Look, here we are again. —What constancy! She is still standing at the window. A girl like that is sure to make a man happy. —And why am I doing all this, you ask. Because I am a vile fellow who has his fun by teasing others? By no means. I am doing it out of consideration for you, my charming girl. In the first place, you have been waiting for this licentiate, longing for him, and thus he is doubly handsome when he comes. In the second place, when he comes through the door now, he will say, “We damned near let the cat out of the bag when that confounded fellow was at the door as I was about to visit you. But I was smart; I inveigled him into a long chat about the appointment I am seeking; I walked him here and there and finally way out to the customhouse. I assure you that he did not notice a thing.” And what then? So you are fonder of your licentiate than ever, for you have always thought that he had an excellent way of thinking, but that he was clever—well, now you see it for yourself. And you have me to thank for that. —But something occurs to me. Their engagement must not have been announced yet—otherwise I would know about it. The girl is lovely and delightful to look at, but she is young. Perhaps her discernment is not mature yet. Was it not conceivable that she would go and rashly take a most serious step? That must be prevented; I must speak with her. I owe it to her, for she certainly is a very charming girl. I owe it to the licentiate, for he is my friend; as far as that goes, I owe it to her because she is my friend’s intended. I owe it to the family, for certainly it is a very respectable family. I owe it to the whole human race, for it is a good deed. The whole human race! What a tremendous thought, what uplifting sport—to act in the name of the whole human race, to be in possession of a general power of attorney. —But now to Cordelia. I can always make use of mood, and the girl’s beautiful longing has really stirred me.
So now begins the first war with Cordelia, in which I retreat and thereby teach her to be victorious as she pursues me. I continually fall back, and in this backward movement I teach her to know through me all the powers of erotic love, its turbulent thoughts, its passion, what longing is, and hope, and impatient expectancy. As I perform this set of steps before her, all this will develop correspondingly in her. It is a triumphal procession in which I am leading her, and I myself am just as much the one who dithyrambically sings praises to her victory as I am the one who shows the way. She will gain courage to believe in erotic love, to believe it is an eternal force, when she sees its dominion over me, sees my movements. She will believe me, partly because I rely on my artistry, and partly because at the bottom of what I am doing there is truth. If that were not the case, she would not believe me. With my every move, she becomes stronger and stronger; love is awakening in her soul; she is being enthroned in her meaning as a woman.
Until now I have not proposed [friet] to her, as it is called in the bourgeois sense; now I shall do it. I shall make her free [fri]; only in that way shall I love her. That she owes this to me, she must never suspect, for then she will lose her confidence in herself. Then when she feels free, so free that she is almost tempted to want to break with me, the second struggle will begin. Now she has power and passion, and the struggle has significance for me—let the momentary consequences be what they may. Suppose that in her pride she becomes giddy, suppose that she does break with me—all right! —she has her freedom, but she will still belong to me. That the engagement should bind her is silly—I want to possess her only in her freedom. Let her leave me—the second struggle is nevertheless beginning, and in this second struggle I shall be victorious as surely as it was an illusion that she was victorious in the first one. The greater the abundance of strength she has, the more interesting for me. The first war is a war of liberation; it is a game. The second is a war of conquest; it is a life-and-death struggle.
Do I love Cordelia? Yes! Sincerely? Yes! Faithfully? Yes—in the esthetic sense, and surely this should mean something. What good would it have been if this girl had fallen into the hands of a clumsy oaf of a faithful husband? What would have become of her? Nothing. They say that it takes a bit more than honesty to make one’s way through the world. I would say that it takes a bit more than honesty to love such a girl. That more I do have—it is deceitfulness. And yet I do love her faithfully. Strictly and abstinently, I keep watch on myself so that everything in her, the divinely rich nature in her may come to full development. I am one of the few who can do this, and she is one of the few qualified for it; so are we not suited to each other?
Is it sinful of me not to look at the pastor but instead fasten my eyes on the beautiful embroidered handkerchief you are holding in your hand? Is it sinful of you to hold it in just that way. —There is a name in the corner. Your name is Charlotte Hahn? It is so seductive to come to know a woman’s name in such an accidental way. It is as if there were an obliging spirit who secretly introduced me to you. Or perhaps it is not accidental that the handkerchief is folded in such a way that I am able to see the name? —You are moved, you wipe a tear from your eye. —The handkerchief is hanging loosely once again. —It seems strange to you that I am looking at you and not at the pastor. You look at the handkerchief and notice that it has betrayed your name. It is indeed a most innocent thing; one can easily find out a girl’s name. —Why must the handkerchief suffer? Why must it be crumpled up? Why become angry with it? Why become angry with me? What is that the pastor is saying: “Let no one lead a person into temptation. Even the person who does it unknowingly bears a responsibility; he, too, has a debt to the other that he can pay off only by increased kindness.” —Now he says Amen. Outside the door of the church, you will probably let the handkerchief fly loosely in the wind. —Or have you become afraid of me? What have I done? —Have I done more than you can forgive, than what you dare to remember—in order to forgive?
A double-movement is necessary in relation to Cordelia. If I just keep on retreating before her superior force, it would be very possible that the erotic in her would become too dissolute and lax for the deeper womanliness to be able to hypostatize itself. Then, when the second struggle begins, she would be unable to offer resistance. To be sure, she sleeps her way to victory, but she is supposed to do that; on the other hand she must continually be awakened. If for one moment she thinks her victory would in turn be wrested from her, she must learn to will to hold onto it tightly. Her womanliness will be matured in this conflict. I could use either conversation to inflame her or letters to cool her off, or vice versa. The latter is preferable in every way. I then enjoy her most extreme moments. When she has received a letter, when its sweet poison has entered her blood, then a word is sufficient to make her love burst forth. At the next moment, irony and hoarfrost make her doubtful, but not so much that she nevertheless does not continually feel her victory, feel it augmented by the receipt of the next letter. Nor can irony be used very well in a letter without running the risk that she would not understand it. Only traces of ardor can be used in a conversation. My personal presence will prevent ecstasy. If I am present only in a letter, then she can easily cope with me; to some extent, she mistakes me for a more universal creature who dwells in her love. Then, too, in a letter one can more readily have free rein; in a letter I can throw myself at her feet in superb fashion etc. —something that would easily seem like nonsense if I did it in person, and the illusion would be lost. The contradiction in these movements will evoke and develop, strengthen and consolidate, the erotic love in her—in one word: tempt it.
These letters, however, must not take on a strongly erotic color too soon. In the beginning, it is best that they bear a more universal stamp, contain a single clue, remove a single doubt. Occasionally they may suggest the advantage an engagement has, insofar as people can be deflected by mystifications. Whatever drawbacks it has otherwise, she will not lack opportunities to become aware of them. In my uncle’s house I have a caricature that I can always place alongside. Without my help, she cannot produce the erotic inwardness. If I deny her this and let this burlesque image plague her, then she will surely become bored with being engaged, yet without really being aware that it is I who have made her bored with it.
A little epistle today describing the state of my soul will give her a clue to her own inner state. It is the correct method, and method I do have. I have you to thank for that, you dear girls I have loved in the past. I owe it to you that my soul is so in tune that I can be what I wish for Cordelia. I recall you with thanks; the honor belongs to you. I shall always admit that a young girl is a born teacher from whom one can always learn—if nothing else, then to deceive her—for one learns that best from the girls themselves. No matter how old I become, I shall still never forget that it is all over for a man only when he has grown so old that he can learn nothing from a young girl.
My Cordelia,
You say that you had not imagined me like this, but neither did I imagine that I could become like this. Is not the change in you? For it is conceivable that I have not actually changed but that the eyes with which you look at me have changed. Or is the change in me? It is in me, for I love you; it is in you, for it is you I love. In the calm, cold light of the understanding, I considered everything. Proud and unmoved, I was terrified by nothing. Nothing surprised me; even if a ghost had knocked at the door, I would have calmly picked up the candelabrum55 and opened it. But see, it was not ghosts for whom I unlocked the door, not pale, feeble shapes—it was for you, my Cordelia; it was life and youth and health and beauty that approached me. My arm shakes; I cannot hold the light steady. I fall back from you, and yet I cannot keep from looking at you, cannot keep from wishing I could hold the light steady. I am changed, but why, how, what is the nature of this change? I do not know; I know of no more explicit definition to add, no richer predicate to use than this when I altogether enigmatically say of myself: I have changed.
Your Johannes
My Cordelia,
Erotic love loves secrecy—an engagement is a disclosure; it loves silence—an engagement is a public announcement; it loves whispering—an engagement is a loud proclamation, and yet, with my Cordelia’s help, an engagement will be a superb way to deceive the enemies. On a dark night, there is nothing more dangerous for other ships than to hang out a lantern, which is more deceptive than the darkness.
Your Johannes
She is sitting on the sofa by the tea table; I am sitting at her side. She is holding my arm; her head, heavy with many thoughts, is resting on my shoulder. She is so near and yet still so far; she is devoted to me, and yet she does not belong to me. There is still some resistance, but it is not subjectively reflected; it is the common resistance of womanliness, for woman’s essence is a devotedness that takes the form of resistance. —She is sitting on the sofa by the tea table; I am sitting at her side. Her heart is beating, but without passion; her bosom rises and falls, but not in agitation; at times her color changes, but with soft shading. Is it love? By no means. She listens; she understands. She listens to the familiar saying; she understands it. She listens to another person’s talking; she understands it as her own. She listens to another person’s voice as it resonates within her; she understands this resonance as if it were her own voice that discloses to her and to another.
What am I doing? Am I beguiling her? By no means—that would be of no avail to me. Am I stealing her heart? By no means—in fact, I prefer that the girl I am going to love should keep her heart. What am I doing, then? I am shaping for myself a heart like unto hers. An artist paints his beloved; that is now his joy; a sculptor shapes her. This I, too, am doing, but in an intellectual sense. She does not know that I possess this image and therein really lies my falsification. I obtained it secretively, and in that sense I have stolen her heart, just as it is told of Rebecca that she stole Laban’s heart when she took his household gods away from him in a cunning manner.56
Surroundings and setting do have a great influence upon a person and are part of that which makes a firm and deep impression on the memory [Hukommelse] or, more correctly, on the whole soul, and for this reason cannot be forgotten either. No matter how old I may become, it will nevertheless always be impossible for me to think of Cordelia in surroundings other than this little room. When I come to visit her, the maid usually lets me in by the door to the large drawing room; Cordelia herself enters from her room, and as I open the door to enter the small drawing room, she opens the other door, so that our eyes meet in the doorway. This drawing room is small, cozy, is almost the size of a private room. Although I have now seen it from many different angles, I am most fond of seeing it from the sofa. She sits there at my side; before us stands a round tea table, over which a tablecloth is spread in rich folds. On the table stands a lamp shaped in the form of a flower, which rises up vigorously and copiously to bear its crown, over which in turn hangs a delicately cut veil of paper, so light that it cannot remain still. The form of the lamp is reminiscent of the Orient, the movement of the veil reminiscent of the gentle breezes in that region. The floor is covered by matting woven of a special kind of willow, a work that immediately betrays its foreign origin.
At moments, I let the lamp be the motif in my landscape. I sit with her then, stretched out on the ground under the flower of the lamp. At other times, I let the willow matting call up the image of a ship, of an officer’s stateroom—we are sailing out in the middle of the great ocean. When we are sitting far from the window, we look directly into the sweeping horizon of the sky. This, too, augments the illusion. When I am sitting at her side, I let such things appear like an image that hastens as elusively over actuality as death crosses a person’s grave.
The surroundings are always of great importance, especially for the sake of recollection [Erindring].57 Every erotic relationship must always be lived through in such a way that it is easy for one to produce an image that conveys all the beauty of it. To be able to do this successfully, one must be attentive to the surroundings. If they are not found to be as desired, then they must be made so. For Cordelia and her love, the surroundings are entirely appropriate. But what a different image presents itself to me when I think of my little Emily, and yet, again, were not the surroundings appropriate? I cannot imagine her or, more correctly, I want to recall her only in the little room opening onto the garden. The doors stood open; a little garden in front of the house cut off the view, compelled the eyes to be arrested there, to stop before boldly following the road that vanished into the distance. Emily was lovely but of less significance than Cordelia. The surroundings were also designed for that. The eyes remained earthbound, did not rush boldly and impatiently ahead, rested on that little foreground. The road itself, even though it romantically wandered off into the distance, had no other effect than that the eyes glanced over the stretch before it and then returned home in order to glance over the same stretch again. The room was earthbound. Cordelia’s surroundings must have no foreground but rather the infinite boldness of the horizon. She must not be earthbound but must float, not walk but fly, not back and forth but eternally forward.
When a person himself becomes engaged, he is at once effectually initiated into the antics of the engaged. Some days ago, licentiate Hansen showed up with the charming young girl to whom he has become engaged. He confided to me that she was lovely, which I knew before, that she was very young, which I also knew; he finally confided to me that he had chosen her precisely so that he himself could form her into the ideal that had always vaguely hovered before him. Good lord, what a silly licentiate—and a healthy, blooming, cheerful girl. Now, I am a fairly old hand at the game, and yet I never approach a young girl other than as nature’s Venerabile [something worthy of veneration] and first learn from her. Then insofar as I may have any formative influence upon her, it is by teaching her again and again what I have learned from her.
Her soul must be stirred, agitated in every possible direction—not piecemeal and by spurts, but totally. She must discover the infinite, must experience that this is what lies closest to a person. This she must discover not along the path of thought, which for her is a wrong way, but in the imagination, which is the real line of communication between her and me, for that which is a component for the man is the whole for the woman. She must not labor her way forward to the infinite along the irksome path of thought, for woman is not born to labor, but she will reach it along the easy path of the imagination and the heart. For a young girl, the infinite is just as natural as the idea that all love must be happy. Everywhere, wherever she turns, a young girl has the infinite around her, and the transition is a leap,58 but, please note, a feminine, not a masculine, leap. Why are men ordinarily so clumsy? When they are going to leap, they have to take a running start, make many preparations, measure the distance with the eyes, make several runs—shy away and turn back. Finally they leap and fall in. A young girl leaps in a different way. In mountainous country, one often comes upon two towering mountain peaks. A chasmic abyss separates them, terrible to look down into. No man dares to risk this leap. But a young girl, so say the natives in the region, did dare to do it, and it is called the Maiden’s Leap. I am fully prepared to believe it, just as I believe everything remarkable about a young girl, and it is intoxicating to me to hear the simple natives talk about it. I believe it all, believe the marvelous, am amazed by it only in order to believe; as the only thing that has amazed me in the world, a young girl is the first and will be the last. And yet for a young girl such a leap is only a hop, whereas a man’s leap always becomes ludicrous because no matter how far he stretches out, his exertion at the same time becomes minuscule compared with the distance between the peaks and nevertheless provides a kind of yardstick. But who would be so foolish as to imagine a young girl taking a running start? One can certainly imagine her running, but this running is itself a game, an enjoyment, a display of her loveliness, whereas the idea of a running start separates what in woman belongs together; that is, a running start has in itself the dialectical, which is contrary to woman’s nature. And now the leap—who again would be graceless enough here to dare to separate what belongs together! Her leap is a gliding. And once she has reached the other side, she stands there again, not exhausted by the effort, but more beautiful, more soulful than ever; she throws a kiss over to us who stand on this side. Young, newborn, like a flower that has shot up from the root of the mountain, she swings out over the abyss so that everything almost goes black before our eyes. —What she must learn is to make all the motions of infinity, to swing herself, to rock herself in moods, to confuse poetry and actuality, truth and fiction, to frolic in infinity. Then when she is familiar with this tumult, I shall add the erotic; then she will be what I want and desire. Then my duties will be over, my work; then I shall haul in all my sails; then I shall sit at her side, and under her sails we shall journey forward. In fact, as soon as this girl is erotically intoxicated, I shall have enough to do sitting at the helm in order to moderate the speed so that nothing happens too soon or in an unbecoming manner. Once in a while one punctures a little hole in the sail, and the next moment we rush along again.
In my uncle’s house, Cordelia becomes more and more indignant. She has requested several times that we do not go there anymore, but it is to no avail; I always know how to think up evasions. When we were leaving there last night, she shook my hand with an unusual passion. She probably has really felt very distressed there, and no wonder. If I did not always find amusement in observing these unnatural affectations, I could not possibly hold out. This morning, I received a letter from her in which she makes fun of engagements with more wit than I had given her credit for. I kissed the letter; it is the most cherished one I have received from her. Just right, my Cordelia! That is the way I want it.
It so happens, rather oddly, that on Østergade there are two coffee shops directly opposite each other. On the second floor, left side, lives a young miss or a young lady. Usually, she is concealed behind a vertical Venetian blind covering the window by which she sits. The blind is made of very thin material, and anyone, if he has good eyes, who knows the girl or has seen her frequently will easily be able to identify every feature, whereas to the person who does not know her and does not have good eyes she will appear as a dark figure. In some measure, the latter is the case with me; the former with a young officer who every day, precisely at twelve o’clock, shows up in the offing and turns his gaze up toward that Venetian blind. Actually it was the Venetian blind that first directed my attention to that fine telegraphic connection. There are no blinds on the other windows, and a solitary blind such as that, covering only one window, is usually a sign that someone sits behind it regularly.
One morning, I stood in the window of the pastry shop on the other side. It was exactly twelve o’clock. Paying no attention to the people passing by, I kept my eyes on that Venetian blind, when suddenly the dark figure behind it began to move. The profile of a woman’s head appeared in the next window in such a way that it turned in a strange manner in the same direction as the Venetian blind. Thereupon the owner of the head nodded in a very friendly way and again hid behind the Venetian blind. I concluded first and foremost that the person she greeted was a man, for her gesture was too passionate to be prompted by the sight of a girl friend; second, I concluded that the one to whom the greeting applied ordinarily came from the other side. She had placed herself just right in order to be able to see him some distance away, in fact, hidden by the Venetian blind, she could even greet him. —Quite so! At precisely twelve o’clock, the hero in this little love episode, our dear lieutenant, comes along. I am sitting in the coffee shop on the ground floor of the building in which the young lady lives on the second floor. The lieutenant has already spied her. Be careful, my good friend; it is not such an easy matter to pay one’s respects gracefully to the second floor. Incidentally, he is not bad—slender, well built, a handsome figure, a curved nose, black hair—the cocked hat is very becoming. Now the pinch. His legs begin to knock a little, to become too long. This makes a visual impression comparable to the feeling a person has when he has a toothache and the teeth become too long for the mouth. If one is going to concentrate all the energy in the eyes and direct them toward the second floor, one is likely to draw too much strength from the legs. Pardon me, Mr. Lieutenant, for halting this gaze in its ascension. It is a piece of impertinence, I know very well. This gaze cannot be said to say very much; rather, it says nothing at all, and yet it promises very much. But obviously these many promises are mounting too powerfully to his head; he is reeling, or to use the poet’s words about Agnes: he staggered, he fell.59
It is too bad, and if the matter had been left to me, it would never have happened. He is too good for that. It is really unfortunate, for if one is going to impress the ladies as a gallant, one must never fall. Anyone wishing to be a gallant must be alert to such things. But if someone appears merely as an intelligent being, all such things are of no importance; one is deeply absorbed in oneself, one droops, and if one actually does fall down, there is nothing striking about it. —What impression did this incident probably make on my little miss? It is too bad that I cannot be simultaneously on both sides of this Dardanelles street. I could, it is true, have an acquaintance posted on the other side, but for one thing I always prefer to make the observations myself, and for another, one can never know what may come out of this affair for me. In such a case, it is never good to have someone in on the secret, for then one must waste a good deal of time wresting from him what he knows and making him puzzled.
I am really becoming bored with my good lieutenant. Day in and day out, he marches past in full uniform. It is indeed a terrible kind of steadfastness. Is this befitting for a soldier? Good sir, do you not carry side arms? Should you not take the house by storm and the girl by force? Of course, if you were a student, a licentiate, a curate, who keeps himself alive by hope,60 that would be another matter. But I forgive you, for the girl pleases me the more I see her. She is beautiful; her brown eyes are full of roguishness. When she is awaiting your arrival, her countenance is transfigured by a higher beauty that is indescribably becoming to her. Therefore, I conclude that she must have great imagination, and imagination is the natural cosmetic of the fair sex.
What is longing [Længsel]? Language and poets rhyme [rime] it with the word “prison [Fængsel]”. How unreasonable [urimelig]! As if only the person sitting in prison could long. As if one could not long if one is free. Suppose that I were free—how I would long! And on the other hand, I am certainly free, free as a bird, and yet how I do long! I long when I am going to you; I long when I leave you; even when I am sitting at your side, I long for you. Can one, then, long for what one has? Indeed, if one considers that the next moment one may not have it. My longing is an eternal impatience. Only if I had lived through all eternities and assured myself that you belonged to me every moment, only then would I return to you and live through all eternities with you and certainly not have enough patience to be separated from you for one moment without longing but have enough assurance to sit calmly at your side.
Your Johannes
My Cordelia,
Outside the door there stands a little cabriolet, to me larger than the whole world, since it is large enough for two, hitched to a pair of horses, wild and unruly like the forces of nature, impatient like my passions, bold like your thoughts. If you wish, I shall carry you off—my Cordelia! Do you command it? Your command is the password [Løsen] that lets loose [løsne] the reins and the pleasure of flight. I am carrying you away, not from some people to others, but out of the world. —The horses rear; the carriage rises up; the horses are standing upright almost over our heads. We are driving through the clouds up into the heavens; the wind whistles about us; is it we who are sitting still and the whole world is moving, or is it our reckless flight? Are you dizzy, my Cordelia? Then hold fast to me; I do not become dizzy. Intellectually one never becomes dizzy if one thinks of only one thing, and I think only of you. Physically one never becomes dizzy if one looks fixedly at only one object, and I look only at you. Hold tight; if the world passed away, if our light carriage disappeared beneath us, we would still cling to each other, floating in the harmony of the spheres.61
Your Johannes
It is almost too much. My servant has waited six hours, I myself two in the wind and rain, just to waylay that dear child Charlotte Hahn. She usually visits an old aunt of hers every Wednesday between two and five. Precisely today would have to be the day she did not come, precisely today when I did so much want to meet her. Why? Because she puts me in a very particular mood. I greet her; she curtseys in a way that simultaneously is indescribably terrestrial and yet so heavenly. She almost stops; it is as if she were about to sink into the earth, and yet she has a look as if she were about to be elevated into the heavens. When I look at her, my mind simultaneously becomes solemn and yet desiring. Otherwise, the girl means nothing to me; all I ask is this greeting, nothing more, even if she were willing to give it. Her greeting puts me in a mood, and in turn I squander this mood on Cordelia. —And yet I wager that she has slipped past us in one way or another. Not only in comedies but also in actual life is it difficult to keep watch on a young girl; one must have an eye on each finger. There was a nymph, Cardea,62 who spent her time fooling the menfolk. She lived in a wooded area, lured her lovers into the thicket, and vanished. She was going to fool Janus, too, but he fooled her, because he had eyes in the back of his head.
My letters are not failing of their intention. They are developing her mentally, even though not erotically. For that purpose, letters cannot be used, but notes. The more the erotic emerges, the shorter they become, but all the more unerringly they seize the erotic point. For in order not to make her sentimental or soft, irony stiffens the feelings again but also makes her crave the sustenance of which she is most fond. Distantly and indefinitely, the notes give a presentiment of the highest. The moment this presentiment begins to dawn in her soul, the connection is broken. Through my resistance, the presentiment will take form within her soul as if it were her own thought, the impulse of her own heart. This is just what I want.
My Cordelia,
Somewhere in the city there lives a little family consisting of a widow and three daughters. Two of them go to the royal kitchen to learn how to cook. One afternoon in early summer, about five o’clock, the door to the drawing room opens softly, and a reconnoitering glance surveys the room. No one is there except a young girl sitting at the piano. The door is slightly ajar, so one can listen without being observed. The one playing is no great artist, for then the door would surely have been entirely closed. She is playing a Swedish melody; it is about the brief duration of youth and beauty. The words mock the girl’s youth and beauty; the girl’s youth and beauty mock the words. Which is right—the girl or the words? The music sounds so hushed and melancholy, as if sadness were the arbitrator that would settle the controversy. —But it is in the wrong, this sadness! What communion is there between youth and these reflections! What fellowship between morning and evening! The piano keys quiver and quake; the spirits of the soundboard spring up in confusion and do not understand one another. —My Cordelia, why so vehement! Why this passion!
How distant must an event be from us in time in order for us to recollect it; how distant so that recollection’s longing can no longer grasp it? In this respect, most people have a limit; they cannot recollect what is too close in time, nor can they recollect what is too distant. I know no limit. Yesterday’s experience I push back a thousand years in time and recollect it as if it were experienced yesterday.
Your Johannes
I have a secret to confide to you, my confidante. To whom should I confide it? To echo? It would betray it. To the stars? They are cold. To human beings? They do not understand it. Only to you do I dare to confide it, for you know how to keep it. There is a girl, more beautiful than the dream of my soul, purer than the light of the sun, deeper than the springs of the sea, prouder than the flight of the eagle—there is a girl—O incline your head to my ear and to my words so that my secret can steal into it. —This girl I love more than my life, for she is my life; more than all my desires, for she is my only desire; more than all my thoughts, for she is my only thought; more warmly than the sun loves the flower, more intimately than grief loves the privacy of the troubled mind, more longingly than the burning sand of the desert loves the rain. I cling to her more tenderly than the mother’s eye to her child, more confidently than the entreating soul to God, more inseparably than the plant to its root. —Your head grows heavy and full of thoughts; it sinks down upon your breast; your bosom rises to come to its aid—my Cordelia! You have understood me, you have understood me correctly, literally; not one jot or tittle has escaped you! Shall I strain every nerve of my ears and let your voice convince me of it? Would I be able to doubt? Will you keep this secret? Dare I depend upon you? Tales are told of people who by dreadful crimes initiated each other into mutual silence.63 To you I have confided a secret that is my life and the content of my life—have you nothing to confide to me that is so significant, so beautiful, so chaste that supranatural forces would be set in motion if it were betrayed?
Your Johannes
My Cordelia,
The sky is cloudy—dark rain clouds scowl like black eyebrows above its passionate countenance; the trees of the forest are in motion, tossed about by troubled dreams. You have disappeared from me into the forest. Behind every tree I see a feminine creature that resembles you; if I come closer, it hides behind the next tree. Do you not wish to show yourself to me, collect yourself? Everything is confused to me; the various parts of the forest lose their distinctive contours; I see everything as a sea of fog, where feminine creatures resembling you appear and disappear everywhere. I do not see you; you are continually moving in a wave of perception, and yet I am already happy over every single resemblance to you. What is the reason—is it the copious unity of your nature or the scanty multiplicity of my nature? —To love you, is it not to love a world?
Your Johannes
It would be of real interest to me if it were possible to reproduce very accurately the conversations I have with Cordelia. But I easily perceive that it is an impossibility, for even if I managed to recollect every single word exchanged between us, it nevertheless is out of the question to reproduce the element of contemporaneity, which actually is the nerve in conversation, the surprise in the outburst, the passionateness, which is the life principle in conversation. Ordinarily, I am not prepared in advance, of course, for this is at variance with the essential nature of conversation, especially erotic conversation. But I continually bear in mente [in mind] the content of my letters, always keep my eye on the mood they may have evoked in her. Of course, it could never occur to me to ask whether she has read my letter. It is easy to ascertain that she has read it. Nor do I ever speak directly with her about it, but I maintain secret communication with them in my conversations, partly in order to fix more firmly in her soul some impression or other, partly in order to wrest it from her and make her perplexed. Then she can read the letter again and gain a new impression from it and so forth.
A change has taken place and is taking place in her. If I were to designate the state of her soul at this moment, I would say that it is pantheistic boldness. The expression in her eyes betrays it at once. It is bold, almost reckless, in expectations, as if it asked for the extraordinary at every moment and was prepared to see it. Like the eye that gazes in the distance, this look sees beyond what immediately appears to it and sees the marvelous. It is bold, almost reckless, in its expectancy—but not in self-confidence, and therefore it is rather dreaming and imploring, not proud and commanding. She is seeking the marvelous outside her self; she will pray that it might make its appearance, as if it were not in her power to call it forth. This must be prevented; otherwise I shall gain the upper hand too soon. Yesterday she told me there was something royal in my nature. Perhaps she wants to defer to me, but that absolutely will not do. To be sure, dear Cordelia, there is something royal in my nature, but you have no inkling of the kind of kingdom I have dominion over. It is over the tempests of moods. Like Aeolus,64 I keep them shut up in the mountain of my personality and allow one and now another to go out. Flattery will give her self-esteem; the distinction between what is mine and what is yours will be affirmed; everything will be placed upon her. Flattery requires great care. Sometimes one must place oneself very high, yet in such a way that there remains a place still higher; sometimes one must place oneself very low. The former is more proper when one is moving in the direction of the intellectual; the latter is more proper when one is moving in the direction of the erotic.
Does she owe me anything? Not at all. Could I wish that she did? Not at all. I am too much a connoisseur, understand the erotic too well, for such foolishness. If this actually were the case, I would try with all my might to make her forget it and to lull to sleep my own thoughts about it. When it comes to the labyrinth of her heart, every young girl is an Ariadne;65 she holds the thread by which one can find the way through—but she possesses it in such a way that she herself does not know how to use it.
Speak—I obey. Your desire is a command; your entreaty is an omnipotent adjuration; your every most evanescent wish is a boon to me, for I do not obey you as a ministering spirit, as if I stood outside you. When you command, your will comes into existence, and I along with it, for I am a disarray of soul that simply awaits a word from you.
Your Johannes
My Cordelia,
You know that I very much like to talk with myself. I have found in myself the most interesting person among my acquaintances. At times, I have feared that I would come to lack material for these conversations; now I have no fear, for now I have you. I shall talk with myself about you now and for all eternity, about the most interesting subject with the most interesting person—ah, I am only an interesting person, you the most interesting subject.
Your Johannes
My Cordelia,
You find the time I have loved you to be so short; you almost seem to fear that I could have loved before. There are manuscripts in which the fortunate eye quickly sees faintly an older writing that in the course of time has been supplanted by trivial inanities. With caustic substances, the later writing is erased, and now the older writing is distinct and clear. In the same way, your eye has taught me to find myself in myself. I allow forgetfulness to consume everything that does not touch on you, and then I discover a pristine, a divinely young, primitive text; then I discover that my love for you is just as old as I myself.
Your Johannes
My Cordelia,
How can a kingdom survive that is in conflict with itself;66 how can I survive if I am in conflict with myself? About what? About you—in order if possible to find repose in the thought that I am in love with you. But how am I to find this repose? One of the conflicting forces will continually convince the other that it is indeed the one most deeply and fervently in love; at the next moment, the other will. It would not concern me so much if the conflict were outside myself, if there were someone who dared to be in love with you or dared to desist—the crime is equally great—but this conflict within me consumes me, this one passion in its duplexity.
Your Johannes
Just vanish, my little fisherman’s daughter; just hide among the trees; just pick up your load, for bending over is so becoming to you—yes, this very minute you are bending over with a natural grace under the bundle of brushwood you have gathered. How is it that such a creature should have to carry such loads! Like a dancer, you betray the beauty of your form—small of waist, full of bosom, burgeoning in development—any recruiting officer must admit that. You perhaps think these are trifles; you believe that society women are far more beautiful. Alas, my child, you do not know how much falseness there is in the world! Just set out upon your walk with your bundle into the enormous woods that presumably stretch many, many miles into the country to the border of the blue mountains. Perhaps you are not actually a fisherman’s daughter but an enchanted princess; you are a troll’s domestic servant, and he is cruel enough to make you pick up firewood in the woods. So it always goes in the fairy tale. Otherwise, why do you walk deeper into the forest? If you are really a fisherman’s daughter, you will walk past me with your firewood down to the fishing village that lies on the other side of the road.
Just take the footpath that winds easily among the trees; my eyes will find you. Just turn around and look at me; my eyes will follow you. You cannot make me move; longing does not carry me away; I am sitting calmly on the railing and smoking my cigar. —Some other time, perhaps. —Yes, when you turn back your head halfway in that manner, the expression in your eyes is roguish; your light step is beckoning. Yes, I know, I understand where this path leads—to the solitude of the forest, to the whispering of the trees, to the abundant stillness. Look, the sky itself favors you. It hides Itself in the clouds; it darkens the background of the forest, as if drawing the curtains for us. —Farewell, my beautiful fisherman’s daughter, take care of yourself! Thanks for your favor. It was a beautiful moment, a mood, not strong enough to move me from my firm seat on the railing but still abundant in inner motion.
When Jacob had bargained with Laban about the payment for his service, when they agreed that Jacob should tend the white sheep and as reward for his work have all the motley-colored lambs born in his flock, he set rods in the watering troughs and had the sheep look at them67—in the same way I place myself before Cordelia everywhere; her eyes see me continually. To her it seems like sheer attentiveness from my part, but on my side I know that her soul thereby loses interest for everything else, that there is being developed within her a mental concupiscence that sees me everywhere.
My Cordelia,
As if I could forget you! Is my love, then, a work of memory [Hukommelse]? Even if time erased everything from its blackboards, even if it erased memory itself, my relationship with you would remain just as alive, you would still not be forgotten. As if I could forget you! What, then, should I recollect [erindre]? After all, I have forgotten myself in order to recollect you, so if I forgot you, I would then recollect myself, but the moment I remembered myself I would have to recollect you again. As if I could forget you! What would happen then? There is a painting from ancient times that shows Ariadne leaping up from her couch and anxiously watching a ship speeding away under full sail.68 At her side stands Cupid with an unstrung bow and dries his eyes. Behind her stands a winged female figure with a helmet on her head. The figure is usually assumed to be Nemesis.69 Imagine this picture; imagine it slightly changed. Cupid is not weeping and his bow is not unstrung, or would you then have become less beautiful, less triumphant, because I had gone out of my mind. Cupid smiles and draws the bow. Nemesis does not stand idle at your side; she, too, draws her bow. In that old painting, we see on the ship a manly figure busy at his work. Presumably it is Theseus. Not so in my picture. He is standing in the stem; he is looking back longingly. He is stretching out his arms; he has repented of it or, more correctly, his madness has left him, but the ship is carrying him away. Cupid and Nemesis both aim, an arrow flies from each bow, they accurately hit the mark; we see and we understand that both have hit one spot in his heart to symbolize that his love was the Nemesis that avenged.
Your Johannes
My Cordelia,
I am in love with myself, people say of me. That does not surprise me, for how would it be possible for them to see that I can love, since I love only you? How could anyone else suspect it, since I love only you? I am in love with myself. And why? Because I am in love with you; for you I love and you alone and everything that truly belongs to you, and thus I love myself because this self of mine belongs to you, so that if I stopped loving you, I would stop loving myself. Therefore, what is an expression of the utmost egotism in the world’s profane eyes is in your initiated eyes an expression of the purest sympathy; what is an expression of the most prosaic self-preservation in the world’s profane eyes is in your sanctified sight an expression of most inspired self-annihilation.
Your Johannes
What I feared most was that the whole process would take me too long a time. I see, however, that Cordelia is making great progress, yes, that it will be necessary, in order to keep her inspired, to set everything in motion. She must not for all the world become listless ahead of time, that is, before that time when her time is up.
When in love, one does not take the highway. It is only marriage that is right in the middle of the king’s highway. If one is in love and walks from Nøddebo, one does not go along Esrom Lake, even though the path is really only a hunting path, but it is a beaten path, and love prefers to beat its own path. One proceeds deeper into Gribs forest.70 And when a couple wanders arm in arm in this way, each understands the other; that which obscurely delighted and pained before becomes clear now. There is no hint of anyone’s presence. —So this lovely beech tree becomes a witness to your love; under its crown you two confessed it for the first time. You recollected everything so clearly—the first time you saw each other, the first time you took each other’s hands in the dance, when you parted toward morning, when you would not admit anything to yourselves, let alone to each other. —It really is beautiful to listen to these love rehearsals. —They fell on their knees under the tree; they swore unbreakable love to each other; they sealed the pact with the first kiss. —These are productive moods that must be squandered on Cordelia. —So this beech tree became a witness. Oh, well, a tree is a quite suitable witness, but nevertheless it is too little. Presumably you two are thinking that heaven, too, was a witness, but heaven as such is a very abstract idea. Therefore, you see, there was still another witness. —Should I stand up and let them see that I am here? No, they may know me, and then the game is over. When they are some distance away, should I stand up and let them know someone was present? No, that is pointless. Silence must rest over their secret—as long as I want it to. They are in my power; I can separate them when I want to. I know their secret; only from him or from her can I have found it out—from her personally, that is impossible; consequently from him, it is detestable—bravo! And yet it is indeed almost malice. Well, I shall see. If I can gain a definite impression of her that I otherwise cannot obtain in the ordinary way, which I prefer, then there is nothing else to do.
My Cordelia,
Poor am I—you are my wealth; dark—you are my light; I own nothing, need nothing. Indeed, how should I be able to own anything; it is indeed a contradiction that a person who does not own himself can own something. I am happy like a child who cannot and must not own anything. I own nothing, for I belong only to you. I am not; I have ceased to be, in order to be yours.
Your Johannes
My Cordelia,
“My”—what does the word designate? Not what belongs to me, but what I belong to, what contains my whole being, which is mine insofar as I belong to it. After all, my God is not the God who belongs to me, but the God to whom I belong, and the same when I say my native land, my home, my calling, my longing, my hope. If there had been no immortality before, then the thought that I am yours would break through nature’s usual course.
Your Johannes
My Cordelia,
What am I? The humble narrator who follows your triumphs, the dancer who bows under you as you soar in lovely buoyancy, the branch upon which you momentarily rest when you are tired of flying, the bass voice that interjects itself under the soprano’s ebullience to make it ascend even higher—what am I? I am the earthly force of gravity that keeps you captive to the earth. What am I, then? Body, substance, earth, dust, and ashes. —You, my Cordelia, you are soul and spirit.
Your Johannes
My Cordelia,
Love is everything; therefore, for one who loves everything ceases to have intrinsic meaning and has meaning only through the interpretation love gives to it. Thus, if some other engaged man became convinced that there was another girl he cared for, he probably would stand there like a criminal, and she would be outraged. But you, I know, you would see esteem in such a confession, for you know that it is impossible for me to love another—it is my love for you that casts a luster over all of life. So if I care for another, it is not to convince myself that I do not love her but only you—that would be presumptuous—but since my whole soul is full of you, life acquires another meaning for me—it becomes a myth about you.
Your Johannes
My Cordelia,
My love consumes me; only my voice remains,71 a voice that has fallen in love with you, that whispers everywhere to you that I love you. Oh! Does it weary you to hear this voice? It surrounds you everywhere; I wrap my thoroughly reflective soul, like a manifold mobile frame, around your pure, deep being.
Your Johannes
We read in old stories that a river fell in love with a maiden.72 Just so is my soul like a river that loves you. It is still at times and reflects your image deeply and calmly. At times it fancies that it has taken your image captive and tosses up its waves to prevent you from escaping again; then it ripples its surface gently and plays with your image. At times it has lost it, and then its waves become dark and despairing. —Just so is my soul—like a river that has fallen in love with you.
Your Johannes
To be honest, it does not take unusually vivid imaginative power to conceive of a conveyance that is more convenient, comfortable, and, above all, more consistent with one’s station in life. To ride with a peat cutter—that attracts attention but not in the desirable sense. But in an emergency, one accepts it with thanks. You walk some distance out in the country. You climb up, ride a mile, and encounter nothing; two miles, and everything goes well. You begin to feel safe and secure; the scenery actually is better than usual from this level. Almost three miles have gone by—who would ever have expected to meet a Copenhagener way out on a country road? And he is a Copenhagener, that you can see well enough. He is not from the country; he has an altogether singular way of looking at things—so definite, so observant, so appraising, and so little given to derision. Well, my dear girl, your position is by no means comfortable;
you look as if you were sitting on a tray. The cart is so flat that it has no recess for the feet. —But it is, of course, your own fault. My carriage is entirely at your service; I take the liberty of offering you a much more comfortable seat, if it will not be too uncomfortable for you to sit beside me. In that case, I shall place the whole carriage at your disposal and sit in the driver’s box myself, happy to be allowed to drive you to your destination. —The straw hat does not even shield you sufficiently from a sidelong glance. It is futile for you to bow your head; I still admire your beautiful profile. —Is it not annoying that the peasant bows to me? But, after all, it is proper for a peasant to bow to a distinguished man. —You are not getting off so lightly. Well, here is a tavern, a post house, and a peat cutter is much too pious in his way to neglect his devotions. Now I shall take care of him. I have an extraordinary talent for fascinating peat cutters. Oh, would that I might also succeed in pleasing you! He cannot resist my invitation, and once he has accepted it, he cannot resist the effects of it. If I cannot, then my servant can. —He is going to the barroom now; you are alone in the wagon in the shed. —God knows what kind of girl this is! Could this be a little middle-class miss, perhaps the daughter of a parish clerk? If so, she is unusually pretty and unusually well dressed for a parish clerk’s daughter. The parish clerk must have a good salary. It occurs to me: Could she perhaps be a little blueblood miss who is tired of driving in a fine carriage, who perhaps is taking a little hike out to the country house and now also wants to try her hand at a little adventure? Quite possibly, such things are not unheard of. —The peasant does not know anything; he is a clod who only knows how to drink. Yes, yes, go on drinking, my good man; you are welcome to it.
But what do I see—it is none other than Miss Jespersen, Hansine Jespersen, daughter of the wholesaler. Good heavens, we two know each other. It was she I once met on Bredgade. She was riding backwards; she could not raise the window. I put on my glasses and had the enjoyment of following her with my eyes. It was a very awkward situation; there were so many in the carriage that she could not move and presumably did not dare to make any outcry. The present situation is even more awkward. We two are destined for each other; that is obvious. She must be a romantic little miss; she is definitely out on her own initiative. —There comes my servant with the peat cutter. He is dead drunk. It is disgusting. They are a depraved lot, these peat cutters. Alas, yes! And yet there are even worse people than peat cutters. —See, now you are in a pretty mess. Now you yourself will have to drive the horses—how romantic! —You refuse my offer; you insist that you are a good driver. You do not deceive me; I perceive very well how crafty you are. When you have gone a little way you are going to jump out; in the woods one can easily find a hiding place. —My horse will be saddled; I shall follow on horseback. —You see, now I am ready, now you can be safe against any attack. —Please do not be so terribly afraid; then I shall turn back at once. I merely wanted to make you a little uneasy and give you an occasion for the heightening of your natural beauty. After all, you do not know that it is I who caused the peasant to get drunk, and I certainly have not taken the liberty of one offensive word to you. Everything can still be all right; I daresay that I shall give the affair such a turn that you can laugh at the whole episode. I just want a little unsettled account with you. Never think that I take any girl by surprise. I am a friend of freedom, and I do not care for anything I do not receive freely. —”You will certainly see for yourself that it will not do to continue the journey this way. I myself am going hunting; therefore I am on horseback. But my carriage is harnessed at the tavern. If you give the order, it will catch up with you at once and take you wherever you wish. I myself, I regret, cannot have the pleasure of escorting you; I am committed to a hunting engagement, and they are sacred.” —But you accept. —Everything will promptly be in order. —See, you have no need at all to be embarrassed by seeing me again, or in any case no more embarrassed than is very becoming to you. You can be amused by the whole affair, laugh a little, and think about me a little. I ask no more. It might seem to be very little, but for me that is enough. It is a beginning, and I am especially good at the principles of beginnings.
Yesterday evening there was a little party at the aunt’s. I knew Cordelia would take out her knitting. I had hidden a little note in it. She dropped it, picked it up, was stirred, wistful. One should always make use of the situation in this way. It is unbelievable what advantage can be derived from it. An intrinsically insignificant little note, read under such circumstances, becomes enormously significant for her. She had no chance to talk to me, for I had arranged things so that I had to escort a lady home. She was obliged to wait, therefore, until today. This is always a good way to drill the impression all the deeper into her soul. It always seems as if I were the one who paid attention to her; the advantage I have is that I am placed in her thoughts everywhere, that I surprise her everywhere.
Erotic love does have its distinctive dialectic. There was a young girl with whom I was once in love. At the theater in Dresden last summer, I saw an actress who bore a remarkable resemblance to her. Because of that, I wanted to make her acquaintance, and did succeed, and then realized that the dissimilarity was rather great. Today on the street I meet a lady who reminds me of that actress. This story can be continued as long as you wish.
My thoughts surround Cordelia everywhere. I send them like angels around her. Just as Venus in her chariot is drawn by doves, so she sits in her triumphal chariot, and I harness my thoughts in front like winged creatures. She herself sits there happy, exuberant like a child, omnipotent like a goddess; I walk along at her side. Truly, a young girl is and remains the Venerabile [something worthy of veneration] of nature and of all existence! No one knows that better than I. But what a pity that this glory lasts such a short time. She smiles at me, she greets me, she beckons to me—as if she were my sister. A glance reminds her that she is my beloved.
Erotic love has many gradations. Cordelia is making good progress. She is sitting on my lap; her arm, soft and warm, winds around my neck. Light, without physical weight, she rests against my chest; her soft curves scarcely brush against me. Like a flower, this lovely creature entwines me, free as a bow. Her eyes hide behind her lashes; her bosom is as dazzling white as snow, so smooth that my eyes cannot rest; they would slide off if her bosom did not move. What does this stirring mean? Is it love? Perhaps. It is the presentiment of love, the dream of love. As yet it lacks energy. She embraces me encompassingly, as the cloud embraces the transfigured one, lightly as a breeze, softly as one cups a flower; she kisses me as vaguely as the sky kisses the sea, as gently and quietly as the dew kisses the flower, as solemnly as the sea kisses the image of the moon.
At this moment, I would call her passion a naïve passion. When the turn is made and I begin to pull back in earnest, then she will summon up everything in order really to take me captive. She has no other means for that than the erotic itself, except that this will now manifest itself on an entirely different scale. Then it will be a weapon in her hand that she swings against me. Then I will have reflected passion. She will struggle for her own sake, because she knows I have the erotic in my possession; she will fight for her own sake in order to vanquish me. She herself needs a higher form of the erotic. What I taught her to sense by inciting her, my coldness will now teach her to comprehend, but in such a way that she will believe that she herself discovers it. She will take me by surprise with it; she will think that she has outdone me in boldness and thereby has taken me captive. Then her passion will be definite, energetic, determined, dialectical; her kissing will be consummate, her embrace not hiatic. —In me she is seeking her freedom, and the more firmly I encircle her, the better she will find it. The engagement will break. When this has happened, she will need a little rest, lest something unlovely come out in this wild turmoil. Her passion will rally once again, and she will be mine.
Just as even in poor Edward’s time I indirectly looked after her reading, now I do so directly. What I am offering is what I regard as the best nourishment: mythology and fairy tales. Yet here as everywhere she has her freedom; I learn everything about her by listening to her. If it is not there already, then I put it there first.
When the servant girls go to Deer Park in the summer, it usually affords scant pleasure. They go there only once a year, and therefore they expect to have as much as possible from it. So they must wear a hat and shawl and disfigure themselves in every way. The merriment is wild, graceless, lascivious. No, then I prefer Frederiksberg Gardens. Sunday afternoons they go there, and I also. Here everything is seemly and decent; the merriment itself more quiet and refined. On the whole, the man who has no sense for servant girls loses more by it than they lose. The great host of servant girls is actually the most beautiful militia we have in Denmark. If I were king, I know what I would do—I would not review the regular troops. If I were one of the city’s thirty-two men,73—I would promptly petition for the establishment of a committee of public safety that would try by every means—by insight, counsel, admonition, appropriate rewards—to encourage servant girls to dress with care and taste. Why should their beauty go to waste? Why should it go through life unnoticed? Let it at least be seen once a week in the light under which it appears at its best! But above all, good taste, restraint. A servant girl should not look like a lady—there Politivennen74 is right, but the reasons this respected newspaper gives are entirely fallacious. If we then may dare to anticipate such a desirable flowering of the maidservant class, would not this in turn have a beneficial effect on the daughters in our homes? Or is it rash of me to catch a glimpse along this particular road of a future for Denmark that truly can be called matchless? If only I myself might be allowed to be contemporary with this golden age,75 then with good conscience I could spend the whole day walking around the streets and lanes and delight in the pleasures of the eyes! —How bold and spacious are my teeming thoughts, how patriotic! But here I am, of course, out in Frederiksberg where the servant girls come on Sunday afternoon and I, too.
First come the peasant girls holding hands with their sweethearts, or in another pattern, all the girls in front holding hands and the fellows behind, or in another pattern, two girls and one fellow. This flock forms the frame; they usually stand or sit under the trees in the great square in front of the pavillion. They are healthy and lively; the color contrasts are a bit too strong—their clothing as well as their complexions. Inside come the girls from Jylland and Fyn—tall, straight, a little too powerfully built, their clothing somewhat mixed. Here there would be much for the committee to do. Nor is a representative of the Bornholm division lacking here either: clever kitchen girls but rough customers both in the kitchen and here in Frederiksberg—there is something proudly repelling in their nature. Thus by contrast their presence here is not without effect, and I would be loath to do without them, but I seldom become involved with them.
Now come the select troops—the Nyboder girls, less tall, well rounded and filled out, delicate in complexion, merry, happy, quick, talkative, a bit coquettish, and, above all, bareheaded. Their attire may often approximate a lady’s except for two things: they wear scarves and not shawls, and no hats—at most a little fluttering cap, but preferably they should be bareheaded. —Well, good day, Marie! So we meet out here. It is a long time since I saw you. Are you still at the councilor’s? “Yes.” It is a very good place, I imagine. “Yes.” But you are so alone out here, have no one to go with—no sweetheart—or perhaps he has no time today, or you are waiting for him. —What, you are not engaged? Impossible! The prettiest girl in Copenhagen, a girl who works at the councilor’s, a girl who is an ornament and a model for all servant girls, a girl who knows how to dress so neatly and—so sumptuously. That is indeed a pretty handkerchief you are holding in your hand, made of the finest linen. And what do I see, edged with embroidery? I wager it cost ten marks. There is many a fine lady who does not own its equal. French gloves, a silk umbrella—and such a girl is not engaged. It is indeed preposterous. If I remember correctly, Jens thought a good deal of you—you know whom I mean—Jens, the wholesaler’s Jens, the one up there on the third floor. —You see, I hit it on the head. Why didn’t you become engaged? After all, Jens was a handsome fellow, had a good job; perhaps with a little pull on the part of the wholesaler, in time he could have become a policeman or a fireman; it wouldn’t have been such a bad match. —You must be to blame yourself; you must have been too hard on him. “No! But I found out that Jens had been engaged once before to a girl he did not treat very well at all.” —What am I hearing? Who would have thought that Jens was such a bad fellow? —Yes, those guardsmen, those guardsmen, they are not to be trusted. —You did absolutely right; a girl like you is much too good to be thrown to just anybody. —You will surely make a better match, I can vouch for that. —How is Miss Juliane? I have not seen her for a long time. Would my pretty Marie be so kind as to enlighten me about a few things. —Because one has been unhappy in love, one should not therefore be unsympathetic toward others. —There are so many people here. —I dare not speak with you about it; I am afraid someone might spy on me. —Please listen for a moment, my pretty Marie. Look, here is a place on this shaded path where the trees are entwined together to hide us from others, where we see no one, hear no human voices, only the soft echo of the music. Here I dare speak about my secret. Is it not true, if Jens had not been a bad fellow you would have walked with him here, arm in arm, listened to the jolly music, even enjoyed a still more.… Why are you so agitated—forget Jens. —Do you want to be unfair to me? It was to meet you that I came out here. It was to see you that I visited the councilor’s. You must have noticed—every time I had a chance I always went to the kitchen door. You are going to be mine. The banns will be read from the pulpit. Tomorrow evening I will explain everything to you—up the kitchen stairway, the door to the left, directly opposite the kitchen door. —Good-bye, my pretty Marie. Do not mention to anyone that you have seen me out here or spoken with me. Now you know my secret. She is very lovely; something could be done with her. Once I get a foothold in her room, I can read the banns from the pulpit myself. I have always tried to develop the beautiful Greek αὔτήώξεια [self-sufficiency] and in particular to make a pastor superfluous.
If I could manage to stand behind Cordelia when she receives a letter from me, it would be of great interest to me. Then it would be easy for me to find out to what extent she has in the most proper sense appropriated them erotically. On the whole, letters are and will continue to be a priceless means of making an impression on a young girl; the dead letter of writing often has much more influence than the living word.76 A letter is a secretive communication; one is master of the situation, feels no pressure from anyone’s actual presence, and I do believe a young girl would prefer to be all alone with her ideal, that is, at certain moments, and precisely at those moments when it has the strongest effect on her mind. Even if her ideal has found an ever so perfect expression in a particular beloved object, there nevertheless are moments when she feels that in the ideal there is a vastness that the actuality does not have. These great festivals of atonement must be permitted her, except that one must be careful to use them properly so that she comes back to the actuality not fatigued but strengthened. In this, letters are an aid; they help one to be invisibly and mentally present in these moments of sacred dedication, while the idea that the actual person is the author of the letter forms a natural and easy transition to the actuality.
Could I become jealous of Cordelia? Damn it, yes! And yet in another sense, no! That is, if I saw that her nature would be disordered and not be what I want it to be—even though I won in the clash with another—then I would give her up.
An ancient philosopher has said that if a person carefully chronicles all his experiences, he is, before he knows where he is, a philosopher.77 For a long time now, I have lived in association with the fellowship of the engaged. Such a connection certainly ought to yield some harvest. I have thought of gathering material for a book titled: A Contribution to a Theory of the Kiss, dedicated to all doting lovers. Incidentally, it is curious that there is no book on this topic. If I manage to finish it, I shall also fill a long-felt need. Can the reason for this deficiency in the literature be that philosophers do not think about such things or that they do not understand them? —I am already in a position to offer some hints. A perfect kiss requires that the agents be a girl and a man. A man-to-man kiss is in bad taste, or, worse yet, it tastes bad. —In the next place, it is my opinion that a kiss comes closer to the idea when a man kisses a girl than when a girl kisses a man. When over the years the distinction has been lost in this relationship, the kiss has lost its meaning. That is the case with the conjugal domestic kiss, by which husband and wife, for want of a napkin, wipe each other’s mouth while saying “May it do us good [Velbekom’s].”
If the age gap is very great, the kiss lies outside the idea. I recall a special expression used by the senior class of an outlying girls’ school—”to kiss the councilor”—an expression with anything but agreeable connotations. It began this way. The teacher had a brother-in-law living in the house. He was an elderly man, formerly a councilor, and because of his age he took the liberty of kissing the young girls.
The kiss must be the expression of a particular passion. When a brother and sister who are twins kiss each other, it is not an authentic kiss. The same holds for a kiss paid in Christmas games, also for a stolen kiss. A kiss is a symbolic act that is meaningless if devoid of the feeling it is supposed to signify, and this feeling can be present only under specific conditions.
If one wants to try to classify kisses, numerous possible principles of classification come to mind. The kiss can be classified according to sound. Unfortunately, language does not have an adequate range for my observations. I do not believe all the languages of the world have the stock of onomatopoeia necessary to designate the variations I have come across just in my uncle’s house. Sometimes it is a smacking sound, sometimes whistling, sometimes slushy, sometimes explosive, sometimes booming, sometimes full, sometimes hollow, sometimes like calico, etc. etc.
The kiss can be classified according to touch—the tangential kiss, the kiss en passant, and the clinging kiss.
The kiss can be classified according to time as short or long. In the category of time, there is another classification, really the only one I like. A distinction is made between the first kiss and all the others. What is under consideration here cannot be used as the measure of what appears in the other classifications—it has nothing to do with sound, touch, time in general. The first kiss is qualitatively different from all others. Very few people think about this. It would be a shame if there were not even one who thinks about it.
My Cordelia,
A good answer is like a sweet kiss, says Solomon.78 As you know, I have a weakness for asking questions; I may almost be censured for it. This happens because people do not understand what I am asking about, for you and you alone understand what I am asking about, and you and you alone know how to answer, and you and you alone know how to give a good answer, for, as Solomon says, a good answer is like a sweet kiss.
Your Johannes
There is a difference between the mental erotic and the earthly erotic. Until now, I have tried mainly to develop the mental kind in Cordelia. My personal presence must be different now, not just the accompanying mood; it must be tempting. These days, I have been continually preparing myself by reading the well-known passage in the Phaedrus79 about erotic love. It electrifies my whole being and is an excellent prelude. Plato really had knowledge of the erotic.
My Cordelia,
The Latinist says of an attentive pupil that he hangs on his teacher’s lips. For love, everything is a symbol; in recompense, the symbol in turn is actuality. Am I not a diligent, attentive pupil? But you do not say a word.
Your Johannes
If anyone other than I were directing this development, he presumably would be too sagacious to let himself direct. If I were to consult an initiate among those who are engaged, he would no doubt say with a great flourish of erotic audacity: In these gradations of love, I seek in vain for the Chladni figure80 in which the lovers converse about their love. I would answer: I am pleased that you look in vain, for the figure does not belong within the scope of the essentially erotic, not even when the interesting is drawn into it. Erotic love is much too substantial to be satisfied with chatter, the erotic situations much too significant to be filled with chatter. They are silent, still, definitely outlined, and yet eloquent, like the music of Memnon’s statue.81 Eros gesticulates, does not speak; or if he does, it is an enigmatic intimation, symbolic music. The erotic situations are always either sculptural or pictorial, but two people speaking together about their love is neither sculptural nor pictorial. But the solid engaged couple always begin with such chitchat, which goes on to become the thread that holds their loquacious marriage together. This chitchat is also the beginning of the dowry Ovid mentions: dos est uxoria lites [the dowry of a wife is quarreling]82 and the guarantee that their marriage will not lack it. —If there must be speaking, it is sufficient that one person does it. The man should do the speaking and therefore ought to possess some of the powers in the girdle of Venus83 with which she beguiled: conversation and sweet flattery, that is, the power to ingratiate. —It by no means follows that Eros is mute, or that it would be erotically improper to converse, provided that the conversation itself is erotic and does not wander off into edifying observations on life’s prospects etc. and that the conversation is actually regarded as a respite from the erotic action, a diversion, not as the ultimate. Such a conversation, such a confabulatio [fantasizing together], is entirely divine by nature, and I can never become bored conversing with a young girl. That is, I can become weary of a particular young girl, but never of conversing with a young girl. That is just as impossible for me as it is to become weary of breathing. What is really the distinctive characteristic of such speaking together is the vegetative flowering of conversation. The conversation keeps contact with the earth, has no actual subject; the accidental is the law of its movements—but daisy [Tusindfryd, thousand delights] is its name and the name of what it produces.
My Cordelia,
“My—Your”—those words, like parentheses, enclose the paltry content of my letters. Have you noticed that the distance between its arms is becoming shorter? O my Cordelia! It is nevertheless beautiful that the emptier the parenthesis becomes the more momentous it is.
Your Johannes
My Cordelia,
Is an embrace a struggle?
Your Johannes
Usually Cordelia keeps silent. This has always made me happy. She has too deep a womanly nature to pester one with hiatuses, a mode of speaking especially characteristic of women and unavoidable when the man who should supply the preceding or succeeding circumscribing consonant is just as feminine. But at times a single brief remark betrays how much dwells within her. Then I assist her. It is as if behind a person, who with an unsure hand hastily made a few strokes in a drawing, there stood another person who every time made something vivid and finished out of it. She herself is surprised, and yet it is as if it belonged to her. This is why I watch over her, over every chance remark, every casual word, and as I give it back to her it always becomes something more significant, which she both recognizes and does not recognize.
Today we were at a party. We had not exchanged a word with each other. We rose from the table; then a servant came in and told Cordelia that there was a messenger who wished to speak with her. This messenger was from me, bringing a letter alluding to a remark I had made at the table. I had managed to introduce it into the general dinner conversation in such a way that Cordelia, although she sat some distance from me, was bound to hear it and misunderstand it. The letter was composed with this in mind. If I had been unable to turn the dinner conversation in that direction, I would have been present at the designated time to confiscate the letter. She came in again and had to tell a little white lie. Such things consolidate the erotic secretiveness without which she cannot walk the path assigned to her.
My Cordelia,
Do you believe that the person who pillows his head on an elf-hillock sees the image of an elf-girl in his dreams? I do not know, but this I do know—when I rest my head upon your breast and then do not close my eyes but look up, I see an angel’s face. Do you believe that the person who leans his head against an elf-hillock cannot lie quietly? I do not think so, but this I do know—that when my head inclines upon your bosom it is too deeply stirred for sleep to alight upon my eyes.
Your Johannes
Jacta est alea [The die is cast].84 Now the turn must be made. I was with her today but was completely engrossed in thinking about an idea that totally occupied me. I had neither eyes nor ears for her. The idea itself was interesting and captivated her. Furthermore, it would have been incorrect to begin the new operation by being cold in her presence. After I have gone and the thought no longer occupies her, she will easily discover that I was different from what I have usually been. Because she discovers this change in her solitude, the discovery will be much more painful for her, will work its effect more slowly but all the more penetratingly. She cannot promptly flare up, and when she does have a chance she will already have thought out so much to say that she cannot say it all at once but will always retain a remnant of doubt. The disquietude mounts, the letters stop coming, the erotic rations are diminished, erotic love is mocked as something ludicrous. Perhaps she goes along with it for a time, but in the long run she cannot endure it. Then she will want to make me captive with the same means I have employed against her—with the erotic.
On the subject of breaking an engagement, every little miss is a great casuist, and although in the schools there is no course on the subject, every little slip of a girl is superbly informed when the question is under what circumstances an engagement should be broken. This really ought to be the standing question in the senior examination, and although I know that generally the papers written in girls’ schools are very much the same, I am sure that there would be no lack of variety here, since the issue itself opens a wide field to a girl’s acuteness. And why should a young girl not be given the opportunity to use her acuteness in the most brilliant manner? Or will she not precisely thereby have the opportunity to show that she is mature enough—to become engaged? I once witnessed a situation that interested me very much. One day, the parents in a family I sometimes visited were absent; however, the two daughters of the household had invited a circle of girl friends for morning coffee. There were eight in all, between the ages of sixteen and twenty. Very likely they had not expected a visit—in fact, the maid even had orders to say they were not at home. But I went in and clearly perceived that they were somewhat surprised. God knows what eight young girls like that discuss in such a solemn synodical meeting. At times, married women also convene in similar meetings. Then they discourse on pastoral theology, discussing in particular such important questions as: under what circumstances it is all right to allow a maidservant to go to market alone; whether it is better to have a charge account at the butcher’s or to pay cash; the likelihood that the kitchenmaid has a sweetheart; how to eliminate all this sweetheart traffic that delays the cooking.
I found my place in this beautiful cluster. It was very early in the spring. The sun sent out a few odd shafts of light as express messengers of its arrival. In side the apartment, everything was wintry, and for that very reason the sun’s rays were so portentous. The coffee shed fragrance at the table, and the young girls themselves were happy, healthy, blooming—and hilarious, for their anxiety had quickly subsided. What was there to be afraid of, after all; in a way they were strong in manpower. I managed to direct their attention and conversation to the question: under what circumstances should an engagement be broken. While my eyes delighted in flitting from one flower to the next in this circle of girls, delighted in resting now on this beauty, now on that one, my outer ears delighted in reveling in the enjoyment of the music of their voices, and my inner ears delighted in listening closely to what was said. A single word was frequently enough for me to gain a deep insight into such a girl’s heart and its history. How seductive are the ways of love, and how interesting to explore how far along the way the individual is. I continually fanned the flames; brilliance, wit, esthetic objectivity contributed to making the situation more relaxed, and yet everything remained within the bounds of the strictest propriety. While we jested this way in the regions of light conversation, there slumbered the possibility of putting the good maidens into a disastrously awkward situation with a single word. This possibility was in my power. The girls did not comprehend this, had scarcely an inkling of this. It was kept submerged at all times by the easy play of conversation, just as Scheherazade85 held off the death sentence by telling stories.
Sometimes I led the conversation to the edge of sadness; sometimes I let flippancy break loose; sometimes I tempted them out into a dialectical game. Indeed, what subject contains greater multiplicity, all according to how one looks at it. I continually introduced new themes. —I told of a girl whom the parents’ cruelty had forced to break an engagement. The unhappy collision almost brought tears to their eyes. —I told of a man who had broken an engagement and had given two grounds: that the girl was too big and that he had not knelt before her when he confessed his love. When I protested to him that they could not possibly be regarded as adequate grounds, he replied, “Well, they are quite adequate to achieve what I want, for no one can give a reasonable reply to them.” —I submitted a very difficult case for the assembly’s consideration. A young girl broke her engagement because she felt sure that she and her sweetheart were not compatible. The lover sought to bring her to her senses by assuring her how much he loved her; whereupon she answered: Either we are compatible and there is a real sympathy, and in that case you will perceive that we are not compatible, or we are not compatible, and in that case you will perceive that we are not compatible. It was amusing to see how the girls cudgeled their brains to grasp this enigmatic talk, and yet I clearly noticed that there were a couple of them who understood it superbly, for on the subject of breaking an engagement every young miss is a born casuist. —Yes, I really do believe it would be easier for me to argue with the devil himself than with a young girl when the topic is: under what circumstances should an engagement be broken.
Today I was with her. Precipitously, with the speed of thought, I immediately turned the conversation to the same subject with which I had occupied her yesterday, once again trying to make her enraptured. “Yesterday, after I had gone, I thought of something I would have said.” It worked. As long as I am with her, she enjoys listening to me; after I am gone, she perceives very well that she is being deceived, that I am different. In this way one withdraws one’s shares of stock. It is a disingenuous method but very expedient, as are all indirect methods. She can very well understand that something such as we are discussing can occupy me; indeed, she herself finds it interesting at the moment, and yet I am cheating her of the essentially erotic.
Oderint, dum metuant [Let them hate me, so they but fear me],86 as if only fear and hate belong together, whereas fear and love have nothing to do with each other, as if it were not fear that makes love interesting. With what kind of love do we embrace nature? Is there not a secretive anxiety and horror in it, because its beautiful harmony works its way out of lawlessness and wild confusion, its security out of perfidy? But precisely this anxiety captivates the most. So also with love, if it is to be interesting. Behind it ought to brood the deep, anxious night from which springs the flower of love. Thus the nymphaea alba [white water lily] rests with its calyx on the surface of the water, while thought is anxious about plunging down into the deep darkness where it has its root. —I have noticed that she always calls me “my” when she writes to me but does not have the courage to say it to me. Today, with as much insinuating and erotic warmth as possible, I beseeched her to do so. She began to do so; an ironic look, briefer and swifter than it takes to say it, was enough to make it impossible for her, although my lips did their utmost to encourage her. This mood is normal.
She is mine. This I do not confide to the stars, according to custom; I really do not see of what concern this information can be to those remote globes. Neither do I confide it to any human being, not even to Cordelia. This secret I keep to myself alone, whisper it, as it were, into myself in the most secretive conversations with myself. Her attempted resistance to me was not particularly great, but the erotic power she displays is admirable. How interesting she is in this profound passionateness, how great she is—almost larger than life! How agile she is in escaping, how adroit in insinuating herself wherever she discovers a weak point! Everything is set in motion, but I find myself right in my element in this rioting of the elements. And yet even in this agitation she is by no means unbeautiful, not torn to pieces in moods, not split up into fragments. She is always an Aphrodite, except that she does not rise up in naïve loveliness or in unbefangen [disinterested] tranquillity but is stirred by the strong pulsebeat of erotic love, although she nevertheless is unity and balance. Erotically, she is fully equipped for battle; she fights with the arrows of her eyes, with the command of her brow, with the secretiveness of her forehead, with the eloquence of her bosom, with the dangerous enticements of her embrace, with the appeal of her lips, with the smile of her cheeks, with the sweet longing of her whole being. There is a power in her, an energy, as if she were a Valkyrie, but this erotic plenitude of power is tempered in turn by a certain pining languor that suffuses her. —She must not be kept too long at this pinnacle where only anxiety and uneasiness support her and keep her from plunging down. Emotions such as these will soon make her feel that the engagement is too constricted, too hampering. She will herself become the temptress who seduces me into going beyond the boundary of the universal; in this way she will become conscious of it herself, and for me that is primary.
Quite a few remarks dropped from her side to indicate that she is tired of the engagement. They do not pass my ear unnoticed; they are the reconnoiterers of my enterprise in her soul that give me informative clues; they are the ends of the threads by which I am spinning her into my plan.
My Cordelia,
You complain about the engagement; you think that our love does not need an external bond, which is only a hindrance. I thereby recognize at once my excellent Cordelia! I truly do admire you. Our outward union is still only a separation. There is still a partition that keeps us apart like Pyramus and Thisbe.87 There is still the disturbance of having others share our secret. Only in contrast is there freedom. Only when no alien suspects our love, only then does it have meaning; only when all outsiders think that the lovers hate each other, only then is love happy.
Your Johannes
Soon the bond of the engagement will be broken. She herself will be the one who dissolves it, in order by this dissolution to captivate me even more, if possible, just as flowing locks captivate more than those that are bound up. If I broke the engagement, I would miss out on this erotic somersault, which is so seductive to look at and such a sure sign of the audacity of her soul. For me, that is primary. Moreover, the whole incident would create for me some unpleasant consequences in connection with other people. I shall become unpopular, detested, loathed, although unjustly so, for would not many people derive some advantage from it? There is many a little miss who, failing to become engaged, would still be quite content to have been close to it. After all, it is something, even though, to tell the truth, exceedingly little, for just when one has elbowed forward this way in order to obtain a place on the waiting list [Exspectance-List], the prospects [Exspectance] are dim; the higher one moves up, the further one advances, the dimmer the prospects. In the world of love, the principle of seniority does not hold with respect to advancement and promotion. In addition, such a little miss is bored by holding undivided possession of the property; she wants her life to be stirred by some event. But what can compare with an unhappy love affair, especially when, in addition, one can take the whole thing so lightly. So one makes oneself and the neighbors believe that one is among the victimized, and, not qualified to be accepted into a home for fallen women, one takes lodging next door as a wailer. People are duty-bound to hate me.
In addition, there is still a class of those whom someone has deceived totally, one-half, or three-quarters. There are many gradations here, from those who have a ring as evidence to those who hang their hats on a handclasp in a square dance. Their wound is torn open again by the new pain. I accept their hate as a bonus. But, of course, all these haters are the same as crypto-lovers to my poor heart. A king without any territory is a ludicrous character, but a war of succession among a mob of pretenders to a kingdom without any territory goes beyond even the most ludicrous. Thus I really ought to be loved and cared for by the fair sex as a pawnshop is. A person who is actually engaged can take care of only one, but such an extensive potentiality can take care of, that is, up to a point take care of, as many as you please. I escape all this finite nonsense and also have the advantage of being able to appear to others in a totally new role. The young girls will feel sorry for me, pity me, sigh for me. I play in the very same key, and in this way one can also make a catch.
Strangely enough, right now I note with distress that I am getting the sign of denunciation Horace wished upon every faithless girl—a black tooth,88 moreover, a front one. How superstitious one can be! The tooth really disturbs me; I dislike any reference to it—it is a weak point I have. Although I am fully armed everywhere else, here even the biggest lout can give me a jolt that goes far deeper than he thinks when he refers to the tooth. I do everything to whiten it, but in vain. I say with Palnatoke:
I am rubbing it by day, by night,
But cannot wipe out that black shadow.89
Life does indeed have extraordinarily much that is enigmatic. Such a little circumstance can disturb me more than the most dangerous attack, the most painful situation. I would have it pulled out, but that would affect my speaking and the power of my voice. But if I do have it pulled out, I will have a false one put in—that is, it will be false to the world; the black one was false to me.
It is superb that Cordelia takes exception to an engagement. Marriage still is and will continue to be an honorable institution, even though it does have the wearisome aspect of enjoying already in its youth a share of the honor that age provides. An engagement, however, is a strictly human invention and as such is so significant and so ludicrous that on the one hand it is entirely appropriate that a young girl in the tumult of passion overrides it, and yet on the other hand she feels its significance, perceives the energy of her soul as a higher blood system everywhere present in herself. The point now is to guide her in such a way that in her bold flight she entirely loses sight of marriage and the continent of actuality, so that her soul, as much in pride as in her anxiety about losing me, will destroy an imperfect human form in order to hurry on to something that is superior to the ordinarily human. But in this regard, I need have no fear, for her movement across life is already so light and buoyant that actuality has already been lost sight of to a large extent. Moreover, I am indeed continually on board and can always stretch out the sails.
Woman still is and will continue to be an inexhaustible subject for contemplation for me, an everlasting overabundance for observations. The person who feels no need for this study can be whatever he wants to be in the world as far as I am concerned, but one thing he is not, he is no esthetician. What is glorious and divine about esthetics is that it is associated only with the beautiful; essentially it deals only with belles lettres and the fair sex. It can give me joy, it can joy my heart, to imagine the sun of womanhood sending out its rays in an infinite multiplicity, radiating into a confusion of languages, where each woman has a little share of the whole kingdom of womanhood, yet in such a way that the remainder found in her harmoniously forms around this point. In this sense, womanly beauty is infinitely divisible. But the specific share of beauty must be harmoniously controlled, for otherwise it has a disturbing effect, and one comes to think that nature intended something with this girl, but that nothing ever came of it.
My eyes can never grow weary of quickly passing over this peripheral multiplicity, these radiating emanations of womanly beauty. Every particular point has its little share and yet is complete in itself, happy, joyous, beautiful. Each one has her own: the cheerful smile, the roguish glance, the yearning eye, the tilted head, the frolicsome disposition, the quiet sadness, the profound presentiment, the ominous depression, the earthly homesickness, the unshriven emotions, the beckoning brow, the questioning lips, the secretive forehead, the alluring curls, the concealing eyelashes, the heavenly pride, the earthly modesty, the angelic purity, the secret blush, the light step, the lovely buoyancy, the languorous posture, the longing dreaminess, the unaccountable sighing, the slender figure, the soft curves, the opulent bosom, the curving hips, the tiny feet, the elegant hands.
Each one has her own, and the one does not have what the other has. When I have seen and seen again, observed and observed again, the multiplicity of this world, when I have smiled, sighed, flattered, threatened, desired, tempted, laughed, cried, hoped, feared, won, lost—then I fold up the fan, then what is scattered gathers itself together into a unity, the parts into a whole. Then my soul rejoices, my heart pounds, passion is aroused. This one girl, the one and only in all the world, she must belong to me; she must be mine. Let God keep his heaven if I may keep her.90 I know very well what I am choosing; it is something so great that heaven itself cannot be served by sharing in this way, for what would be left in heaven if I kept her? The hopes of believing Mohammedans would be disappointed if in their paradise they embraced pale, feeble shadows, because they would not be able to find warm hearts, since all the warmth of the heart would be concentrated in her breast; they would despair inconsolably when they found pale lips, lusterless eyes, an inert bosom, a weak handclasp, for all the redness of the lips and fire of the eye and restlessness of the bosom and promise of the handclasp and intimation of the sighing and seal of the lips and quivering of the touch and passion of the embrace—all—all would be united in her, who squandered on me what would be sufficient for a world both here and to come.
I have often thought on the matter in this way, but every time I think thus I always become warm because I imagine her as warm. Although warmth is generally considered a good sign, it does not follow from this that my mode of thinking will be conceded the honorable predicate that it is sound. Therefore, for variety, I, myself cold, shall imagine her as cold. I shall attempt to consider woman categorically. In which category is she to be placed? In the category of being-for-other.91 But this is not to be taken in the bad sense, as if one who is for me is also for an other. Here one must, as always in abstract thinking, abstain from every consideration of experience, for otherwise in the present instance I would in a curious way have experience both for and against me. Here as everywhere, experience is a curious character, for its nature is always to be both for and against. So she is being-for-other. Here in turn, from a different angle, we must not let ourselves be disturbed by experience, which teaches us that very seldom do we meet a woman who is truly being-for-other, since the great majority usually are not entities at all, either for them selves or for others. She shares this qualification with all nature, with all femininity in general. All nature is only for-other in this way, not in the teleological sense, in such a way that one specific segment of nature is for a different specific segment, but the whole of nature is for-other—is for spirit. It is the same again with the particular. Plant life, for example, in all naïveté unfolds its hidden charms and is only for-other. Likewise, an enigma, a charade, a secret, a vowel, etc. are merely being-for-other. This explains why God, when he created Eve, had a deep sleep fall upon Adam, for woman is man’s dream. The story teaches us in another way that woman is being-for-other. That is, it says that Jehovah took one of man’s ribs. If he had, for example, taken from man’s brain, woman would certainly have continued to be being-for-other, but the purpose was not that she should be a figment of the brain but something quite different. She became flesh and blood, but precisely thereby she falls within the category of nature, which essentially is being-for-other. Not until she is touched by erotic love does she awaken; before that time she is a dream. But in this dream existence two stages can be distinguished: in the first, love dreams about her; in the second, she dreams about love.
As being-for-other, woman is characterized by pure virginity. That is, virginity is a being that, insofar as it is being-for-itself, is actually an abstraction and manifests itself only for-other. Feminine innocence has the same characteristic. Therefore, it can be said that woman in this state is invisible. It is well known that there was no image of Vesta,92 the goddess who most closely represented true virginity. In other words, this form of existence is esthetically jealous of itself, just as Jehovah is ethically jealous,93 and does not want any image to exist or even any idea of one. This is the contradiction—that which is for-other is not and, so to speak, first becomes visible through the other. Logically, this contradiction is entirely in order, and one who knows how to think logically will not be disturbed by it but will rejoice over it. But one who thinks illogically will imagine that whatever is being-for-other is in the same finite sense as one can say of a particular thing: That is something for me.
Woman’s being (the word “existence”94 already says too much, for she does not subsist out of herself) is correctly designated as gracefulness, an expression that is reminiscent of vegetative life; she is like a flower, as the poets are fond of saying,95 and even the intellectual [aandelige] is present in her in a vegetative way. She belongs altogether to the category of nature and for this reason is free only esthetically. In the deeper sense, she first becomes free [fri] through man, and therefore we say “to propose [at frie],” and therefore man proposes. If he proposes properly, there can be no question of any choice. To be sure, woman chooses, but if this choice is thought of as the result of a long deliberation, then that kind of choosing is unwomanly. Therefore, it is a disgrace to be rejected, because the individual involved has overrated himself, has wanted to make another free without having the capacity to do so.
In this relation there is profound irony. That which is for-other has the appearance of being dominant; man proposes, woman chooses. According to her concept, woman is the vanquished and man, according to his concept, the victor, and yet the victor submits to the defeated one; nevertheless this is altogether natural, and it is sheer boorishness, stupidity, and lack of erotic sensitivity to disregard that which follows directly as a matter of course. This also has a deeper basis, namely, that woman is substance, man is reflection. Therefore, she does not choose without further ado; rather, man proposes, she chooses. But man’s proposal is a questioning; her choosing is actually an answer to a question. In a certain sense, man is more than woman, in another sense infinitely much less.
This being-for-other is the pure virginity. If it makes an attempt itself to be in relation to another being that is being-for-it, then the opposite manifests itself in an absolute coyness, but this opposite also shows that woman’s true being is being-for-other. The diametrical opposite of absolute devotedness is absolute coyness, which conversely is invisible as the abstraction against which everything breaks, although the abstraction does not therefore come to life. Womanliness now assumes the quality of abstract cruelty, which is the caricaturing extreme of essential virginal Sprödigkeit [coyness]. A man can never be as cruel as a woman. A search of mythology, folktales, legends will confirm this. If a representation is to be given of a principle of nature that in its ruthlessness knows no limits, then it is a feminine creature. Or one is terrified to read about a young girl who callously has her suitors liquidated, as one so frequently reads in the fairy tales of all peoples. On the wedding night, a Bluebeard kills all the girls he has loved, but he does not enjoy the killing of them; on the contrary, the enjoyment was antecedent, and therein lies the concretion—it is not cruelty for the sake of cruelty alone. A Don Juan seduces them and abandons them, but he has enjoyment not in abandoning them but rather in seducing them; therefore, it is in no way this abstract cruelty.
The more I deliberate on the matter, the more I see that my practice is in complete harmony with my theory. My practice, namely, has always been imbued with the conviction that woman is essentially being-for-other. The moment is so very significant here because being-for-other is always a matter of the moment. A longer or shorter time may pass before the moment arrives, but as soon as it has arrived, then that which originally was being-for-other assumes a relative being, and with that everything is finished. I am well aware that husbands sometimes say that woman is being-for-other in a quite different sense, that she is everything for them for the whole of life. Allowances must be made for husbands. I do believe that this is something that they make each other believe. Every class in life ordinarily has certain conventional ways and especially certain conventional lies. This traveler’s tale must be reckoned as one of those. To have an understanding of the moment is not such an easy matter, and the one who misunderstands it is doomed to boredom for life. The moment is everything, and in the moment woman is everything; the consequences I do not understand. One such consequence is having a child. Now, I fancy myself to be a fairly consistent thinker, but even if I were to go mad, I am not the man to think that consequence. I do not understand it at all—it takes a married man for such things.
Yesterday, Cordelia and I visited a family at their summer home. The people spent most of the time in the garden, where we amused ourselves with all kinds of physical exercise. One of the games we played was quoits [Ring]. When another gentleman who had been playing with Cordelia left, I seized the opportunity to take his place. What a wealth of loveliness she displayed, even more seductive in the graceful exertions of the game! What lovely harmony in the self-contradictions of her movements! How light she was, like a dance across the meadow! How vigorous, yet without needing resistance; how deceptive until her balance accounted for everything! How dithyrambic her demeanor, how provocative her glance! Naturally, the game itself had a special interest for me. Cordelia did not seem to notice it. An allusion I made to one of those present about the beautiful custom of exchanging rings struck her soul like a lightning bolt. From that moment, a higher explanation pervaded the whole situation, a deeper significance permeated it, a heightened energy inflamed her. I had both rings on my stick; I paused for a moment, exchanged a few words with those standing around us. She understood this pause. I tossed the rings to her again. A moment later, she caught both of them on her stick. She tossed both of them straight up into the air simultaneously, as if inadvertently, so that it was impossible for me to catch them. This toss was accompanied by a look filled with unbounded daredeviltry. There is a story of a French soldier who had been in the Russian campaign and had to have his leg amputated because of gangrene. The very moment the agonizing operation was over, he seized the leg by the sole of the foot, tossed it up into the air, and shouted: Vive l’empereur [Long live the emperor]. With a look such as that, she, even more beautiful than ever before, tossed both rings up into the air and said to herself: Long live erotic love. I deemed it inadvisable, however, to let her run riot in this mood or to leave her alone with it, out of fear of the letdown that often comes on its heels. Therefore, I remained very cool, as if I had noticed nothing, and with the help of those present constrained her to keep on playing. Such behavior only gives her more elasticity.
If any sympathy with explorations of this kind could be expected in our age, I would pose this question for a prize essay: From the esthetic point of view, who is more modest, a young girl or a young wife, the inexperienced or the experienced; to whom does one dare to grant more freedom? But such things do not concern our earnest age. In Greece, such an investigation would have prompted universal attention; the whole state would have been set in motion, especially the young girls and the young wives. Our age would not believe this, but neither would our age believe it if it were told of the celebrated contest held between two Greek maidens96 and the very painstaking investigation it occasioned, for in Greece such problems were not treated casually and light-mindedly, and yet everyone knows that Venus has an extra name on account of this contest and that everyone admires the statue of Venus that has immortalized her.
A married woman has two periods of her life in which she is interesting: her very earliest youth and again at long last when she has become very much older. But she also has a moment, and this must not be denied her, when she is even lovelier than a young girl, inspires even more honor. But this is a moment that seldom occurs in life; it is a picture for the imagination that does not need to be seen in life and perhaps is never seen. I imagine her as healthy, blooming, amply developed; in her arms she is holding a child, to whom all her attention is given, in the contemplation of whom she is absorbed. It is a picture that must be called the loveliest that human life has to display; it is a nature myth, which therefore may be seen only in artistic portrayal, not in actuality. There must be no more figures in the picture either, no setting, which only interferes. If one goes to our churches, one will often have occasion to see a mother appear with a child in her arms. Apart from the disquieting crying of the child, apart from the uneasy thought about the parents’ expectations for the little one’s future based upon this crying of the infant, the surroundings in themselves interfere so much that even if everything else were perfect the effect would nevertheless be lost. The father is visible—a huge defect, since that cancels the myth, the charm. The earnest chorus of sponsors is visible—horrenda refero [I report dreadful things]97—and one sees nothing at all. Presented as a picture for the imagination, it is the loveliest of all. I do not lack the boldness and dash, or the brashness, to venture an assault—but if I were to see such a picture in actuality, I would be disarmed.
How Cordelia preoccupies me! And yet the time will soon be over; my soul always requires rejuvenation. I already hear, as it were, the rooster crowing in the distance. Perhaps she hears it, too, but she believes it is heralding the morning. —Why does a young girl have such beauty, and why does it last such a short time? That thought could make me very melancholy, and yet it is really none of my business. Enjoy—do not chatter. Ordinarily, people who make a profession of such deliberations do not enjoy at all. But it does no harm to think about it, because this sadness—not for oneself but for others—usually makes one a bit more handsome in a masculine way. A sadness that like a veil of mist deceptively obscures manly strength is part of the masculine erotic. A certain depression in woman corresponds to this.
As soon as a girl has devoted herself completely, the whole thing is finished. I still always approach a young girl with a certain anxiety; my heart pounds, for I sense the eternal power that is in her nature. It has never occurred to me face to face with a married woman. The little bit of resistance she artfully seeks to make is nothing. It is like saying that the married woman’s housecap is more impressive than the young girl’s uncovered head. That is why Diana98 has always been my ideal. This pure virginity, this absolute coyness, has always occupied me very much. But although she has always held my attention, I have also always kept a suspicious eye on her. That is, I assume that she actually has not deserved all the eulogies upon her virginity that she has reaped. She knew, namely, that her game in life is bound up with her virginity; therefore it is preserved. To this is added that in a philological nook of the world I have heard murmurings that she had some idea of the terrible birth pangs her mother had experienced. This had frightened her, and for that I cannot blame Diana. I say with Euripides: I would rather go into battle three times than give birth once.99 I really could not fall in love with Diana, but I do not deny that I would give a lot for a talk with her, for what I would call a candid conversation. She must have a bag full of all kinds of tricks. Obviously my good Diana in one way or another has knowledge that makes her far less naïve than even Venus. I would not bother to spy on her in her bath, by no means, but I would like to spy on her with my questions. If I were sneaking off to a rendezvous where I had fears for my victory, I would prepare myself and arm myself, activate the spirits of the erotic by conversing with her.
A question that has frequently been the subject of my consideration is: which situation, which moment, may be regarded as the most seductive? The answer, of course, depends upon what and how one desires and how one is developed. I claim that it is the wedding day, and especially a particular moment. When she is standing there adorned as a bride, and all her splendor nevertheless pales before her beauty, and she herself in turn grows pale, when the blood stops, when the bosom is motionless, when the glance falters, when the foot hesitates, when the maiden trembles, when the fruit matures; when the heavens lift her up, when the solemnity strengthens her, when the promise carries her, when the prayer blesses her, when the myrtle crowns her; when the heart trembles, when the eyes drop, when she hides within herself, when she does not belong to the world in order to belong to it entirely; when the bosom swells, when the creation sighs, when the voice fails, when the tear quivers before the riddle is explained, when the torch is lit, when the bridegroom awaits—then the moment is present. Soon it is too late. There is only one step left, but this is just enough for a stumble. This moment makes even an insignificant girl significant; even a little Zerlina100 becomes something. Everything must be gathered together, the greatest contrasts united in the moment; if something is lacking, especially one of the primary opposites, the situation promptly loses part of its seductiveness. There is a well-known etching that portrays a penitent.101 She looks so young and so innocent that one is almost embarrassed for her and the father confessor—what can she really have to confess? She lifts her veil slightly and looks out at the world as if she were seeking something that she perhaps could have the opportunity of confessing on a later occasion, and obviously it is nothing more than an obligation out of solicitude for—the father confessor. The situation is very seductive, and since she is the only figure in the picture there is nothing to prevent imagining the church in which all this takes place as being so spacious that several and very dissimilar preachers could preach there simultaneously. The situation is very seductive, and I have no objection to introducing myself into the background, especially if this slip of a girl has nothing against it. But it nevertheless remains a very minor situation, for the girl seems to be but a child in both respects, and consequently it will take time for the moment to arrive.
In my relation to Cordelia, have I been continually faithful to my pact? That is, my pact with the esthetic, for it is that which makes me strong—that I continually have the idea on my side. It is a secret like Samson’s hair, one that no Delilah can wrest from me.102 Plainly and simply to deceive a girl, for that I certainly would not have the stamina; but the fact that the idea is present in motion, that I am acting in its service, that I dedicate myself to its service—this gives me rigorousness toward myself, abstinence from every forbidden pleasure. Has the interesting been preserved at all times? Yes—I dare to say that freely and openly in this secret conversation. The engagement itself was the interesting precisely because it did not yield that which is commonly understood as the interesting. It preserved the interesting precisely through the contradiction between the outward appearance and the inner life. If I had had a secret connection with her, it would have been interesting only to the first power. But this is the interesting raised to the second power, and therefore only then is it the interesting for her. The engagement is broken, but she herself breaks it in order to soar into a higher sphere. So it should be; this is precisely the form of the interesting that will occupy her the most.
September 16
The bond has broken—full of longing, strong, bold, divine, she flies like a bird that now for the first time is allowed to spread its wings. Fly, bird, fly!103 Truly, if this regal flight were a retreat from me, it would pain me very deeply. For me it would be the same as if Pygmalion’s beloved were changed to stone again.104 Light have I made her, light as a thought, and should then this thought of mine not belong to me! It would be enough to despair over. A moment before, it would not have occupied me; a moment later, it will not concern me, but now—now—this now that is an eternity for me. But she is not flying away from me. Fly, then, bird, fly, rise proudly on your wings, glide through the delicate aerial kingdom; soon I shall be with you, soon I shall hide myself with you in deep solitude.
The aunt was rather astonished at this news. But she is too broad-minded to want to coerce Cordelia, even though I have made some attempt to engage her interest on my behalf—partly to lull her into a deeper sleep and partly to tease Cordelia a little. She is, however, very sympathetic toward me; she does not suspect how much reason I have to decline all sympathy.
She has received permission from her aunt to spend some time out in the country; she will visit a family. Fortunately, it so happens that she cannot immediately surrender to a glut of moods. For some time yet, she will be kept in tension by all kinds of resistance from without. I keep up a slight communication with her through letters; in that way our relationship is coming to life again. She must now be made strong in every way; in particular it is best to let her make a couple of flourishes of eccentric contempt for men and for the universal. Then when the day for her departure arrives, a trustworthy fellow will show up as the driver. Outside the city gate, my highly trusted servant will join them. He will accompany them to their destination and remain with her to wait on her and help her in case of need. Next to myself, I know of no one better suited for that than Johan. I have personally arranged everything out there as tastefully as possible. Nothing is lacking that in any way can serve to beguile her soul and pacify it in luxuriant well-being.
My Cordelia,
Yet the cries of “Fire!” in individual families have not joined in a universal Capitolinian confusion of citywide shrieking.105 Probably you have already had to put up with a few solos. Imagine the whole gaggle of teatime talebearers and coffee gossips; imagine a presiding chairwoman, a worthy counterpart to that immortal President Lars in Claudius,106 and you have a picture of and a notion of and a measure of what you have lost and with whom: the opinion of good people.
Enclosed is the celebrated engraving that depicts President Lars.107 I was unable to purchase it separately, so I bought the complete Claudius, tore it out, and threw the rest away—for why should I venture to inconvenience you with a gift that means nothing to you at this moment; why should I not summon everything to provide what could please you for just one moment; why should I permit more to be mixed up in a situation than belongs to it? Nature has such a complexity, as does the person who is a slave to life’s finite relations, but you, my Cordelia, you will in your freedom hate it.
Your Johannes
Spring is indeed the most beautiful time to fall in love, autumn the most beautiful to attain the object of one’s desire. Autumn has a sadness that corresponds exactly to the movement whereby the thought of the fulfillment of a desire flows through a person. Today I myself have been out at the country house where in a few days Cordelia will find a setting that harmonizes with her soul. I myself do not wish to participate in her surprise and in her joy over it; such erotic episodes would only weaken her soul. But if she is alone in it, she will dream away; she will see hints everywhere, clues, an enchanted world. But all this would lose its significance if I were at her side; it would make her forget that for us the time is past when something like this enjoyed together had significance. This setting must not narcotically entrap her soul but continually allow it to soar aloft as she views it all as a game that means nothing compared with what is to come. During the days still remaining, I myself plan to visit this place more often in order to keep myself in the mood.
My Cordelia,
Now I truly call you my; no external sign reminds me of my possession. —Soon I shall truly call you my. And when I hold you clasped tightly in my arms, when you enfold me in your embrace, then we shall need no ring to remind us that we belong to each other, for is not this embrace a ring that is more than a symbol? And the more tightly this ring encircles us, the more inseparably it knits us together, the greater the freedom, for your freedom consists in being mine, as my freedom consists in being yours.
Your Johannes
My Cordelia,
While he was hunting, Alpheus108 fell in love with the nymph Arethusa. She would not grant his request but continually fled before him until on the island of Ortygia she was transformed into a spring. Alpheus grieved so much over this that he was transformed into a river in Elis in the Peloponnesus. He did not, however, forget his love but under the sea united with that spring. Is the time of transformations past? Answer: Is the time of love past? To what can I compare your pure, deep soul, which has no connection with the world, except to a spring? And have I not told you that I am like a river that has fallen in love? And now when we are separated, do I not plunge under the sea in order to be united with you? There under the sea we shall meet again, for only in the deeps of the sea shall we really belong together.
Your Johannes
My Cordelia,
Soon, soon you will be mine. When the sun shuts its vigilant eye, when history is over and the myths begin, I will not only throw my cloak around me but I will throw the night around me like a cloak and hurry to you and listen in order to find you—listen not for your footsteps but for the beating of your heart.
Your Johannes
During these days when I cannot be with her personally when I want to be, the thought has troubled me that it may occur to her at some moment to think about the future. It has never occurred to her before, because I have known too well how to anesthetize her esthetically. There is nothing more unerotic imaginable than this chattering about the future, which is due mainly to having nothing with which to fill up present time. If only I am with her, I have no fear about such things; no doubt I shall make her forget both time and eternity. If a man does not know how to establish rapport with a girl’s soul to that extent, he should never become involved in trying to beguile, for then it will be impossible to avoid the two reefs, questions about the future and catechizing about faith. Therefore, it is entirely appropriate for Gretchen in Faust109 to conduct a little examination of him, since Faust had been injudicious enough to disclose the knight in him, and against such an assault a girl is always armed.
Now I believe that everything is arranged for her reception; she will not lack opportunity to admire my memory, or, more correctly, she will not have time to admire it. Nothing has been forgotten that could have any significance for her; on the other hand, nothing has been introduced that could directly remind her of me, although I am nevertheless invisibly present everywhere. But in large part the effect will depend upon how she happens to see it the first time. In that regard, my servant has received the most precise instructions, and in his way he is a perfect virtuoso. He knows how to drop a remark casually and nonchalantly if directed to do so; he knows how to be ignorant—in short, he is invaluable to me.
The location is just as she would like it. Sitting in the center of the room, one can look out on two sides beyond everything in the foreground; there is the limitless horizon on both sides; one is alone in the vast ocean of the atmosphere. If one moves nearer to a row of windows, a forest [Skov] looms far off on the horizon like a garland, bounding and inclosing. So it should be. What does erotic love [Elskov] love? —An enclosure. Was not paradise itself an enclosed place, a garden facing east?110 —But it hedges one in too closely, this ring. One moves closer to the window—a calm lake hides humbly within the higher surroundings. At the edge there is a boat. A sigh out of the heart’s fullness, a breath from the mind’s unrest. It works loose from its mooring, glides over the surface of the lake, gently moved by the soft breeze of ineffable longing. Rocked on the surface of the lake, which is dreaming about the deep darkness of the forest, one vanishes in the mysterious solitude of the forest. —One turns to the other side, where the sea spreads out before one’s eyes, which are stopped by nothing and are pursued by thoughts that nothing detains. What does erotic love love? Infinity. —What does erotic love fear? Boundaries.
Beyond this large room lies a smaller room or, more correctly, a private room, for this was what the drawing room in the Wahl house approximated. The resemblance is striking. Matting woven of a special kind of willow covers the floor; in front of the sofa stands a small tea table with a lamp upon it, the mate to the one there at home. Everything is the same, only more sumptuous. This change I think I can permit myself to make in the room. In the large room there is a piano, a very plain one, but it brings to mind the piano at the Jansens. It is open. On the music holder, the little Swedish melody lies open. The door to the hall is slightly ajar. She comes in through the door in the back—Johan has been instructed about that. Then her eyes simultaneously take in the private room and the piano; recollection is aroused in her soul, and at the same moment Johan opens the door. —The illusion is perfect. She enters the private room. She is pleased; of that I am convinced. As her glance falls on the table, she sees a book; at that very instant, Johan picks it up as if to put it aside as he casually remarks: The gentleman must have forgotten it when he was out here this morning. From this she learns for the first time that I had already been there the day before, and then she wants to see the book. It is a German translation of the well-known work by Apuleius: Amor and Psyche. It is not a poetic work but it should not be that either, for it is always an affront to a young girl to offer her a book of real poetry, as if she at such a moment were not herself sufficiently poetic to imbibe the poetry that is immediately concealed in the factually given and that has not first gone through someone else’s thought. Usually one does not think of this, and yet it is so. —She wants to read this book, and with that the goal is reached. —When she opens it to the place where it was last read, she will find a little sprig of myrtle, and she will also find that this means a little more than to be a bookmark.
My Cordelia,
What, fear? When we stay together, we are strong, stronger than the world, even stronger than the gods themselves. As you know, there once lived a race upon the earth who were human beings, to be sure, but who were self-sufficient and did not know the intensely fervent union of erotic love [Elskov]. Yet they were powerful, so powerful that they wanted to assault heaven. Jupiter feared them and divided them in such a way that one became two, a man and a woman.111 If it sometimes happens that what was once united is again joined in love [Kjærlighed], then such a union is stronger than Jupiter; they are then not merely as strong as the single individual was, but even stronger, for the union of love [Kjærlighed] is an even higher union.
Your Johannes
September 24
The night is still—the clock strikes a quarter to twelve—the hunter at the city gate blows his benediction out across the countryside, and it echoes from Blegdam; he enters the gate—he blows again, and it echoes from still farther away. —Everything sleeps in peace, but not erotic love [Elskov]. Arise, then, you mysterious powers of erotic love, concentrate yourselves in this breast! The night is silent—a solitary bird breaks this silence with its cry and the beat of its wings as it sweeps over the misty field toward the slope of the embankment; no doubt it, too, is hastening to a rendezvous—accipio omen [I accept the omen]!112 —How ominous all nature is! I take auguries from the flight of the birds, from their cries, from the frolicsome slap of the fish on the surface of the water, from their vanishing into the depths, from the faraway baying of a dog, from the rattling of a carriage in the distance, from footsteps echoing far off. At this hour of the night, I do not see ghosts; in the bosom of the lake, in the kiss of the dew, in the fog that spreads out over the earth and hides its fertile embrace, I do not see what has been but what is to come. Everything is a metaphor; I myself am a myth about myself, for is it not as a myth that I hasten to this tryst? Who I am is irrelevant; everything finite and temporal is forgotten; only the eternal remains, the power of erotic love, its longing, its bliss. How responsive is my soul, like a taut bow, how ready are my thoughts, like arrows in my quiver, not poisoned, and yet able to blend with blood. How vigorous, sound, and happy is my soul, as present as a god.
She was beautiful by nature. I thank you, marvelous nature! Like a mother, you have watched over her. Thank you for your solicitude. Unspoiled she was. I thank you, you human beings to whom she owed this. Her development—that was my work—soon I shall enjoy my reward. —How much I have gathered into this one moment that is now at hand! Damned if I should fail now!
As yet I do not see my carriage. —I hear the crack of the whip; it is my driver. —Drive on for dear life, even if the horses collapse, but not one second before we reach the place.
September 25
Why cannot such a night last longer? If Alectryon113 could forget himself, why cannot the sun be sympathetic enough to do so? But now it is finished, and I never want to see her again. When a girl has given away everything, she is weak, she has lost everything, for in a man innocence is a negative element, but in woman it is the substance of her being. Now all resistance is impossible, and to love is beautiful only as long as resistance is present; as soon as it ceases, to love is weakness and habit. I do not want to be reminded of my relationship with her; she has lost her fragrance, and the times are past when a girl agonizing over her faithless lover is changed into a heliotrope.114 I shall not bid her farewell; nothing is more revolting than the feminine tears and pleas that alter everything and yet are essentially meaningless. I did love her, but from now on she can no longer occupy my soul. If I were a god, I would do for her what Neptune did for a nymph: transform her into a man.115
Yet it would really be worth knowing whether or not one could poetize oneself out of a girl in such a way as to make her so proud that she imagined it was she who was bored with the relationship. It could be a very interesting epilogue, which in and by itself could have psychological interest and besides that furnish one with many erotic observations.