So it is with a mussel that lies on the seashore; it opens its shell searching for food; a child sticks a twig in between so that it cannot close up. Finally the child gets tired of it and wants to pull out the twig, but a sliver remains. And the mussel closes up, but deep inside it suffers again and cannot get the sliver out. No one can see that there is a sliver, for of course the mussel has closed up, but that it is there the mussel knows.
But away with despondency; it is a deceit against her and essentially alien to my soul. If the Jewish high priest was forbidden to tear his clothes in grief because it was too passionate and too strong an expression,404 then 405I, too, am forbidden to become despondent because it is too apathetic and too weak. But my having become momentarily despondent shows me that for the first time in my life I have trusted my understanding in opposition to her. I have always known what it could say to me, but I have not wanted it. The impression of that meeting has given my understanding the advantage.
My sympathy, however, finally reduces me to a beggar’s staff. I am like the Englishman who was in financial difficulty even though he had a five-hundred-pound banknote in his hands—but no one in the little village where he was could change it.406 But is an expression of sympathy supposed to be like changing large currency? I thought that sympathy was like that shilling in Fortunat’s purse407—one continually pays it all out and continually keeps it all; if one wants to change it, the magic vanishes. See, this gives me comfort.
July 2. Morning. [VI 363]
A year ago today. An eyewitness to my situation would probably say to me: You do not know what love is since you are acting this way. Possibly so, but this much I do know—I know its pain. Its pleasure I perhaps know also, although at a distance, at a very great distance. If it were possible, if it were possible—in the very same moment I breathe every tear away from her eyes, alas, as schoolchildren do lest anyone see that they have cried, then the pain is forgotten, more than forgotten. Swiftly, through the omnipotence of being in love, swiftly like the growth of plants when they are cultivated by fairies, she unfurls, lovelier than ever—through herself, through the germinating power of being in love, and through my breath and the words that are whispered into her ear. Then I take her on my arm and dash through the world with her—this much, at least, I understand about love. But this very understanding of love could easily drive me out of my mind. Never in my life until now have I felt the temptations of suicide. But the torment of sympathy and then to be the guilty one—this contradiction affects my soul the way the wrenching of one’s joints out of their natural position affects one physically. But what good would suicide do? Well, it could prevent her from being offended, for then she could go on living as mine if she so wished. But suppose she some day finds out—that would indeed be terrible. If she had sense, she would of course perceive that she should never have brought me to this extremity, and thus I would have made her guilty. And by such a step I perhaps would have determined her whole life so that she would not seek her healing in finitude, where she really must seek it nevertheless.
Spiritually, she is not suffering so very much. She is not even exhausted as much as she is beginning to become a little weary, with a little admixture of being bored. Humanly speaking, this does not surprise me at all, for she has no confidant, and I am unwearied in nonsense.
The days are numbered. 408Suppose that she became ill before the final day arrived; suppose that in a fever delirium she betrayed what is taking place between us. Her closest kin, who would believe it was all fantasy, and I, who knew it was actuality! And then when she had recovered, we would begin all over again.
[VI 364] July 3. Midnight.409
Where shall we see each other again? In eternity. So there is certainly time enough for an understanding. Where is eternity? When does eternity begin? What language is spoken there? Or is there perhaps no speaking at all? Could there not be a little intervening time? Is it always high noon in eternity? Could there not be a dawn in which one found understanding in intimacy? What is eternity’s judgment? Is the judgment ready before eternity begins and eternity only its execution? How is eternity depicted? As the wide horizon where one sees nothing. This is the way it is depicted in the tombstone picture: the mourner sits in the foreground and says, “He has gone away, into the hereafter.” But on the wide horizon I see nothing at all, and the passerby only sees the bereaved one in the foreground, but beyond that he sees nothing. So I do not see her, either. It is impossible. I must see her. Is this no argument, or is it a better argument that whether I will or not I must see her? Suppose she had forgotten me. Can we see each other then? Suppose she had not forgiven me. Then, of course, she would not have forgotten me. But can we see each other then? Suppose she stood beside someone else. When she stands that way within time, I am standing in her path and therefore shall go away. 410But if I stood in her path in eternity, where should I go? Compared with eternity, is time the stronger? Has time the power to separate us eternally? I thought it had only the power to make me unhappy within time but would have to release me the instant I exchange time for eternity and am where she is, for eternally she is continually with me. If so, what then was time? It was that we two did not see each other last evening, and if she found another, it was that we two did not see each other last evening because she was out somewhere else. And whose fault was that? Yes, the fault was mine. But would I or could I nevertheless act in any other way than I have acted if the first is assumed to have happened? No! I regret the first. From that moment on, I have acted according to the most honest deliberation and to the best of my ability, 411as I also had done the first, until I perceived my error.
But does eternity speak so frivolously about guilt? At least time does not; it will no doubt still teach what it has taught me, that a life is something more than last evening. But eternity will, of course, also heal all sickness, give hearing to the deaf, give sight to the blind and physical beauty to the deformed; hence it will also heal me. What is my sickness? [VI 365] Depression. Where does this sickness have its seat? In the power of the imagination, and possibility is its nourishment. But eternity takes away possibility. And was not this sickness oppressive enough in time—that I not only suffered but also became guilty because of it? After all, the deformed person only has to bear the pain of being deformed, but how terrible if being deformed made him guilty!
So, when time is over for me, let my last sigh be to you, O God, for my soul’s salvation; let the next to the last be for her, or let me for the first time be united with her again in the same last sigh!
July 6. Midnight.
412Today I saw her. How strange! A thundershower forced me to go into my old café, where I have not been since those days of expectation: erat in eo vicinio tonstrina quaedam [in that vicinity was a barber’s shop].413 A barber’s shop such as that, said the teacher, is closest to what a café is with us. Eo sedebamus plerumque, dum illa rediret [Frequently we sat there until she returned]. The rain was quickly over, the air mild and inviting, everything refreshed and rejuvenated. If I had not been absorbed in recollections, I would hardly have stayed so long. The old café owner came over and greeted me, talked with me—everything acted like a drug on me. I sat in my old place, looking out the window now and then—then she came walking by. She was walking with another young girl, both in a lively conversation; she was cheerful and healthy and happy. Was she perhaps coming from her singing lessons, my beloved songstress—is she going to her singing lessons again? Has perhaps only the song changed?
Would that for half a year I could be changed into a woman in order to understand her nature—my standard is perhaps still too high!
It seems as if everything is as it was. She goes to singing lessons, she comes from singing lessons, happy as before. But there is no one waiting for her. Here in the café there is in one sense no one, but perhaps elsewhere. After all, one often hears that a girl conquers pain and falls in love again. And here, of course, the relationship was particularly conducive to som
ething [VI 366] like that, for I was certainly not her beloved but a deceiver. One also often hears that a girl could not live without a man, and it was true, but it was not that man but another man.
So we are indeed in the old situation, have come to it through change, but I have remained unchanged in it. I can truthfully say, “I continue to be” etc., but what I continue to be is not clear. I am assuming that she becomes another’s—what do I continue to be, then? 414And yet not this way, I cannot relinquish her this way. That almost insane wish to see it reestablished is now superseded by another similar one—that if she becomes another’s, this other might be her first love. Then she would not have broken with the idea, would not have lost in my eyes. To be sure, what does she care about losing in my eyes. But she should not think this way, for my view is more careful of her than anyone else’s. Hence I am not going to see my life-view disturbed by her; alas, how it would pain me and cripple me. If the rest of the whole world has another view, it is merely a signal for battle. The trouble is that I know nothing at all about any such earlier love. However, it must be remembered that I have been far too absorbed in myself and far too ethically engrossed to come to know something like that. To that extent it certainly would be possible. If something like that is the case, it is a little satire on me that I have been ignorant of it. She has not felt encouraged to say anything; perhaps my inclosing reserve has affected her in that way. To that extent it certainly would be possible. Would that it were also actually so. And if it is actually so and remains actual, how fortunate that I did not know it! Perhaps I would have come to take the matter too lightly, and the event would not have gained the significance for me that it has.
What do I continue to be? Well, it is hard to say. But if I myself had not experienced this story and someone else were telling it, I would think that he was talking about me, 415so completely does it apply to me.416
If she becomes another’s, I will be less than ever able to talk with her. 417Should I seek a real understanding just the way she did when she played the hypocrite in bargaining about the price of the ideal? Should I speak out of the passion of truth and satirize against my will? She herself is partly to blame for the confusion, for she has disturbed the erotic by playing false in the religious. She refused to be satisfied with the erotic, with being loved or not loved and the consequences of that for her; she seized upon the religious and in responsibility became a gigantic figure for me. To be sure, war between two [VI 367] great powers has come about because a prince sent back a king’s daughter; for me, who refused her, my conflict became just as terrible, for it was God who was her sponsor. This is how I have viewed the matter. But this terrible earnestness changes the erotic into something almost comic, because, thinking with pathos, I would have to say that if she had been as ugly as hereditary sin, as shrewish as the day is long, she would have had the same meaning for me, but this is speaking altogether unerotically. So who is to blame that I must talk in this manner? It is she, who changed an erotic relationship into a religious one.
418Only when I am silent can I keep my soul full of pathos behind the deception of the comic, or behind the cover that I have long since forgotten the whole thing.
July 7. Morning.
A year ago today. Let me see! My life-view was that I would hide my depression in my inclosing reserve. My pride was that I could do it, and my resolution was to proceed further with it to the best of my ability. I am stranded. On what? On the misrelation of individuality and on the wedding ceremony as a protestation in virtue thereof. What is my life’s confusion? That the statement ultra posse nemo obligatur [nothing can be obligated beyond one’s capacity]419 has become meaningless to me. What is my guilt? To have ventured into something I could not carry out. What is my offense? To have made a person unhappy. Unhappy in what way? In possibility in such a way that according to what she said and by virtue of possibility I have a murder on my conscience. What is my punishment? To endure this consciousness. What is my hope? That a compassionate Governance will in actuality reduce the sentence by helping her. What does my understanding say about her? That there is no real probability of the worst. What consequence does this have for me? None at all. An ethical commitment cannot be discharged by any calculation of probability but only by assuming the ultimate possibility of responsibility.
[VI 368] I went to see her. I approached her with unusual cheerfulness and told her that it was possible to do what she wished. As long as one is struggling, and if one is able to understand what sympathy commands, it is easy to explain that one can forget this consideration precisely because one is struggling. Sympathy usually awakens most powerfully when one has conquered. I thought I should make this extreme attempt to see if she, prompted by having been victorious, would not decide to give me my freedom. No! She accepted it, but without a word reflecting sympathy; she even accepted it somewhat coldly—which pleases me, for it proves that she is weary.
I went away. At noon I came back. An absolute resolve makes one calm; a resolution that has gone through the dialectic of the terrible makes one unterrified. Coldly and definitely I announced that it was over. She was about to abandon herself to the most violent expressions of passion, but for the first time in my life I spoke imperatively. It is terrible to have to hazard this, and yet it was the only thing to do. If she had come close to death before my eyes, I would not have been able to change my resolve. My inflexibility helped her, and what was the most rash undertaking went off in an orderly way. One more attempt to arouse my sympathy had no effect. Finally she begged me to think of her sometimes, and this was promised in a casual tone—perhaps she did not mean much by it, but on the other hand I meant it in all earnestness.
So it is all over. If she chooses the scream, then I choose the pain;420 one becomes tired of screaming—perhaps she is already; the cycle of pain will come to me again and again.
What does my understanding teach me about the employment of the two months with regard to her? She will not grieve to the point of endangering her life. For one thing, her passion is not very dialectical in inwardness; for another, no one will be able to provide her with a more favorable situation than the one she has had: to terrify me, the guilty one, to move me by her suffering. The solicitude of a sympathizer cannot give emphasis to the outburst of pain the way my presence can. Reflection will not readily take hold of her, for by now she has gone through a considerable curriculum. What she herself can think up will not be much compared with what I have already done adequately—that is, have perfected her in to the point of nausea. She will be unable to feel any sympathy for me; if there is a little remnant, it will soon be stifled. Whether she did not have a little to reproach herself with, that she still could have acted differently toward me, will never occur to her. She will perhaps become ill, just as someone [VI 369] who has studied too hard for an examination becomes ill when the examination is over. One could also die from such an illness, but this does not result in an infallible conclusion to a propter hoc [because of this].421 422—As for myself, by driving me to extremes, she has helped me extricate my personality from her as far as possible. If she, tired of the whole affair, should find herself a new love, then I shall not only be left out of it, but so will every image of me, for she has none—at least none in which there is any truth.
July 7. Midnight.
See, now I am stopping for the time being. My season of hibernation with regard to her is beginning; I am withdrawing. The third of January the unrest begins again. When one is discharged, the order is: Right face, about left, march. It is rather satirical, for my trouble is that I cannot make either a right face or an about left or march.
The time of unrest is the half year, the half year of that actuality that comes back again and again until I become free. Good that it was not a full year, for then I would have had a year of mourning in the same sense as one has a church year—the moment I was through with the old one, I had to begin the new one.
When the night watchman began to shout, an
old woman used to say: Now I suppose he has lost his way. And the one who is lost does indeed shout. Thus in the period of unrest I am a shouter, a lost person.
In faithfulness to her, my resolution is with all my power423 to remain faithful to the ideas and to my spiritual existence so that I may be convinced by experience that it is spirit that gives life,424 that the external man can languish and the spirit conquer, creation can groan and the spirit rejoice,425 so that I might be comforted and become happy through the spirit, renouncing all of finitude’s grounds of comfort, so that I might persevere and not terminate the glory of the word in the pettiness of deeds and not witness in lofty phrases and contradict [VI 370] myself with deeds of finitude. It would have been better if I could have remained faithful to her; it would have been greater if my spiritual existence had countenanced everyday use in a marriage, and I would have understood life more surely and easily. This is the order of rank. Next comes what I do. If she would bleed to death in a futile passion, if she would not be saved by a help that is perhaps closer than I think or at least comes close enough when it is needed, then I must work in such a way that my existence can count for two. If she helps herself in some other way, that is superfluous.
Suppose there was a book that was printed once and could not be reprinted and in it there was no place to make corrections, but in the list of printing errors there was a reading that was much more expressive than what stood in the same place in the text—then it would have to be satisfied to remain standing among the printing errors but nevertheless with its fullness of meaning. Suppose there was a weed that grew apart from the useful grain—then it would indeed stand on the side, would indeed be a weed, and would indeed be disgraced, but suppose that nevertheless it was called Proud Henry.426
Stages on Life’s Way Page 45
