Stages on Life’s Way
Page 26
But in this there is no meaning. I am a rogue. Correct—if I were what I am considered to be, but I am just the opposite. What am I then? A fool, a fantast, a quixotic knight who will take a young girl’s words so to heart. Why? Is this a theological proceeding against me, as Aristotle requires? Is there no third position?56 Was it a careless word? Damn and blast it, if I examine evidence, I do it to some purpose. I took two months; I have made attempts in all moods; she has said it in as decisive a manner as possible. Is it a careless word? 57Then it must be that a girl according to her very nature is also mentally rejuvenated and begins all over again.
See, now I am certainly ready to go to bed; I feel like sleeping, I the perfidious one. Then I shall not think about anything, and above all will abominate anyone whose view of life, by wanting to go to the defense of a girl, insults her more deeply than I have done. In closing, I think of you, immortal Shakespeare; you are able to speak passionately. I shall think of the lovable Imogen in act three, scene four, of Cymbeline, where she says:
Falsch seinem Bett? Was heiszt das falsch ihm seyn? [VI 209]
Wachend d’rinn liegen und an ihn nur denken?
Weinend von Stund zu Stund? Erliegt Natur
Dem Schlaf, auffahren mit furchtbarem Traum
Von ihm; erwachen gleich in Schreckensthränen
[False to his bed? What is it to be false?
To lie in watch there and to think on him?
To weep ‘twixt clock and clock? if sleep charge nature,
To break it with a fearful dream of him
And cry myself awake]?58
At this point an eminent poet would stop, but Shakespeare knows how to speak the language of passion fluently, a language that sensu eminenti [in the eminent sense] then has the characteristic that if a person cannot speak it fluently he cannot speak it at all—that is, it simply does not exist for him. Therefore Imogen says:
Heiszt das nun falsch seyn seinem Bette? heiszt es [That’s false to his bed? is it]?
Allow that Imogen is right in this, that der Missimgänner Schwüre sind der Frauen Verräther [men’s vows are women’s traitors],59 but cursed be the paltry consolation that a woman’s vows cannot deceive anyone because she cannot take an oath or swear.
January 20. Morning.
A year ago today. I cannot keep my soul in the immediacy of falling in love. I am well aware that she is lovely, in my eyes indescribably so, but I do not feel like throwing the passion of my soul in that direction. Alas, loveliness is ephemeral; it is a shame to grasp it at once. She shall not complain that in this respect I am leading her erotically astray. Indeed, I am so reserved for still another reason, because I am most unhappy when she is most beautiful. Then it seems to me that she has such an indescribable claim upon life; I cannot comprehend that every human being has a claim upon life—I alone do not. I wish that she were ugly—then everything would go better. I wonder if Socrates would understand this interpretation of loving ugly people?60 And yet this is the way it is: like loves only like. If she were unhappy, it would help. But this childlike happiness, this buoyancy in the world, which I cannot understand and with which I cannot deeply and essentially [VI 210] sympathize (because my sympathy for it is through sadness, which indicates precisely the contradiction)—and my battle, my courage (to say something positive about myself), my buoyancy in dancing over abysses of which she has no idea whatsoever and with which she can sympathize only unessentially, as with a dreadful story one reads and whose actuality one cannot conceive, that is, through the imagination—what will come of this?
So I have chosen the religious. This is closest to me; my faith is in it. So leave loveliness in abeyance; let heaven keep it for her. If I attain a common point of departure along this road, then come, you smiling freedom from care; I shall rejoice with you as sincerely as I can, braid rosebuds in your hair; I shall handle you as lightly as is possible for me, as is possible for someone who is accustomed to reach for what is crucial with the passion of thought and at the risk of his life.
61Yesterday I read a sermon aloud to her. What emotion! Never has my soul been shaken in this way. Tears pour out of my eyes; a dreadful intimation comes over me; the dark cloud of care sinks lower and lower over me. I can scarcely see her, although she is sitting with me. Poor girl, I wonder what she is thinking! Nevertheless, let come what may along this road! I wonder what she is thinking. She is silent, quiet, but entirely calm. That I am so overwhelmed by her—I wonder if she would attribute this effect to love. Impossible, to me that would be the most unlovely thing I can imagine. When I humble myself under God, then to believe that it was under her! No, she does not have that effect upon me. I have been able, can still bear, to live without her if only I retain the religious. But I suspect that the religious crisis is to bring it into what I have begun here.
Might it be possible, might my whole attitude to life be askew, might I have run into something here in which secretiveness is forbidden? I do not understand it. I who have become a master in my art, I who—alas, I do confess it—proudly ranked myself with the heroes I found in the poets’ writings because I knew I could do what was said of them,62 I who for her sake and the sake of this relationship had just brought this to perfection! Suppose a pilgrim had been wandering for ten years, taking two steps forward and one back, suppose that he finally saw the holy city in the distance and was told: That is not the holy city—well, presumably he would keep on walking. But suppose he was told: That is the holy city, but your method is completely wrong; you must [VI 211] break yourself of the habit of walking in this way if you want your journey to be pleasing to heaven! He who for ten years had been walking in this manner with most extreme effort!
January 20. Midnight.
Is there nevertheless no third party? No. Everything is dark; the lights are out all over. Of course, if anyone was suspicious of me and curious, the best thing would be to stay in a dark room oneself. How rewarding it is to be inclosed within one-self; I truly cannot say that I do not have my reward.63
If a third party did think about my love-relationship, or someone else—for when all is said and done I am perhaps the only one who thinks about it and am not even a second party on the subject. But that, after all, is what I want and what I am fighting for. Yet it is alarming to think this way in the stillness of the night. All existence thereby becomes somewhat askew, somewhat turned around, and thereby somewhat weird. When will the time come when I shall be allowed to examine more closely how things are going with me, what I have suffered? —Consequently, if there were a third party who thought about my relationship—I shall begin in that way, and I can then begin anywhere; the only thing I cannot do is to finish. There is a contradiction in all my desperate exertion. To myself I seem like a person who wanted to take his examen artium [final comprehensive examination] and had studied beyond measure for seven others but had not studied what was prescribed and therefore failed. A third party, be it a stage hairdresser, a silk, wool, and linen merchant, a young girl at a finishing school, to say nothing of the gentlemen who write short stories and novels—a third party would be informed at once. So this is the situation. I am a depraved man who in the intoxication of new sins has promptly forgotten the girl and the relationship. That is certain, and if everything is just as certain, we shall probably make some sense of it. And certain it is—that is precisely my consolation. Surely not many know me, but if the girl were to go to any one of those who do know me, there is not a single one who would not say that. If it is the grocer’s clerk across the street—when he is engaged and all dressed up on a Sunday, he thinks of such a man with disgust; if it is one of Østergade’s more common [VI 212] dilettantes, he feels like a knight when he considers such vil-lainy; if it is a husband who worries his wife to death with his marital fidelity, he is appalled at the thought of such treachery. But the girl, reports the third party, she sits and grieves, she broods over every little recollection, she listens for a footstep.64 —But the first is not the case; does it follow
that the second is not, either? Would that this conclusion were right, but what does Aristotle say?65
Every word she has said, every look on her face, I can remember as clearly as if it were yesterday, and every flimsiest hint about her is promptly set in circulation among my deliberative thoughts. The most nonsensical thing becomes the object of the most enormous efforts. In antiquity there were those who assumed that the principle of existence was a vortex.66 So is my life. At times it is an atom, which cannot be seen by the naked eye, a mere nothing, that sets the vortex seething. 67My pride prohibits me from disdaining the least thing; my honor does this, and if one is so alone in this as I am, one is obliged to be very careful. Things that I ordinarily would let go in one ear and out the other must now have significance, absolute significance. If a religious fanatic had but a single dubious Bible passage to cite, to what effort he would go to demonstrate its authenticity so that he could erect his system upon this sure foundation! And a Bible passage is nevertheless always something, but one word from her, a comment she did not know she made about the tea, that is little. Yet it is indeed possible that a secret lay therein—it is just possible. Who but me understands this? But I do, after all, have a support in myself, for who would ever dream that I could be such as I am. Ergo—yes, it is correct, absolutely correct: it is possible. It is possible that she was just as skilled in reflection as I am. Indeed, if my honor and my pride, my depression, did not put the thumbscrews on me, I would hardly feel the force of this syllogism. But I do not want it any different. If it could be undone, if it were possible—oh, if this were so, I would be convinced that I had acted to the best of my ability, had done everything that understanding and madness can dredge up; I would be convinced that undoing it would not come as a new whim but as a potentiation of the logical consequences; I would be convinced that I had done [VI 213] everything to thrust her from me, if this could save her, and everything to keep my soul at the peak of desire so that I might be the same. Heaven be praised, that is what I am right now; my hope is that I shall keep on as long as it is required. There is indeed nothing as strengthening as consistency, and nothing as consistent as consistency itself. I have still not counseled with flesh and blood;68 my soul’s passion steadily keeps the sail set for the wind of resolution. Just as the sailor says that the ship is sailing steadily at the same speed, so I dare say that I am steadily standing still at the same speed. She has pleaded with me; it is her plea that plunges me into despair.
My suffering is a punishment. I accept it from God’s hands; I have deserved it. In my youth I have often quietly smiled at erotic love. I have not scoffed at it, have not done a thing to hold it up to ridicule—it occupied me too little for that. 69I have lived only intellectually. When I read in the poets the speeches of lovers, I smiled because I could not understand that such a relationship could occupy them so much. The eternal, a relationship with God, a relationship to the idea—this stirred my soul, but I could not grasp something so intermediate. Now—well, now I am suffering, I am doing penance, even if I am not suffering in a purely erotic way.
January 25. Morning.
A year ago today. Religious presuppositions she does not seem to have at all. So a metamorphosis can occur. And yet what will my little influence be when compared with the originality of childhood. If only I would not gain too much power over her, either. If only the awkward situation that may come about along this road does not intervene—that I become her religion teacher instead of her lover, that I become the autocrat instead of her beloved, that I become superior to her and manage to destroy the erotic element, that I barbarically cross out her feminine loveliness and assert myself. Would that I might lift her or rather that she might swing herself over into the religious freedom where she will feel the power of the spirit and feel religiously assured and secure, then everything will be all right. Would that she not become unjustifiably indebted to me for anything, that she not ever foolishly fancy that she [VI 214] is. Even if my depression cannot fulfill her youthful, beautiful claim on life (and God knows whether or not it is my depression that tortures my feelings with exaggerations), well, then I shall regard her love as a sacrifice she makes. Can love [Kjærlighed] be appraised or paid for more highly! Spiritually I shall always be able to be something for her. We shall then, both of us, grow older; there indeed comes a time when youth does not crave in the same way, and then in a distinctive sense our love will have the years ahead of it. Or is, then, the most enviable love that whose most beautiful time was when the lovers could sweep out onto the floor in a waltz?
She is reserved, quiet, entirely calm; when someone is present, she is as cheerful as ever.
January 26. Midnight.
Alas, if it were possible, if it were possible! My God, every one of my nerves is probing, as it were, out in existence; they are feeling their way to see whether there would be some indication that we still might turn out to be suitable for each other, that until then I would have maintained the strength to keep my soul and my love at the peak of desire per tot discrimina [through so many perilous chances],70 and that she would have promptly found her bearings without looking to the right or to the left. What a tremendous reward for all my misery! If the whole thing were to be but a day, if my wedding day and the day of my death were to be the same, what overpayment for all my toil and trouble, for what I, regarding the matter from a comic angle, have given up outwardly and what I, tragically suffering, call the overtime work of a prisoner! Ineffable bliss! What are Romeo and Juliet compared with an understanding through such spiritual trials, compared with a victory through such perils, compared with the happiest outcome of the deepest despair! Great, yes, it would be truly great! If it were to happen in the wintertime, methinks the flowers would spring up for joy; were it to happen in summertime, methinks the sun would dance for joy, and at any time the kinsfolk would be proud of the happiness that made us too blissful to be proud of our happiness. —But what if, what if I grew weary and lost my energy and enthusiasm for desire; what if, what if she perished—but, no, that is out of the question; but what if she languished and faded away, what if she is languishing, is fading away! Or what if she could not persevere with me in the desert of expectancy, what if she [VI 215] longs for the more secure life in Egypt;71 or what if she married someone else! If she does, may God bless her marriage—after all, in a certain sense that is what I want, what I am working for. And yet at this point I have other thoughts on the matter. Do I then have more than one understanding; is this a sign of sagacity or insanity? Or what if she were totally unchanged, had suffered nothing either in soul or body, but she did not understand me, did not understand me entirely; what if the heart in the young girl’s breast did not beat violently as it does in the breast of the faithless one; what if the blood of youth did not rush to her head as it does to mine; what if it coursed calmly in the inexperienced girl and not as it does in the cool soul of the sensible person; what if she did not understand my suffering and its degree, did not understand my chilling composure, the necessity for it; what if the word “forgiveness” between us were to be earnest, the earnestness of judgment, and not a ball we both hit in the game of erotic love while fidelity jubilated over its victory; what if she did not entirely understand that there is only one way to be zealots in our day and to preserve romance of soul in the nineteenth century’s risible commonsensibleness, and that is to be just as cool outwardly as one is warm inwardly; what if she did not understand, did not entirely understand, that it is infamous to help by half measures and that it is being faithful to reject illusory relief; what if, when the hint came from heaven, the sign for our happiness, what if she were out of step and could not follow it—what then, what then, what then? —Ah, I am at the end of my tether, I am relapsing. If only she may be saved, I shall manage. She may do what she wishes, if only she is outside, really outside me, belongs to another, has become tired of the whole affair, or has never understood me. If I am convinced of it, if she wished it or if it just could be done (so
mething I do not fear, for if I dare give full rein to my passion, it makes a place for me everywhere), what a sophist I would become to prove to her that she had chosen the highest.72
So I wish her every good. Right now I can think often possibilities at once—yes, twenty, despite my deplorable bias, which has a sense only for the possibilities of unhappiness; I can think of an explanation for each one in particular, and then, in turn, an explanation that will demonstrate to her that she has done the proudest thing. Suppose that she were so proud that she would not dare to admit her love for me, she who nevertheless was going to die of it; suppose she defends [VI 216] herself by scorning me—if only I dare, I will not be ashamed of her, I will calmly say: I have lost much, very much, or, more correctly, I have had to deny myself my dearest wish. Should I be afraid of confessing an unhappy love [Kjærlighed], should I change myself and my opinion of her because she changed toward me? What is a human life, after all—it is like grass, withered tomorrow73—perhaps I, too, shall die tomorrow. If a fool laughs at me, what does that demonstrate but that I have acted wisely? If a lost soul shrugs his shoulders at me sympathetically, what does that demonstrate but that I may still dare to hope for my salvation beyond and before God?
But for myself and for both of us, I still wish again my most blessed wish, which is beyond all measure and passes all understanding.74 Sleep well, my beloved, sleep well; stay with me in my dreams, stay with the lonely solitary, you heavenly perhaps with your ineffable bliss. And then to rest: