either. (I always found the back-soaping somehow embarrassing.) What is on my mind is the
fact
that it is always the intelligent people who can't wait for death, and when I think of his eyes that were not only intelligent but also full of the knowledge of mysteries, it seems incredible that this man did not know what was waiting for him. Now I even imagine that he was the only one to whom I could have communicated my experienceâthe otherwise almost incommunicable meeting with my angel.
***
Once more I have the familiar feeling of having to fly, of standing on a window sill (in a burning house?) with no possibility of escape unless I am suddenly able to fly. At the same time I know for sure that it is no use flinging myself into the street, suicide is an illusion. This means that I must fly in the confidence that the void itself will bear me up, that is to say a leap without wings, a leap into nothingness, into an unlived life, into guilt by omission, into emptiness as the only reality which belongs to me, which can bear me up...
SECOND NOTEBOOK
M Y counsel has read the notes I have made so far. He wasn't even angry, but merely shook his head. He couldn't defend me with that, he said, and didn't even put it in his brief-case.
Nevertheless, I continue to keep the records.
(With his much appreciated cigar in my mouth.)
***
The relationship between the beautiful Julika and the missing Stiller began with Tchaikovsky's
Nutcracker Suite
(to the young dancer's mortification, Stiller, who was still very young and felt obliged somehow to impress the lovely Julika, described this music as soap-bubble magic, impotent virtuosity, illuminated lemonade, sentimental rubbish for the elderly, and so on), arid to judge by Julika's most recent intimations a
Mutcracker Suite
hung over all the years of their marriage. Julika was in the ballet at the time. On an old photograph, which she showed me casually the day before yesterday, she appears as a page or a prince, blissfully happy in a costume that suits her down to the ground; one could gaze for hours at the ephebe-like charm she displays in this photograph. At that time, unlike today, her large, exceptionally beautiful, and apparently frank eyes contained a strange shyness, something like a veil of secret fear, either fear of her own sex, from which her delightful disguise could protect her only part of the time, or fear of the man who might be waiting somewhere behind the scenes for the removal of her silvery disguise. Julika was then twenty-three. Any reasonably experienced manâwhich Stiller obviously was notâwould immediately have recognized in this fascinating little person a case of extreme frigidity, or at least have guessed it at the first contact, and adjusted his expectations accordingly. At this time a great future was predicted for Julika in the ballet. How many men, reputable citizens of Zürich, people of importance, Julika could have married on the spot, if this strange and hence fascinating girl had not put art (ballet) above everything, so that she regarded every activity outside art as an unwelcome distraction.
Dancing was her life. She kept the gentlemen at a distance with a giggling laugh, which discouraged many of them and made all serious conversation impossible; and whether they would believe it or not, the lovely Julika lived like a nun at this period, though surrounded by rumours that made her out a vamp; but at this, too, Julika only giggled.
Why didn't people let her be as she was? She never left the theatre without a bouquet of fresh flowers or without a slight but genuine fear that her closest admirer, the donor of these flowers, a student perhaps or a gentleman with a shiny car, was waiting outside. Julika was afraid of cars. Fortunately, they generally didn't recognize Julika as she swept past with her beautiful red hair hidden under a schoolgirlish woollen cap, a very ordinary-looking girl once she no longer stood in the glare of the
fact
that it is always the intelligent people who can't wait for death, and when I think of his eyes that were not only intelligent but also full of the knowledge of mysteries, it seems incredible that this man did not know what was waiting for him. Now I even imagine that he was the only one to whom I could have communicated my experienceâthe otherwise almost incommunicable meeting with my angel.
***
Once more I have the familiar feeling of having to fly, of standing on a window sill (in a burning house?) with no possibility of escape unless I am suddenly able to fly. At the same time I know for sure that it is no use flinging myself into the street, suicide is an illusion. This means that I must fly in the confidence that the void itself will bear me up, that is to say a leap without wings, a leap into nothingness, into an unlived life, into guilt by omission, into emptiness as the only reality which belongs to me, which can bear me up...
SECOND NOTEBOOK
M Y counsel has read the notes I have made so far. He wasn't even angry, but merely shook his head. He couldn't defend me with that, he said, and didn't even put it in his brief-case.
Nevertheless, I continue to keep the records.
(With his much appreciated cigar in my mouth.)
***
The relationship between the beautiful Julika and the missing Stiller began with Tchaikovsky's
Nutcracker Suite
(to the young dancer's mortification, Stiller, who was still very young and felt obliged somehow to impress the lovely Julika, described this music as soap-bubble magic, impotent virtuosity, illuminated lemonade, sentimental rubbish for the elderly, and so on), arid to judge by Julika's most recent intimations a
Mutcracker Suite
hung over all the years of their marriage. Julika was in the ballet at the time. On an old photograph, which she showed me casually the day before yesterday, she appears as a page or a prince, blissfully happy in a costume that suits her down to the ground; one could gaze for hours at the ephebe-like charm she displays in this photograph. At that time, unlike today, her large, exceptionally beautiful, and apparently frank eyes contained a strange shyness, something like a veil of secret fear, either fear of her own sex, from which her delightful disguise could protect her only part of the time, or fear of the man who might be waiting somewhere behind the scenes for the removal of her silvery disguise. Julika was then twenty-three. Any reasonably experienced manâwhich Stiller obviously was notâwould immediately have recognized in this fascinating little person a case of extreme frigidity, or at least have guessed it at the first contact, and adjusted his expectations accordingly. At this time a great future was predicted for Julika in the ballet. How many men, reputable citizens of Zürich, people of importance, Julika could have married on the spot, if this strange and hence fascinating girl had not put art (ballet) above everything, so that she regarded every activity outside art as an unwelcome distraction.
Dancing was her life. She kept the gentlemen at a distance with a giggling laugh, which discouraged many of them and made all serious conversation impossible; and whether they would believe it or not, the lovely Julika lived like a nun at this period, though surrounded by rumours that made her out a vamp; but at this, too, Julika only giggled.
Why didn't people let her be as she was? She never left the theatre without a bouquet of fresh flowers or without a slight but genuine fear that her closest admirer, the donor of these flowers, a student perhaps or a gentleman with a shiny car, was waiting outside. Julika was afraid of cars. Fortunately, they generally didn't recognize Julika as she swept past with her beautiful red hair hidden under a schoolgirlish woollen cap, a very ordinary-looking girl once she no longer stood in the glare of the
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