as if in a gay pleasure garden filled with bower-lined paths. Such a thing can never be forgotten. When I went out and took walks in the woods, finding myself too indolent to know whether to scratch my chin or behind my ears, I dreamed of her, of her alone, as if wanting to dream of what was simultaneously closest and farthest away. She was far from me out of reverence and close out of love. She was so proud, I’ll have you know, that she never allowed me to feel how very shabby I must have appeared to her. She just felt glad when I made myself at home and settled in with her. This persisted until the very last hour, and then she simply cut my farewell off before it left my lips, in the presentiment that I would say only hurtful, stupid things. When I’d left, I turned to look back down the hill behind me and saw her waving at me amicably and simply, as if I were just heading off to the nearest village cobbler and would return in an hour’s time. And yet she knew she was being left behind, alone with her isolation, and would be faced with the task of adjusting to the absence of a companion — and this certainly was a task, an internal labor. When we sat together in the evenings, we’d tell each other stories about our lives, and we heard the wings of childhood beating once more, just as our mother’s dress would rustle on the floor of the room when she came toward her children. My mother and my sister Hedwig always comprise in my head an intimately conjoined and interwoven image. When our mother fell ill, it was Hedwig who cared for and tended her, as one must tend a little child. Just imagine: A child must watch her own mother become a child, and becomes a mother to her own mother. What a strange displacement of feelings. My mother was a highly respected woman, and the esteem she received from all sides was pure and heartfelt. The impression she made was always at once rural and refined. Simultaneously unassuming and dismissive, she could quickly put a damper on disobedience and unkindness. Her expression could ask and command at one and the same time. How the ladies in our town would cluster about her when she went for a walk, how many gentlemen’s hats were doffed before her. Then, when she fell ill, she was forgotten and became an object of worry and shame. For one feels ashamed when a family member is ill and is almost enraged to remember the days when a healthy woman commanded the respect of all who knew her. Shortly before her death — I was fourteen years old at the time — she sat down at noon one day to write a letter: “My beloved son.” But do you imagine her whimsically slender handwriting continued any further than this salutation? No, she just gave a weary confused smile, murmured something and was compelled to lay down the pen once more. There she sat, there lay the beginning of a letter to her son, there the pen, and the sun was shining out of doors, and I observed all these things. One night Hedwig then knocked at the door of my room, telling me to get up, Mother had died. A thin ray of light fell through the crack of the door as I leapt out of bed. As a girl, my mother had been unhappy, born into unfavorable circumstances. She left the distant mountains and came to live in town with her sister, my aunt — where she was forced to work as a maid practically. As a child she walked a long road deeply covered in snow to get to school, and she did her homework in a tiny little room by the light of a paltry candle stub that made her eyes hurt because she could scarcely read the letters in her book. Her parents were unkind to her, and so she became acquainted with melancholy at an early age, and one day, when she was a girl, she stood leaning against the railings of a bridge, wondering whether it wouldn’t be better to leap down into the river. She must have been neglected, shunted back and forth and in this way maltreated. When as a boy I once heard about her wicked childhood, I trembled with indignation, rage shot into my face, and from then on I hated the unknown figures of my grandparents. For her children, our mother had, when she was still healthy, something almost majestic about her that frightened and intimidated us; when she became ill in her mind, we pitied her. It was a crazy leap to make: from fearful, mystical awe to pity. All that lay between — tenderness and trust — remained unknown to us. And so it happened that our pity was strongly intermingled with an unspeakable regret over all we’d never felt, which then caused us to pity her all the more deeply. I remembered all my boyish pranks, all my disrespectful behavior — and then the sound of our mother’s voice, with which she meted out punishments even at a distance, so that the actual physical punishment that followed was sweet, laughable sugar-candy by comparison. She employed just the right tone of voice to make you instantly regret the error you’d committed and desire to see her outrage mollified as quickly as possible. There was something so wonderfully mild about her mildness, and seeing it was like receiving a present; we didn’t receive it often. Oversensitive irritability was my mother’s usual state. We weren’t nearly as frightened of our father as of her, we feared only that he might say or do something that would cause Mother to fly into a rage. He was powerless before her — it was in his nature to prize vigor far less than relaxation. He was a boon companion, and as such well-loved, but when it came to difficult matters, he wasn’t the one to take things in hand. Now he’s eighty years old, and when he dies, a piece of town history will die along with him; the old people will shake their heads more pensively and wearily when they no longer see the old man going about his business, which he still does today, and on fairly spry legs. In his youth he was rather a wild fellow who was gradually polished by city life, but this life also gave him a taste for luxury. Both Mother and Father came from rugged, secluded, mountainous regions and then found themselves in a town that even at the time was known, if not notorious, for its liberal vitality. Industry was flourishing in those days like a fiery plant, permitting an easy, carefree lifestyle — much money was earned, and much spent. When five or six days a week were workdays, this was considered industriousness. Workers lay for days at a time upon the sunny riverbank, catching fish, when they weren’t getting up to mischief. And whenever they needed more money to finance this life, they’d go work a few days more, earning enough to return to their leisure. The craftsmen were making money off the workers, for when even the poor have money, how much more prosperous must the well-to-do be. The city appeared to have acquired an additional ten thousand inhabitants overnight, everyone came streaming in from the surrounding countryside into buildings that were occupied and filled the moment they looked on the outside as though they might be finished, never mind how damp and dirty the inside might still be. Construction firms were having a heyday, all they had to do was keep producing buildings, which they did as shoddily as could be managed. Factory owners rode around on horseback, and their ladies traveled in barouches while the town’s old nobility observed these activities and sniffed. On festival days the town went all out, surpassing all rivals, and left no stone unturned in its bid to be celebrated everywhere as the best town for revelries. The merchants had nothing to complain about under these circumstances, nor did the schoolchildren; the only ones who felt uneasy were a handful of insightful individuals who couldn’t find the courage to join their neighbors on the unsteady, rose-strewn pleasure ground of superficial amusements. Into such surroundings my parents now came, Mother with her irritable sensitivities and her taste for simple refinement, and Father with his talent for assimilating everything around him. For children, every region is lovely and charming, but this particular place, thanks to its setting, was made for children who love to pursue their games amid lairs such as rocks, caves, riverbanks, meadows, hollows, gorges and wooded ravines. And so we enjoyed this entire landscape for our games and inventions until we left school. When Mother died, I was sent to a bank as an apprentice. During the first year I acquitted myself splendidly; for the novelty of what I encountered in this world filled me with timidity and fear. The second year found me a model apprentice, but in the third year of my apprenticeship the director cursed me to the devil, keeping me on only as an act of mercy, in deference to my father, whose close acquaintance he’d been for many years. I’d lost all gusto for work of any sort and spoke insolently to my superiors, whom I considered unworthy of ordering me around. There was something in me that I now find incomprehensible — I recall that everything, every piece of furniture, every object, every word caused me pain. Eventually, I became so timid that the time had come to send me away, and that’s what they did. They found me a job in a far-off town just to get rid of me, as I had proved myself utterly useless. And so I left. — But now I don’t want to think of the past any longer, nor speak of it. There’s something wonderful about having escaped one’s early youth, for youth is by no means always beautiful, lovely and easy; often it’s harder and more filled with worries than the life of many an old man. The more one has lived, the more gently one lives. A person with a tempestuous youth may well in later years rarely or — preferably — never again behave in a tempestuous manner. When I think of how we children, each of us in turn, had to go through all these things, the years of error and violent emotion, and that all children on earth must do this at their own youthful peril, well then I don’t wish to be overhasty in praising the sweetness of childhood, and yet I will praise it, for childhood remains a precious memory all the same. How difficult it often is for parents to be good protective parents; and as for being a well-behaved obedient child — how can this be more than a cheap empty phrase for most children? As a woman, by the way, you know this better than I do. To this day I’ve remained the least capable of human beings. I don’t even have a suit to my name that might bear witness to my having put my life more or less in order. Looking at me, you can’t see anything that might point to my having made a certain choice in life. I’m still standing at the door of life, knocking and knocking, though admittedly none too forcefully, and breathlessly listening to see whether someone will decide to open the bolt and let me in. A bolt like this is rather heavy, and people don’t like to come to the door if they have the feeling it’s just a beggar standing outside knocking. I’m good at nothing but listening and waiting, though in these capacities I’ve achieved perfection, for I’ve learned how to dream while waiting. These two things go hand in hand, and dreaming does a person good and preserves respectability. Might I have missed the chance to find my true profession? This is a question I no longer ask myself; a youth might ask such a thing, but not a man. Any profession would have brought me exactly as far as I am now. And why should I concern myself with that! I’m quite conscious of my virtues and weaknesses, and take pains to avoid boasting about either. To every person I offer my knowledge, strength, thoughts, achievements and love if he has any use for them. Anyone who wants need only stick out a finger and beckon, and though many a one would thereupon just come hobbling up, not me — I come leaping and bounding, do you see, the way the wind whistles, and I skip over and tread heedlessly upon memories of all sorts if that lets me run unhindered. And the entire world comes rushing along with me — all of life! That’s how it must be, just like that! Nothing in this world is mine, but I no longer yearn for anything. Longing has become a stranger to me. When I still felt certain longings, I found people a matter of indifference, mere hindrances, I sometimes even despised them, but now I love them because I need them and I offer myself to them to be put to use. That’s what we’re here for. Let’s say someone appears and says to me: “Hey there, you, come here! I need you. I can give you work!” This person makes me happy. Then I know what happiness is! Happiness and pain are completely transformed, they become clearer and more comprehensible to me, they elucidate themselves to me, they permit me to woo them in love and anguish, to court them. Whenever I must submit a letter of application to someone offering my services, I always draw attention to my brothers and point out that since they have both proven to be useful productive individuals, I too might perhaps also be of use, which makes me laugh every time. I’m not at all worried that I myself might not, some day, take on some form, but I want to put off forming myself as long as possible. And then it would be best if this came about of its own accord, unintentionally. Now, for starters, I’ve had myself measured for a pair of sturdy broad shoes with which I shall tread more firmly and show people with my very footsteps that I am a person with a purpose and no doubt abilities as well. To be put to the test is a pleasure for me! I scarcely know any higher pleasure. That I am poor at the moment, what does that signify? It needn’t mean anything at all, it’s merely the tiniest slip in the overall composition that can be erased again with a few vigorous strokes. It might at most cause a healthy person a moment of embarrassment, perhaps even worry, but certainly not alarm. You’re laughing. No? You’re saying you weren’t? What a shame that would be, for your laughter is a beautiful thing. For a time it was always my idea that I could become a soldier, but I no longer quite trust this romantic notion. Why not remain where one is? If it’s my intention to perish, can it be that no suitable opportunities are available to me in this country? I should be able to find a more worthy occasion here for putting my health, strength and joie de vivre on the line. For the moment, I’m delighted about my health and the joy of being able to move my legs and arms at will, then about my mind, which I still find quite lively, and finally about the thrilling recognition that I stand here before the world as a deeply burdened debtor who has every reason to finally take a deep breath and start working himself back into the world’s good graces. I adore being a debtor! If I had no choice but to tell myself that humankind had insulted me, I’d be inconsolable. Then I’d have to withdraw into apathy, antipathy and bitterness. No, things stand quite differently, they stand brilliantly, they couldn’t possibly stand any more brilliantly for a person just becoming a man: It is I–I—who have insulted the world. The world stands before me like an infuriated, offended mother: that wonderful face I’m so in love with: the face of Mother Earth, demanding atonement! I tally up everything I’ve neglected, squandered, dreamed away, overlooked and transgressed. I shall satisfy the one I’ve offended, and then some day, in some beautiful, intimate evening hour, I’ll tell my siblings all about how I managed to make things turn out in such a way that I can hold my head high. It might take years, but after all, I find a task all the more delightful the longer and more difficult the exertions it requires. Now you know me a little.”