7 The Seducer’S Diary
7 THE SEDUCER’S DIARY
È la giovin principiànte.
Don Giovanni, Act I1
I CANNOT conceal from myself, can scarcely master, the anxiety which grips me at this moment, as I resolve for my own interest to make a fair copy of the hasty transcript I was able at that time to secure only in the greatest haste and with much disquiet. The situation confronts me just as alarmingly, but also just as reproachfully, as it did then. Contrary to his custom, he had not closed his escritoire, so its whole contents lay at my disposal; but it is futile for me to gloss over my behaviour by reminding myself that I did not open any drawer. One drawer was pulled out. In it I found a pile of loose papers and on top of them lay a book in broad quarto, tastefully bound. On the side facing up was a vignette of white paper on which he had written in his own hand ‘Commentarius perpetuus No. 4’.2 In vain have I tried, however, to make myself believe that had that side of the book not been turned up, and had the strange title not tempted me, I should not have succumbed to the temptation, or at least would have attempted to resist it. The title itself was curious, not so much in itself as because of its setting. From a quick glance at the loose papers I saw that these contained constructions of erotic situations, some hints about some relationship or other, sketches of letters of a quite peculiar character, with which I later became familiar in their artistically consummate, calculated carelessness. When now, having seen through the designing mind of this depraved person, I recall my situation; when, with an eye open for every artifice, I approach that drawer in thought, it makes the same impression upon me as it must make upon a police officer when he enters the room of a forger, opens his repositories and finds in a drawer a pile of loose papers, handwriting samples; on one there is part of a foliage motif, on another a signature, on a third a line of reversed writing. It shows him clearly that he is on the right track, and his joy over this is mingled with a certain admiration for the study and industry here clearly in evidence.
For me it might have been a little different, being less used to tracking down criminals and not armed with, well, a police badge. The fact that I was following unlawful paths would have been an additional weight on my mind. On this occasion, as usually happens, I was no less at a loss for thoughts than for words. An impression remains with one until reflection reasserts itself and, diverse and speedy in its movements, ingratiates itself with the unfamiliar stranger and talks him round. The more reflection develops, the quicker it can pull itself together; like a passport clerk for foreign travellers, it becomes so used to seeing the most fantastic figures that it is not easily taken aback. But however strongly developed my own reflection, I was at first still greatly astonished. I remember very well that I turned pale, that I nearly fell over, and how that fact alarmed me. What if he had come home, had found me in a faint with the drawer in my hand? At least a bad conscience can make life interesting.
The title of the book in itself made no particular impression on me; I thought it was a collection of excerpts, which to me seemed quite natural since I knew that he had always embraced his studies with enthusiasm. Its contents, however, were of quite another kind. It was neither more nor less than a diary, painstakingly kept; and just as I did not think, from what I knew of him before, that his life was in such great need of commentary, so I do not deny, after the insight I had now gained, that the title had been chosen with much taste and understanding, with true aesthetic, objective mastery of himself and the situation. The title is in perfect harmony with the entire contents. His life has been an attempt to realize the task of living poetically. With a keenly developed sense for what is interesting in life, he had known how to find it, and having found it he had constantly reproduced the experience in a semi-poetic way. His diary, therefore, was not historically exact or a straightforward narrative, not indicative, but subjunctive. Although of course the experience was recorded after it happened – sometimes perhaps even a considerable time after – it was often described as if taking place at the very moment, so dramatically vivid that sometimes it was as though it was all taking place before one’s very eyes. But that he should have done this because the diary served any ulterior purpose is highly improbable; it is quite obvious that, in the strictest sense, its only importance was for him personally. And to assume that what I have before me is a literary work, perhaps even intended for publication, is precluded by the whole as well as by the details. Certainly he did not need to fear anything personally in publishing it, for most of the names are so unusual that there is altogether no likelihood of their being authentic. But I have formed a suspicion that the Christian name is historically correct, so that he himself would always be sure of identifying the actual person, while every outsider must be misled by the surname. Such at least is the case with the girl I knew, around whom the chief interest centres, Cordelia – that was her correct name; not, however, Wahl.
How, then, can we explain that the diary has nevertheless acquired such a poetic flavour? The answer is not difficult; it can be explained by his poetic temperament, which is, if you will, not rich, or if you prefer, not poor enough to distinguish poetry and reality from each other. The poetic was the extra he himself brought with him. This extra was the poetical element he enjoyed in the poetic situation provided by reality; this element he took back in again in the form of poetic reflection. That was the second enjoyment, and enjoyment was what his whole life was organized around. In the first case he savoured the aesthetic element personally; in the second he savoured his own person aesthetically. In the first case the point was that he egoistically, personally, savoured what in part reality gave him and what in part he himself had impregnated reality with; in the second case his personality was volatilized and he savoured, then, the situation and himself in the situation. In the first case he was in constant need of reality as the occasion, as an element; in the second case reality was drowned in the poetic. The fruit of the first stage is thus the mood from which the diary results as the fruit of the second stage, the word ‘fruit’ being used in the latter case in a somewhat different sense from that in the first. The poetic is thus something he has constantly possessed by virtue of the ambiguity in which his life passed.
Behind the world we live in, in the distant background, lies another world standing in roughly the same relation to the former as the stage one sometimes sees in the theatre behind the real stage stands to the latter. Through a thin gauze one sees what looks like a world of gossamer, lighter, more ethereal, of a different quality from the real world. Many people who appear bodily in the real world do not belong there but to this other world. Yet the fact that someone fades away in this manner, indeed almost disappears from reality, can be due to either health or sickness. The latter was the case with this person, with whom I was once acquainted but without getting to know him. He did not belong to reality yet had much to do with it. He was constantly running around in it, yet even when he devoted himself to it most, he was already beyond it. But it was not the good that beckoned him away, nor was it really evil – even now I dare not say that of him. He has suffered from an exacerbatio cerebri3 for which reality afforded insufficient incitement, at best only temporarily. Reality was not too much for him, he was not too weak to bear its burden; no, he was too strong, but this strength was a sickness. As soon as reality lost its power to incite he was disarmed; that is where the evil in him lay. He was conscious of this, even at the moment of incitement, and it was in his consciousness of this the evil lay.
I once knew the girl whose story forms the substance of the diary. Whether he has seduced others I do not know; it does seem so from his papers. He seems also to have been adept at another kind of practice, wholly characteristic of him; for he was of far too spiritual a nature to be a seducer in the usual sense. From the diary we also learn that at times his desire was for something altogether arbitrary – a greeting, for instance – and under no circumstance would accept more, because in the person in question this was what was most beautiful. With the help of his mental gifts he knew how to tempt a girl, to draw her to him, without caring to possess her in any stricter sense. I can imagine him able to bring a girl to the point where he was sure she would sacrifice all, but when matters had come that far he left off without the slightest advance having been made on his part, and without a word having been let fall of love, let alone a declaration, a promise. Yet it would have happened, and the unhappy girl would retain the consciousness of it with double bitterness, because there was not the slightest thing she could appeal to. She could only be constantly tossed about by the most divergent moods in a terrible witches’ dance, at one moment reproaching herself, forgiving him, at another reproaching him, and then, since the relationship would only have been actual in a figurative sense, she would constantly have to contend with the doubt that the whole thing might only have been imagination. She would be unable to confide in anyone, for really there was nothing to confide. When you have dreamed, you can tell others your dream, but what she had to tell was no dream, it was reality, and yet, as soon as she wanted to speak of it to another to ease her troubled mind, it was nothing. She herself felt this very keenly. No one could grasp it, hardly even herself, and yet it lay with an unsettling weight upon her.
Such victims were therefore of a quite special nature. They were not unfortunate girls who, social outcasts or thinking themselves such, openly fumed and fretted and now and then, when their hearts became too full, gave vent in hate or forgiveness. No visible change occurred in them; they lived in their normal circumstances, as respected as ever, and yet they were changed, well-nigh inexplicably to themselves, incomprehensibly to others. Their lives were not, as with those others, snapped off or broken, they were bent in on themselves; lost to others, they sought vainly to find themselves. Just as you might say that your path through life left no trace (for your feet were so formed as to leave no footprints – this is how I best picture to myself his infinite self-reflection), so it could be said that no victim fell to him. He lived in far too spiritual a manner to be a seducer in the ordinary sense. Sometimes, however, he assumed a parastatic body and was then sheer sensuality.4 Even his affair with Cordelia was so complicated that it was possible for him to appear as the one seduced; yes, even the unlucky girl was sometimes in confusion about it; here, too, his footprints are so indistinct that any proof is impossible. The individuals were merely his incitement; he cast them off as a tree sheds its leaves – he is refreshed, the leaf withers.
But how, I wonder, do things look in his own head? Just as he has led others astray, so in my view he ends by going astray himself. It is not in external respects that he has led the others astray, but in ways that affect them inwardly. There is something outrageous in a person’s misdirecting a traveller who has lost his way and then leaving him to himself in his error, yet what is that compared with causing someone to go astray in himself? The lost traveller, after all, has a consolation that the country around him is constantly changing, and with every change is born a new hope of finding a way out. A person who goes astray inwardly has less room, for manoeuvre; he soon finds he is going round in a circle from which he cannot escape. This, on an even more terrible scale, I think, is how it will go with him. I can imagine nothing more agonizing than an intriguing mind which has lost the thread and then turns all its wits upon itself, as conscience awakens and the question is one of extricating oneself from this confusion. It is to no avail that he has many exits from his fox’s earth; the moment his anxious soul thinks it sees daylight appearing, it proves to be a new entrance, and like startled game, pursued by despair, he is thus constantly seeking an exit and forever finding an entrance through which he returns into himself. Such a man is not always what we could call a criminal; often he himself is deluded by his intrigues, and yet he is overtaken by a more terrible punishment than the criminal, for what is the pain even of remorse compared with this conscious madness? His punishment has a purely aesthetic character, for even to talk of his conscience awakening is to apply too ethical an expression to him. For him conscience takes the form simply of a higher level of consciousness which expresses itself in a disquietude that still fails to accuse him in a deeper sense, but which keeps him awake with no support beneath him in his barren restlessness. Nor is he mad; for in their diversity his finite thoughts are not petrified in the eternity of madness.
Poor Cordelia! For her, too, it will be hard to find peace. She forgives him from the bottom of her heart, but she finds no rest, for then doubt awakens: it was she who broke off the engagement, it was she who caused the disaster, it was her pride that yearned for the uncommon. Then she repents, but she finds no rest, for then the accusing thoughts acquit her: it was he with his artfulness who placed this plan in her mind. Then she turns to hatred, her heart finds relief in curses, but she finds no rest; she reproaches herself again, reproaches herself because she has hated, she who is herself a sinner, reproaches herself because, however sly he may have been, she will still always be guilty. It is grievous for her that he has deceived her; it is even more grievous, one could almost be tempted to say, that he has aroused in her this many-tongued reflection, that he has developed her aesthetically enough no longer to listen humbly to one voice, but to be able to hear these many points of view all at once. Then memory awakens with her soul, she forgets the offence and the guilt, she remembers the beautiful moments, and she is numbed in an unnatural exaltation. In such moments she not only remembers him, she understands him with a clairvoyance which only goes to show how far she has travelled. Then she no longer sees the criminal in him, or the noble person; her sense of him is purely aesthetic. She once wrote me a note in which she expressed her feelings about him. ‘Sometimes he was so spiritual that I felt myself annihilated as a woman, at other times so wild and passionate, so filled with desire, that I almost trembled before him. Sometimes I seemed a stranger to him, at other times he gave of himself completely; when I then flung my arms around him, sometimes everything was suddenly changed and I embraced a cloud.5 I knew that expression before I knew him, but he has taught me what it means; when I use it I always think of him, just as every thought I think is only in connection with him. I have always loved music and he was a matchless instrument; always alive, he had a range that no instrument has, he was the epitome of all feelings and moods, no thought was too elevated for him, none too despairing, he could roar like an autumn storm, he could whisper inaudibly. No word of mine was without effect, and yet I cannot say that my word did not fail of its effect, for it was impossible for me to know what effect it would have. With an indescribable but secret, blessed, unnameable anxiety I listened to this music I myself called forth, yet did not call forth; there was always harmony, he always carried me away.’
Terrible for her, it will be more terrible for him; I can infer this from the fact that even I cannot quite control the anxiety that grips me every time I think of the matter. I, too, am carried along into that nebulous realm, that dream world where every moment one is afraid of one’s own shadow. Often I try in vain to tear myself away, I follow as a figure of menace, as an accuser who cannot speak. How strange! He has spread the deepest secrecy over everything, and still there is a deeper secret, and it is this, that I am in on it; and indeed I have myself become privy to it unlawfully. To forget the whole thing would be impossible. I have sometimes thought of speaking about it to him. Still, how would that help? He would disavow everything, maintain that the diary was a literary effort, or impose silence upon me, something I could not deny him considering how I came to know of it. Nothing, after all, is so pervaded by seduction and damnation as a secret.
I have received from Cordelia a collection of letters. Whether these are all of them I do not know, although it occurs to me she once let it be understood that she herself had confiscated some. I have copied them and will now insert them in my own clean copy. It is true the dates are missing, but even if they were there it would not help much, since the diary as it proceeds becomes more and more sparing. Indeed, in the end, with the odd exception, it gives no dates, as though the story as it progressed acquired such qualitative importance, and in spite of being historically real, came so near to being idea, that time specifications became for this reason a matter of indifference. What did help me, however, was the fact that at various places in the diary are some words whose significance at first I did not grasp. But by comparing them with the letters I realized that they furnish the motives for the latter. It will therefore be a simple matter to insert them in the right places, inasmuch as I shall always introduce the letter at the point where its motive is indicated. Had I not found these clues, I would have incurred a misunderstanding; for no doubt it would not have occurred to me, as now from the diary seems probable, that at times the letters followed upon each other with such frequency that she seems to have received several in one day. Had I followed my original intention I should have apportioned them more evenly, and not suspected the effect he obtained through the passionate energy with which he used this, like all other means, to keep Cordelia on the pinnacle of passion.
Apart from complete information on his relationship to Cordelia, the diary also contained, interspersed here and there, several small descriptions. Wherever these were found there was an ‘NB’ in the margin. These depictions have absolutely nothing to do with Cordelia’s story but have given me a vivid conception of what is meant by an expression he often used, though previously I understood it differently: ‘One ought always to have an extra little line out.’ Had an earlier volume of this diary fallen into my hands, I should probably have come across more of these, which somewhere in the margin he calls ‘actions at a distance’;6 for he himself admits that Cordelia occupied him too much for him really to have time to look about.
Shortly after he had abandoned Cordelia, he received some letters from her which he returned unopened. These were among the letters Cordelia turned over to me. She had herself broken the seal, and so there seems no reason why I should not venture to make a transcript. She has never mentioned their content to me; on the other hand, when she referred to her relationship to Johannes she usually recited a little verse, I believe by Goethe, which seemed to convey a different meaning according to her moods and the difference in delivery these occasioned:
Gehe
Verschmähe
Die Treue,
Die Rene
Kommt nach.7
These letters go as follows:
Johannes!
I do not call you ‘mine’, I realize very well you never have been, and I am punished enough by this thought having once gladdened my soul; and yet I do call you ‘mine’: my seducer, my deceiver, my foe, my murderer, source of my unhappiness, grave of my joy, abyss of my ruin. I call you ‘mine’, and call myself ‘yours’; and as it once flattered your ear, which proudly bent down to my adoration, so shall it now sound like a curse upon you, a curse to all eternity. Don’t expect me to pursue you, or to arm myself with a dagger so as to incite your ridicule! Flee where you will, I am still yours; go to the farthest boundaries of the world, I am still yours; love a hundred others, I am still yours; yes, even in the hour of death I am yours. The very language I use against you must prove I am yours. You have presumed so to deceive a human being that you have become everything to me; so now will I place all my pleasure in being your slave – yours, yours, yours is what I am, your curse.
Your Cordelia
There was a rich man who had many cattle, large and small; there was a poor little girl, she had only a single lamb, which ate from her hand and drank from her cup.8 You were the rich man, rich in all the earth’s splendour, I was the poor girl who owned only my love. You took it, you rejoiced in it; then desire beckoned to you and you sacrificed the little I owned; of your own you could sacrifice nothing. There was a rich man who owned many cattle, large and small; there was a poor little girl who had only her love.
Your Cordelia
Johannes!
Is there no hope at all, then? Will your love never reawaken? I know you have loved me, even if I do not know what makes me sure of that. I will wait, however heavy time hangs, I will wait, wait until you are weary of loving others; your love will then rise up again from its grave, I will love you as always, thank you as always, as before, oh Johannes, as before! Johannes! This cold-hearted callousness against me, is it your true nature? Was your love, your ample heart just a lie and a falsehood? Are you now yourself again, then? Be patient with my love, forgive me for continuing to love you; I know my love is a burden to you, but there will be a time when you return to your Cordelia. Your Cordelia! Hear that entreaty! Your Cordelia, your Cordelia.
Your Cordelia
If Cordelia did not possess the compass she admired in her Johannes, one still sees clearly that she was not without modal variation. Each of her letters clearly bears the stamp of her mood, even though to some extent she lacked lucidity in her presentation. This is especially the case in the second letter, where one suspects rather than grasps her meaning, but to me it is this imperfection that makes it so touching.
April 4th
Caution, my beautiful unknown! Caution! Stepping out of a coach is not so simple a matter. Sometimes it is a decisive step. I might lend you a short story by Tieck in which you would see how a lady, on dismounting from her horse, got so caught up in a tangle that this step became decisive for her whole life.9 Also, the steps on coaches are usually so badly placed that one has almost to forget about being graceful and risk a desperate lunge into the arms of coachman and footman. Yes, coachman and footman have the best of it! I really think I shall seek employment as a footman in a house where there are young girls; a servant easily becomes privy to the secrets of a little girl like that. But for God’s sake, don’t jump, I beg you! After all, it’s dark; I shan’t disturb you; I shall just place myself under this street-lamp so you can’t see me, and one is always only bashful, after all, to the extent one is seen, but then again, one is always only seen to the extent one sees. So for the sake of the footman who may not be able to withstand such a leap, for the sake of the silk dress, likewise the lace edging, for my sake, let this charming little foot, whose slenderness I have already admired, let it venture out into the world, dare to depend on it, it will surely find a footing, and should you tremble an instant because it seems as though it sought in vain for something to rest upon, yes, should you tremble even after it has found it, then quickly bring the other foot too, for who would be so cruel as to leave you in that position, who so ungracious, so slow to keep up with the revelation of beauty? Or is it, again, some intruder you fear? Hardly the servant, or me, for I have already seen the little foot, and since I am a natural scientist I have learned from Cuvier10 how to draw definite conclusions from such details. Hurry then! How this anxiety enhances your beauty! Still, anxiety in itself is not beautiful; it is so only when one sees at the same time the energy that overcomes it. How firmly, now, this little foot stands. I have noticed that girls with small feet generally stand more firmly than the more pedestrian, large-footed ones. – Now who would have thought it? It flies in the face of all experience, one runs not nearly so great a risk of one’s dress being caught up when climbing out as when one jumps out. But then it is always risky for young girls to ride in a coach, in the end they come to stay there. The lace and the ribbons are lost and that’s the end of that. No one has seen anything; to be sure a dark figure appears, wrapped to the eyes in a cloak. One cannot see where he has come from, the light shines right in one’s eyes; he passes you by in a moment, when you are about to enter the street-door. Just at the critical second, a sidelong glance seizes upon its object. You blush, your bosom becomes too full to be able to lighten itself in a single breath; there is exasperation in your glance, a proud contempt; there is a prayer, a tear in your eye; both are equally beautiful, I accept both equally as my due, for I can be just as well the one thing as the other. But I’m mischievous all the same – what is the number of the house? What do I see? A window-display of trinkets; my beautiful unknown, perhaps it is outrageous of me, but I follow the path of light … She has forgotten what has passed. Ah, yes, when one is seventeen, when one goes shopping at that happy age, when the thought of every large or small object one lays one’s hand on gives an inexpressible joy, one forgets easily. She still hasn’t seen me. I am standing by myself, far away on the other side of the counter. A mirror hangs on the wall opposite. She doesn’t think of it, but it thinks of her. How true to her image it is, as a humble slave who shows his devotion by being faithful, a slave who, although she means something to him, means nothing to her, who although he dares to grasp her, does not dare to comprehend her. That unhappy mirror, which can capture her image but not her; that unhappy mirror, which cannot hide her image in its secret depths, hide it from the whole world, but must on the contrary betray it to others, as now to me. What agony if a man were so made. And yet aren’t there many who are made thus, who own nothing except in the instant when they show it to others, who grasp the surface only, not the substance, who lose everything when the substance itself wants to appear, as this mirror would lose her image if she were, with a single breath, to betray her heart to it? And if a man could not possess a memory image even at the moment of presence, he would always want to be at a distance from the beauty, not too near for the earthly eye to see how beautiful is that which he holds in his close embrace and is lost to the outward eye, though he can always regain it by putting it at a distance, but which he can then also have before him in his mind’s eye when he cannot see the object itself because it is too near, when lips are closed on lips… Yet, how beautiful she is! Poor mirror, it must be agony! It is well that you know no jealousy. Her head is a perfect oval; she inclines it a little forward, thus heightening her forehead, which rises pure and proud without any phrenologist’s signs of intellect. Her dark hair closes softly and gently about her brow. Her face is like a fruit, every transition fully rounded. Her skin is transparent, like velvet to the touch, I can feel it with my eyes. Her eyes – well, yes, I haven’t seen them yet, they are hidden behind lids armed with silken fringes curving like hooks, dangerous to whoever would meet her glance. She has a Madonna head, pure and innocent in cast; and like the Madonna she is bending forward, but she is not lost in contemplation of the One. There is a variation of expression in her face. What she is considering is the manifold, the multiplicity of things over which worldly pomp and splendour casts its reflection. She pulls off her glove to show the mirror and myself a right hand, white and shapely as an antique, without adornment, not even a flat gold ring on her fourth finger – Bravo! She looks up, and how changed everything is, yet the same, the forehead a little less high, the oval of her face a little less regular but more alive. She is talking with the salesman, she is cheerful, joyful, talkative. She has already chosen one, two, three things; she picks up a fourth and holds it in her hand, again she looks down; she asks what it costs; she puts it to one side under her glove, it must surely be a secret, intended for – a sweetheart? But then she is not engaged. Alas, there are many who are not engaged and yet have a sweetheart, many who are engaged and still have no sweetheart … Ought I to give her up? Ought I to leave her undisturbed in her joy? … She wants to pay, but she has lost her purse … presumably she mentions her address, I don’t want to hear that, I don’t want to deprive myself of the surprise; I shall no doubt meet her again in life, I shall recognize her, and maybe she will also recognize me, my sidelong glance is not so easily forgotten. When I meet her by surprise in unexpected surroundings, that’s when her turn will come. If she does not recognize me, if her glance does not immediately convince me of that, then I can always get a chance to see her from the side. I promise she shall remember the situation. No impatience, no greediness, everything will be savoured in slow draughts; she is earmarked and she will no doubt be brought in.
the 5th
I rather like that! Alone in the evening on Østergade. Yes, all right, I can see the footman following you; don’t suppose I think so ill of you that you would go out all alone; don’t think I am so inexperienced that in my survey of the situation I have not observed that demure figure straightaway. But why in such a hurry? One is a little anxious after all; one feels a pounding of the heart, due not to an impatient longing to get home, but to an impatient fear which courses through one’s entire body with its sweet unrest, and hence the rapid tempo of the feet. – But still it is gorgeous, priceless to walk alone like this – with the footman behind … ‘One is sixteen years old, one has read, that is to say, read romances. While happening to pass through one’s brothers’ room one has picked up a piece of a conversation between them and their friends, something about Østergade. Later one has whisked through on several occasions to obtain a little more information if possible. To no avail! As a big, grown-up girl, shouldn’t one know something about the world? If only it were possible to go out without the servant behind. Thanks, no! Mother and father would make peculiar faces, and also, what excuse could one give? There’s no chance of it when one is going to a party, it would be a little too early; I heard August say nine to ten o’clock. Going home it’s too late, and then usually you must have an escort to drag along. Thursday evening, on the way back from the theatre, would be a splendid opportunity, but then one always has to drive in the coach and have Mrs Thomsen and her dear cousins packed in too; if one drove alone, one could let down the window and look about a bit. Still, the unexpected often occurs. Today mother said to me, “You’ll never get that sewing finished for your father’s birthday; to be quite undisturbed, you may go to your Aunt Jette’s and stay until tea-time, then Jens can fetch you!” Really it wasn’t such a very pleasing message, since it is extremely boring at Aunt Jette’s; but then I will walk home alone at nine with the servant. When Jens comes, he will have to wait until a quarter to ten, and then off we go. Only I may meet my Mr Broder or Mr August – that mightn’t be such a good idea, presumably I’d be escorted home – thanks, but I prefer to be free, freedom – but if I could catch sight of them so that they didn’t see me’ … Now then, my little lady, what is it you see, and what do you think I see? In the first place, the little cap you have on suits you splendidly, and harmonizes totally with your hurrying. It is not a hat, nor is it a bonnet, more like a kind of hood. But you can’t possibly have had that on when you went out this morning. Could the servant have brought it, or have you borrowed it from Aunt Jette? – Maybe you are incognito. One shouldn’t lower the veil completely if one is to make observations. Or perhaps it isn’t a veil but just a broad piece of lace? In the dark it is impossible to decide. Whatever it is, it hides the upper part of the face. The chin is really pretty, a little too pointed; the mouth small, open; that’s because you are walking too energetically. The teeth – white as snow. That’s how it should be. Teeth are of the greatest importance, they are a lifeguard hiding behind the seductive softness of the lips. The cheeks glow with health. – If one inclines one’s head a little to the side it might be possible to catch a glimpse under the veil or lace. Watch out! A look like that from below is more dangerous than one from straight ahead. It’s like fencing, and what weapon so sharp, so sudden in its movement, and hence so deceptive, as the eye? One points high quart, as the fencer says, and thrusts in second; the quicker the thrust follows the pointing the better. The moment of targetting is an indescribable now. The opponent feels as though slashed, yes, indeed he is struck, but in quite a different place than he thought … indefatigably, on she goes without fear and without harm. Watch out! There’s a man coming over there; lower the veil, don’t let his profane glance defile you. You’ve no idea – it might be impossible for you to forget for a long time the disgusting dread with which it touched you. – You do not notice, as I did, that he has sized up the situation. – The servant has been picked out as the nearest object. Yes, now you see the consequences of going out alone with a servant. The servant has fallen down. Really, it’s quite laughable, but what will you do now? Going back and helping him to his feet is impossible, to go on with a mud-stained servant is disagreeable, to go alone is risky. Watch out! the monster approaches … You don’t answer me. Just look at me, is there anything in my appearance that frightens you? I make no impression at all on you, I look like a good-natured person from quite another world. There is nothing in my speech to disturb you, nothing to remind you of the situation, no slightest movement of mine that comes too near you. You are still a little anxious; you still haven’t forgotten that sinister figure’s approach. You conceive a certain kindness towards me, the awkwardness that keeps me from looking at you gives you the upper hand. That pleases you and makes you feel safe. You might almost be tempted to poke a little fun at me. I wager that at this moment you would have the courage to take me by the arm, if it occurred to you … So it’s in Stormgade you live. You drop me a cold and hasty curtsy. Have I deserved that, I who have helped you out of the whole unpleasantness? You are sorry, you return, you thank me for my civility, offer me your hand – why do you turn pale? Isn’t my voice unchanged, my bearing the same, my eye as quiet and calm? This handclasp? Can a handclasp mean anything? Yes, much, very much, my little miss. Within a fortnight I shall explain everything to you; until then you must remain in the contradiction: I am a good-natured person who came like a knight to the aid of a young girl, and I can also press your hand in a way that is anything but good-natured. –
April 7th
‘On Monday, then, one o’clock at the exhibition.’ Very good, I shall have the honour of turning up at a quarter to one. A little rendezvous. Last Saturday I finally cut the matter short and decided to call on my much-travelled friend, Adolph Bruun. To that end I set out at about seven in the evening for Vestergade, where someone had told me he was living. However, he was not there, not even on the third floor, which I reached quite out of breath. As I was about to descend, my ear caught the sound of a melodious feminine voice saying, ‘On Monday, then, one o’clock at the exhibition; the others are all out then, but you know I never dare see you at home.’ The invitation was not to me but to a young man who was out of the door in a flash, and so quickly that not even my eye, let alone my legs, could catch him. Why is there no gaslight on the stairway? At least I might have seen whether it was worthwhile being so punctual. Still, if there had been a gaslight I might not have heard. What exists is the rational, after all;11 I am and remain an optimist … Now, which one is her? The exhibition is swarming with girls, to quote Donna Anna.12 It is exactly a quarter to one. My beautiful unknown! Would that your intended were in every way as punctual as I; or perhaps you would rather he never came a quarter of an hour too early; as you will, I am in every way at your service … Bewitching enchantress, witch or fairy, let your cloud vanish, reveal yourself, you are presumably already here, but invisible to me; betray yourself, for I hardly dare expect any other kind of revelation. Could there perhaps be several up here on the same errand as she? Quite possibly. Who knows the ways of man, even when he goes to exhibitions? – But there comes a young girl in the front room, hurrying, faster than a bad conscience after a sinner. She forgets to hand over her ticket and the man in red stops her. Heaven preserve us! What a rush she’s in! It must be her. Why such premature impetuosity? It still isn’t one o’clock. Do but remember that you are to meet the beloved. Is it no matter at all how one looks on such occasions, or is this what it means to put one’s best foot forward? When such an innocent young hot-head keeps a tryst, she tackles the matter like a madwoman. She is all of a flutter. As for me, I sit here comfortably in my chair, contemplating a delightful pastoral landscape … She’s a devil’s child, she storms through all the rooms. You must learn to hide your eagerness a little; remember for example what was said to Lisbeth: ‘Does it become a young girl to let it be seen how eager she is to pair?’13 But of course your meeting is one of those innocent ones … Lovers usually consider a tryst a most beautiful moment. I myself still remember as clearly as if it were yesterday the first time I hastened to the appointed place, with a heart as full as it was ignorant of the joy awaiting me, the first time I knocked three times, the first time the window was opened, the first time the little door was opened by the invisible hand of a girl who concealed herself in opening it, the first time I hid a girl under my cloak in the light summer night. But much illusion is blended with this judgement. The dispassionate third party does not always find the lovers most beautiful at this moment. I have been witness to trysts where, although the girl was charming and the man handsome, the whole impression was well-nigh disgusting and the meeting itself far from beautiful, though no doubt it seemed so to the lovers. In a way one gains something by becoming more experienced; for although one loses the sweet unrest of impatient longing, one gains a preparedness to make the moment really beautiful. It can irritate me to see a man given such an opportunity so bewildered that love alone is enough to give him delirium tremens. But what does the farmer know of cucumber salad? Instead of being level-headed enough to enjoy her disquiet, to allow it to enflame her beauty and kindle it, he produces only a charmless confusion, and yet he goes joyfully home imagining it to have been something glorious … But what the devil has become of the fellow? It’s already two o’clock. What fine types, these sweethearts! A scoundrel like that lets a young girl wait for him! Not me, I’m a trustworthy person of quite different calibre! Maybe it would be best to speak to her now, since she is passing by for the fifth time. ‘Pardon my boldness, fair young lady. You are no doubt looking for your family up here. You have hurried past me several times, and as my eyes followed you, I noticed you always stop in the next but last room; perhaps you are unaware that there is still another room further in. Perhaps you will find them there.’ She curtsies to me; it suits her well. The occasion is favourable. I am glad the person has not come; one always fishes best in troubled waters. When a young girl is emotionally disturbed, one can successfully venture that which would otherwise be ill-starred. I have just bowed to her as politely and distantly as possible. I sit down again in my chair, look at my landscape, and watch her. To follow her straightaway would be too risky; she might find me intrusive and then immediately be on her guard. Just now she believes I addressed her out of sympathy, I am in her good books. – I know quite well there’s not a soul in the inner room. Solitude will have a beneficial effect upon her. So long as she sees many people around her she is agitated; if she is alone she will be calm. Quite right, she is still in there. After a while I shall approach her en passant; I have earned the right to make a remark, she owes me at least a greeting … She’s sitting. Poor girl, she looks so sad. She has been crying, I think, or at least has tears in her eyes. It is outrageous making a girl like that cry. But be calm, you shall be avenged, I shall avenge you, he will learn what it means to keep her waiting. – How beautiful she is, now that the various squalls have subsided and she rests in a single mood. Her being is a harmony of sadness and pain. She really is captivating. She sits there in travelling clothes, yet it wasn’t she who was to travel, she put them on so as to journey out in search of joy; now it is a sign of her pain, for she is like someone from whom gladness departs. She looks out, as though constantly taking leave of the loved one. Let him go! – The situation is favourable, the moment beckons. The thing now is to express myself in a way that makes it seem that I believed she was looking for her family or a party of friends up here, and yet warmly enough, too, for every word to be appropriate to her feelings, then I shall have a chance to worm my way into her thoughts. – Now devil take the scoundrel! If there isn’t a man arriving who can only be him. No, take me for a bungler, just as I’ve got the situation as I wanted it. Yes, yes, something can surely be salvaged from it. I must touch upon their relationship, have myself placed in the situation. When she sees me she’ll have to smile at my believing she was looking for someone quite different. That smile makes me her accomplice, which is always something. – A thousand thanks my child, that smile is worth much more to me than you think; it is the beginning, and the beginning is always the hardest. Now we are acquainted, and our acquaintance is based upon a piquant situation; it is enough to be going on with. You will hardly stay here more than an hour; within two hours I shall know who you are – why else do you think the police keep census rolls?
the 9th
Have I gone blind? Has the soul’s inner eye lost its power? I have seen her, but it’s as if I’d seen a heavenly revelation, so completely has her image vanished from me again. Vainly do I call upon all the strength of my soul to conjure forth this image. If ever I saw her again I’d recognize her immediately even if she stood among a hundred. Now she has run away, and my mind’s eye seeks in vain to overtake her with its longing. – I was walking along Langelinie,14 to all appearances unconcerned and without regard to my surroundings, although my watchful glance let nothing go unobserved, when my eye fell on her. It fixed itself unwaveringly upon her, it no longer obeyed its master’s will. It was impossible for me to undertake any movement with it and use it to survey the object I would behold; I did not see, I stared. Like a fencer who freezes in his pass, so was my eye fixed, petrified in the direction it had taken. It was impossible for me to look down, impossible to withdraw my glance, impossible for me to see, because I saw far too much. The only thing I can remember is that she wore a green cape, that’s all. One can call that catching the cloud instead of Juno;15 she has slipped away from me like Joseph from Potiphar’s wife and has left only her cape behind.16 She was accompanied by an oldish lady, who appeared to be her mother. Her I can describe from top to toe, even though I never really saw her but at most took her in en passant. So it goes. The girl made an impression upon me and I have forgotten her. The other has made no impression and I can remember her.
the 11th
The same contradiction still blinds my soul. I know I have seen her, but I know also I have forgotten it again, in a way that the residue of memory left over gives no refreshment. With a restlessness and vehemence that put my wellbeing at risk, my soul demands this image, yet it does not appear; I could tear out my eyes to punish them for their forgetfulness. When I have finished impatiently raging, when I become calm, it is as if intimation and memory wove a picture which still cannot take definite shape because I cannot get it to stand still all at once. It is like a pattern in a fine texture; the pattern is lighter than the ground and by itself it is invisible because it is too light. – This is a curious state to be in, yet it has its pleasant side both in itself and also because it proves to me that I am still young. It can also teach me something else, namely that I’m always seeking my prey among young girls, not among young wives. A wife has less of nature in her, more coquetry; the relationship with her is not beautiful, not interesting, but piquant, and the piquant is always what comes last. I had not expected to be able to taste again the first fruits of infatuation. I am over my ears in love, I have got what swimmers call a ducking; no wonder I am a little confused. So much the better, so much the more I promise myself from this relationship.
the 14th
I hardly recognize myself. My mind rages like a sea tossed by the storms of passion. If another could see my soul in this condition, it would look as if, like a boat, it bored its bow down in the sea, as if with its fearful speed it had to plunge into the depths of the abyss. He does not see that high up on the mast there sits a sailor on lookout. Rage, you wild forces, stir your powers of passion! Even if the crashing of your waves hurls the foam to the skies, you will still not manage to pile up over my head; I sit serene as the King of the Cliff.17
I can almost not find my footing, like a water-bird I seek in vain to alight on my mind’s turbulent sea. And yet such turbulence is my element, I build upon it, just as Alcedo ispida builds its nest on the sea.18
Turkey cocks puff themselves up when they see red; it’s the same with me when I see green, every time I see a green cape; and since my eyes often deceive me, all my expectations are sometimes dashed on seeing a porter from Frederiks Hospital.19
the 20th
One has to restrict oneself, that is a main condition of all enjoyment. It doesn’t seem I can expect so soon to get any information about the girl who fills my soul and thoughts so much that they keep her loss alive. Now I shall stay quite calm, for this state I’m in, this obscure and undefined but intense unrest, has a sweet side nevertheless. I have always loved, on a moonlit night, to lie out in a boat on one of our lovely lakes. I take in the sails and the oars, remove the rudder, stretch out full-length, and gaze up into the vault of heaven. When the boat rocks on the breast of the waves, when the clouds scud before the strong wind so that the moon vanishes for a moment and then reappears, I find rest in this unrest. The motion of the waves lulls me, their lapping against the boat is a monotonous cradle-song. The swift flight of the clouds, the shifting light and shadow, intoxicate me so that I am in a waking dream. Thus now, too, I lay myself out, take in the sails and rudder; longing and impatient expectation toss me about in their arms; longing and expectation become more and more quiet, more and more blissful, they fondle me like a child; the heaven of hope arches over me; her image floats by me like the moon’s, indistinct, blinding me now with its light, now with its shadow. How enjoyable thus to splash up and down on a stormy lake – how enjoyable to be stirred in oneself.
the 21st
The days go by and I am no nearer. Young girls give me pleasure more than ever and still I have no desire to enjoy them. I seek her everywhere. It often makes me unreasonable, blurs my vision, enervates my pleasure. That beautiful season is soon coming now when, in public life in the streets and lanes, one buys up these small favours which, in the winter’s social life, one can pay dearly enough for, for although there is much a young girl can forget, she cannot forget a situation. Social life does indeed bring one in contact with the fair sex, but there is no artistry in starting an affair there. In social life every young girl is armed, the occasion is threadbare and repeated over and over again; she gets no voluptuous thrill. In the street she is on the open sea and everything therefore seems more intense; it is as if there were mystery in everything. I would give a hundred dollars for a smile from a young girl in a street situation, but not even ten for a handclasp at a party; these are currencies of quite different kinds. Once the affair is under way, you can then seek out the person in question at parties. You have a secret communication with her that tempts you, and it is the most effective stimulant I know. She dares not speak of it and yet she thinks of it; she doesn’t know if you’ve forgotten it or not; you lead her astray in one way and then another. Probably I shan’t collect much this year; this girl preoccupies me too much. In a sense my returns will be poor; but then I have the prospect of the big prize.
Damned chance! I have never cursed you for appearing, I curse you because you don’t appear at all. Or is this perhaps some new invention of yours, you unfathomable being, barren mother of all that exists, sole remnant of that time when necessity gave birth to freedom, when freedom let itself be duped back into its mother’s womb? Damned chance! You, my only confidant, the only being I consider worthy to be my ally and my enemy, always the same however different, always unfathomable, always a riddle! You, whom I love with all the sympathy in my soul, in whose image I form myself, why do you not appear? I am not begging, I do not humbly entreat you to appear in this way or that; such worship would be idolatry, not well-pleasing to you. I challenge you to battle: why don’t you appear? Or has the turbulence in the world’s structure come to a standstill? Is your riddle solved, so that you too have plunged into the ocean of eternity? Terrible thought, for then the world has come to a standstill from boredom! Damned chance! I am waiting for you. I do not wish to defeat you with principles, or with what foolish people call character; no, I want to be your poet! I’ll not be a poet for others. Show yourself! I compose you, I consume my own verse and it is my sustenance. Or do you find me unworthy? As a bayadère dances to the honour of God,20 I have dedicated myself to your service; light, thinly clad, supple, unarmed, I renounce everything, I own nothing, I have no mind to own anything, I love nothing, I have nothing to lose; but haven’t I then become more worthy of you, you who long ago must have wearied of depriving people of what they loved, wearied of their cowardly sighs and prayers? Take me by surprise, I am ready, no stakes, let us fight for honour. Show me her, show me a possibility that looks like an impossibility; show me her in the shadows of the underworld, I shall fetch her up.21 Let her hate me, despise me, be indifferent to me, love another, I’m not afraid; but stir up the waters, break your silence. It’s cheap of you to starve me in this way, you who after all fancy yourself stronger than I.
May 6th
Spring is at hand. Everything is in bloom, including the young girls. Capes are laid aside, and presumably my green one has been hung up. That’s what comes of making a girl’s acquaintance in the street instead of at a party, where one finds out immediately what she is called, what family she is from, where she lives, whether she is engaged. This last is extremely important for all steadfast and soberminded suitors, to whom it would never occur to fall in love with a girl who was engaged. Such an easy-paced ambler would be in deadly peril if he were in my place; he would be completely devastated if his efforts to acquire information were crowned with success, with the bonus that she was engaged. But that doesn’t worry me much. An engaged girl is only a comic difficulty. I have no fear either of comic or of tragic difficulties; all I fear are the tediously long-drawn-out ones. So far I haven’t secured a single piece of information, in spite of surely leaving no stone unturned and often feeling the truth of the poet’s words:
Nox et hiems longaeque viae, saevique dolores
mollibus his castris, et labor omnis inest.22
Perhaps after all she doesn’t live here in town, perhaps she is from the country, perhaps, perhaps – I could go crazy over all these perhapses, and the more crazy I become, the more perhapses. I always have money in readiness for a journey. In vain I look for her at the theatre, at concerts, ballets, and on promenades. That pleases me in a way; a young girl who takes too much part in such entertainments is generally not worth conquering; she usually lacks that originality which for me is a sine qua non. One can more easily imagine finding a Preciosa23 among the gypsies than in the cheap dancing-halls where young girls are put up for sale – in all innocence, of course, Lord preserve us, what else?
the 12th
Yes, my child, why didn’t you stay standing quite still at the door? There is nothing at all reprehensible about a young girl’s stopping in a doorway when it’s raining. I do the same sometimes when I have no umbrella, sometimes even when I have, as for instance now. Besides, I could mention a number of respectable ladies who have not hesitated to do so. You have only to stand quietly, turn your back to the street, so that passers-by can’t tell whether you are standing there or are about to go into the house. On the other hand, it is unwise to hide oneself behind the door when it is half open, mainly because of the consequences; for the more you are hidden, the more unpleasant it is to be surprised. But if you do hide, you should stand quite still, committing yourself to the good genie and the custody of all the angels; you should particularly refrain from peeping out – to see if it has stopped raining. If you want to find out, then step out boldly and look earnestly up into the sky. But if you poke your head out a little curiously, shyly, anxiously, uncertainly, and then hurriedly draw it in again – then every child understands that movement; it’s called playing hide-and-seek. And I, who always take part, I should of course hold back and not answer when asked … Don’t think I’m getting any injurious ideas, you hadn’t the slightest intention when you poked out your head, it was the most innocent thing in the world. In return you mustn’t get ideas about me, my good name and reputation won’t stand it. Besides, it was you who started it. I advise you never to tell anyone of this; you were in the wrong. What else can I do other than what any gentleman would – offer you my umbrella? – Where has she got to? Excellent, she has hidden herself in the porter’s doorway. – She is a most charming little girl, merry, pleased. – ‘Do you know anything of a young lady who just a blessed moment ago poked her head out of this doorway, evidently in need of an umbrella? It is she I am looking for, I and my umbrella.’ – You laugh – perhaps you will allow me to send my servant to fetch it tomorrow, or if you ask me to call a carriage – nothing to thank me for, it is only due courtesy. – She is one of the most joyful girls I have seen in a long time, her glance is so childlike and yet so forthright, her nature so charming, so pure, and yet she is curious. – Go in peace, my child, if it were not for a certain green cape, I might have wanted to make a closer acquaintance. – She walks down to Købmagergade. How innocent and trusting, not a sign of prudery. Look how lightly she walks, how gaily she tosses her head – the green cape demands self-denial.
the 15th
Thank you, kind chance, accept my thanks! Straight she was and proud, mysterious and rich in ideas as a spruce, a shoot, a thought, which from deep in the earth sprouts up towards heaven, unexplained and to itself inexplicable, a whole that has no parts. The beech crowns itself, its leaves tell of what has taken place beneath; the spruce has no crown, no history, a mystery to itself – such was she. She was hidden from herself inside herself, she rose up from out of herself, she had a self-contained pride, like the daring flight of the spruce, even though it is fastened to the earth. A sadness poured over her like the cooing of the wood-pigeon, a deep longing that had no want. She was a riddle, who mysteriously possessed her own solution, a secret, and what are all diplomats’ secrets compared with this, an enigma, and what in all the world is so beautiful as the word that solves it? How significant, how pregnant, language is: ‘to solve’ [at løse], what ambiguity it contains, how beautiful and strong in all the combinations where this word appears! As the wealth of the soul is a riddle, as long as the ligature of the tongue is not loosed [løst], and the riddle thereby solved [løst], so is a young girl, too, a riddle. – Thank you, kind chance, accept my thanks! If I had seen her first in winter she’d have been wrapped in that green cape, frozen perhaps and, in her, Nature’s inclemency might have diminished its own beauty. But now, what luck! I saw her first at the most beautiful time of year, in the spring, in the light of late afternoon. True, winter also has its advantages. A brilliantly lit ballroom can indeed be a flattering setting for a young girl in evening dress. But she seldom appears to best advantage here, partly because everything demands it of her, a demand whose effect is disturbing whether she gives in to it or resists, and partly because everything suggests transience and vanity, and evokes an impatience that makes the enjoyment less soothing. At times I would not wish to dispense with the ballroom, I would not forgo its costly luxury, its priceless abundance of youth and beauty, its manifold play of forces; but then it isn’t so much that I enjoy myself as gorge myself in possibility. It is not a single beauty that captivates me but a totality; a dream image floats past, in which all these feminine natures form their own configurations among one another, and all these movements seek something, seek rest in one picture that is not seen.
It was on the path between Nørre- and Østerport,24 about half-past six. The sun had lost its strength, its memory only was preserved in a mild radiance spreading over the landscape. Nature breathed more freely. The lake was calm, smooth as a mirror. The comfortable houses on Blegdammen were reflected in the water, which further out was dark as metal. The path and the buildings on the other side were lit by the faint rays of the sun. The sky was clear and only a single light cloud floated over it unnoticed, best seen by directing your eyes at the lake, over whose shining forehead it vanished from view. Not a leaf moved. – It was her. My eye did not deceive me, even though the green cape had done so. In spite of being prepared now for so long, it was impossible to control a certain excitement, a rising and falling, like the song of the lark that rose and fell in the adjacent fields. She was alone. How she was dressed I have forgotten again, and yet now I have a picture of her. She was alone, preoccupied, evidently not with herself but with her thoughts. She was not thinking, but the quiet pursuit of her thoughts wove a picture of longing before her soul, possessed by presentiment, inexplicably like a young girl’s many sighs. She was at her most beautiful age. A young girl does not develop in the sense that a boy does; she does not grow, she is born. A boy begins straightaway to develop, and it takes a long time; a young girl takes a long time being born and is born full-grown. Therein lies her infinite richness; the moment she is born she is fully grown, but this moment of birth comes late. Therefore she is born twice, the second time when she marries, or, rather, at that moment she ceases being born, that is her moment of birth. It is not just Minerva who sprang fully grown from the head of Jupiter, not just Venus who rose from the ocean in all her beauty; every young girl is like this if her womanliness has not been destroyed by what people call development. She awakens not by degrees but all at once; on the other hand, she dreams all the longer, provided people are not so unreasonable as to arouse her too early. But this dream is an infinite richness. – She was preoccupied not with herself but in herself, and in her this preoccupation was an infinite peace and repose. This is how a young girl is rich; encompassing this richness makes oneself rich. She is rich even though she does not know that she owns anything. She is rich, she is a treasure. A quiet peacefulness brooded over her and a little sadness. She was light to lift up with the eyes, as light as Psyche who was carried off by genies,25 lighter still, for she carried herself. Let theologians dispute on the Virgin Mary’s Assumption; to me it seems not inconceivable, for she no longer belonged to the world; but the lightness of a young girl is incomprehensible and makes mockery of the law of gravity. – She noticed nothing and therefore believed herself unnoticed. I kept my distance and absorbed her image. She was walking slowly, no urgency disturbed her peace or the quiet of her surroundings. By the lake sat a boy fishing, she stopped and looked at the mirror surface of the water and the small river. Although she had not been walking vigorously she sought to cool herself. She loosened a little kerchief fastened about her neck under her shawl. A soft breeze from the lake fanned a bosom as white as snow, yet warm and full. The boy seemed unhappy to have a witness to his catch; he turned to her with a somewhat phlegmatic glance and watched her. He really cut a ridiculous figure, and I cannot blame her for beginning to laugh at him. How youthfully she laughed! If she had been alone with the boy I don’t think she would have been afraid of coming to blows with him. Her eyes were large and radiant; when one looked into them they had a dark lustre which, because of their impenetrability, gave a hint of their infinite depth; they were pure and innocent, gentle and quiet, full of mischief when she smiled. Her nose was finely arched; when I saw her sideways it seemed to merge with the forehead, making it a little shorter and a little more spirited. She walked on, I followed. Happily there were many strollers on the path; while exchanging a few words with some of them, I let her gain a little on me and soon overtook her again, thus relieving myself of the need to keep my distance by walking as slowly as she did. She walked in the direction of Østerport. I wished to see her more closely without being seen. At the corner stood a house from which that might be possible. I knew the family and so needed only to call on them. I hurried past her at a good pace, as though paying her not the slightest heed. I got a good lead on her, greeted the family right and left, and then took possession of the window which overlooked the path. She came, I looked and looked while at the same time keeping up a conversation with the tea party in the drawing-room. The way she walked easily convinced me she hadn’t taken many dancing lessons, yet it had a pride, a natural nobility, but an artlessness. I had another opportunity to see her that I really had not reckoned with. From the window I could not see very far down the path, but I could see a jetty extending out into the lake, and to my great surprise, I discovered her again out there. It occurred to me that perhaps she belonged out here in the country; maybe the family had summer rooms. I was already on the point of regretting my call, for fear that she might turn back so that I would lose sight of her; indeed, the fact that she could be seen at the extreme end of the jetty was a sort of sign that she was disappearing from my view – when she appeared close by. She had gone past the house; in great haste I seized my hat and cane in order, if possible, to walk past and then lag behind her several times again until I found out where she lived – when in my haste I jostled the arm of a lady about to serve tea. A frightful screaming arose. I stood there with my hat and cane and, anxious only to get away and if possible give a twist to the matter to motivate my retreat, I exclaimed with great feeling, ‘Like Cain I shall be banished from the place where this tea was spilled.’ But as if everything conspired against me, the host conceived the desperate idea of following up my remarks and declared, loudly and solemnly, that I was forbidden to leave before I had enjoyed a cup of tea; I myself served the ladies the tea I had deprived them of, and thus made good everything once more. Since I was perfectly certain that my host, under the circumstances, would consider it a courtesy to use force, there was nothing for it but to remain. – She had vanished.
the 16th
How beautiful to be in love, how interesting to know one is in love! See, that’s the difference! The thought of her disappearing a second time can be irritating but in a sense it pleases me. The picture I now have of her wavers indeterminately between being her actual and her ideal image. I am now evoking it, but precisely because either it is real or it has at least its source in reality, it has its own fascination. I feel no impatience, since she must belong here in town, and for me that is enough for the moment. It is this possibility that makes her image properly appear – everything should be savoured in slow draughts. And should I not indeed be relaxed, I who consider myself the darling of the gods, to whom befell the rare good fortune to fall in love again? That, after all, is something no art, no study, can produce; it is a gift. But since I have succeeded in stirring up a love once more, I want at least to see how long it can be kept going. This love I coddle as I never did my first. Such an opportunity is not given every day, it seems, so it is truly a matter of making the most of it. That’s what drives one to despair. Seducing a girl is no art, but it needs a stroke of good fortune to find one worth seducing. – Love has many mysteries, and this first infatuation is also a mystery, even if a minor one – most people who rush into it get engaged or indulge in other foolish pranks, and then it’s all over in the twinkling of an eye and they don’t know what they have conquered or what they have lost. Twice now she has appeared before me and vanished; that means that soon she will appear more frequently. After he has interpreted Pharaoh’s dream, Joseph adds: ‘The fact that you dreamt this twice, means that it will soon come to pass.’26
Still, it would be interesting if one could see a little in advance those forces whose coming on the scene makes for life’s content. She lives her life now in peace and quiet; she has no suspicion I even exist, even less what goes on inside me, less still the certainty with which I survey her future; for my soul demands more and more reality, it is becoming stronger and stronger. When, at a first glance, a girl does not make a deep enough impression upon one to awaken the ideal, then the real thing is usually not particularly desirable. But if she does awaken it, then however experienced one may be, generally one is a little overwhelmed. But for someone uncertain of his hand, his eye and his victory, I would always advise him to chance an attack at this first stage when, just because he is overwhelmed, he is in possession of extraordinary powers. For this being overwhelmed is a curious mixture of sympathy and egoism. On the other hand, he will forgo an enjoyment because he does not enjoy a situation he himself is secretly involved in. What is nicest is hard to decide; what the most interesting, easy. However, it is always good to get as close to the limit as possible. That is the real pleasure and what others enjoy I’ve no idea. The mere possession isn’t much and the means lovers use are generally wretched enough; they even stoop to money, power, influence, sleeping draughts, and so on. But what pleasure can there be in love when it is not the most absolute self-surrender, that is, on the one side? But that as a rule requires spirit, and as a rule these lovers lack that.
the 19th
So her name is Cordelia. Cordelia! That’s a pretty name, which is also important, since often it is very disconcerting to have to use an ugly name in connection with the tenderest attributions. I recognized her a long way off; she was walking with two other girls on her left. The way they walked suggested they would soon be stopping. I stood at the corner and read a poster while keeping a constant eye on my unknown. They took leave of one another. The two had presumably come a little out of their way, since they took an opposite direction. She set off towards my corner. When she had taken a few steps, one of the other girls came running after her, calling loudly enough for me to hear, ‘Cordelia! Cordelia!’. Then the third girl came up; they put their heads together for a private conference, which with my keenest ear I tried in vain to hear. Then all three laughed and went off in rather greater haste in the direction the two had taken before. I followed. They went into a house on the Strand. I waited quite a time since it seemed likely that Cordelia would soon return alone. But that didn’t happen.
Cordelia! That is really an excellent name; it was also the name of the third of King Lear’s daughters, that remarkable girl whose heart did not dwell upon her lips, whose lips were silent when her heart was full.27 So too with my Cordelia. She resembles her, of that I’m certain. But in another sense her heart does dwell upon her lips, not in words but more cordially in the form of a kiss. How full of health her lips were! Never have I seen prettier.
That I am really in love I can tell among other things by the secrecy, almost even to myself, with which I treat this matter. All love is secretive, even faithless love when it has the necessary aesthetic element. It has never occurred to me to want confidants or boast of my affairs. So it was almost gratifying not to get to know her address but a place that she frequents. Besides, perhaps because of this I have come even nearer to my goal. I can begin my investigations without attracting her attention, and from this fixed point it shouldn’t be difficult to gain access to her family. Should that prove difficult, however, eh bien; it’s all in the day’s work; everything I do I do con amore; and thus also I love con amore.
the 20th
Today I got hold of some information about the house she disappeared into. It’s a widow with three blessed daughters. An abundance of information can be got from that source, that’s if they have any. The only difficulty is to understand this information when raised to the third power, since all three talk at once. She is called Cordelia Wahl, and she is the daughter of a Navy captain. He died some years ago, and the mother too. He was a very hard and strict husband. Now she lives in the house with her aunt, her father’s sister, who is said to resemble her brother but is a very respectable woman besides. So far so good, but beyond that they know nothing of this house; they never go there, but Cordelia often visits them. She and the two girls are taking a course at the Royal Kitchens. She usually goes there in the afternoon, sometimes also in the morning, never in the evening. They live a very secluded life.
So that’s the end of the story. There seems to be no bridge by which I can slip over into Cordelia’s house.
She has, then, some conception of life’s pains, of its darker side. Who would have thought it of her? Still, these memories belong to her earlier years; it is a horizon she has lived under without really noticing it. That’s a very good thing; it has saved her womanliness, she is not crippled. It can be useful, on the other hand, for raising her to a higher level, if one knows how to bring it out. All such things usually produce pride, in so far as they don’t crush, and certainly she is far from being crushed.
the 21st
She lives by the ramparts; it isn’t one of the best localities, no neighbours over the way for me to strike up acquaintance with, no public places from which I could make my observations unnoticed. The ramparts themselves are hardly suitable: one is too visible. If one goes down to the street, the other side right by the ramparts, that will hardly do, for no one goes there and it would be too conspicuous, or else one would have to go along the side on which the houses front and then one can’t see anything. It’s a corner house. From the street one can also see the windows to the courtyard, since there is no neighbouring house. That is presumably where her bedroom is.
the 22nd
Today I saw her for the first time at Mrs Jansen’s. I was introduced. She didn’t seem much concerned, or to take much note of me. I behaved as unobtrusively as possible to be the more attentive. She stayed only a moment, she had merely called to fetch the daughters, who were due to go to the Royal Kitchens. While the two Jansen girls were getting on their wraps, we two were alone in the drawing-room, and I made a few cool, almost nonchalant remarks to her, which were returned with undeserved courtesy. Then they left. I could have offered to accompany them, but that would have been enough to mark me down as a ladies’ man, and I am convinced she cannot be won in that way. – I preferred, instead, to leave a moment after they had gone but considerably faster than they and by another street, though still aiming at the Royal Kitchens, so that just as they turned into Store Kongensgade I rushed past them in great haste, without greeting or anything, to their great astonishment.
the 23rd
I have to gain access to the house, and for that I am, in military parlance, at the ready. However, it looks like being a long-drawn-out and difficult affair. Never have I known a family that lived so isolated. There are only herself and her aunt. No brothers, no cousins, not a shred to seize on, no relatives however distant to walk arm-in-arm with. I go about with one arm constantly hanging free; not for the whole world would I take someone by the arm at this time. My arm is a grapnel which must always be kept in readiness; it is designed for unexpected returns, in case far off in the distance there should appear a remote relative or friend, whom from that distance I could take lightly by the arm – then clamber aboard. But in any case, it is wrong of the family to live so isolated; one deprives the poor girl of the opportunity to get to know the world, to say nothing of what other dangerous consequences it may have. It never pays. That goes for courting too. Such isolation may well protect one against petty thievery; in a very hospitable house opportunity makes the thief. But that doesn’t mean much, for from girls of that kind there isn’t much to steal; when they are sixteen their hearts are already completed samplers and I have never cared to write my name where others have already written. It never occurs to me to scratch my name on a window-pane or in an inn, or on a tree or a bench in Frederiksberg Gardens.
the 27th
The more I see her, the more I am convinced she is a very isolated figure. A man should never be that, not even a young one, for since reflection is essential to his development he must have come into contact with others. But for that reason a girl should rather not be interesting, for the interesting always contains a reflection upon itself, just as the interesting in art always gives you the artist too. A young girl who wants to please by being interesting really only succeeds in pleasing herself. This is the aesthetic objection to all forms of coquetry. All the figurative coquetry which forms part of natural motion is another matter, for instance feminine modesty, which is always the most delightful coquetry. An interesting girl may indeed succeed in pleasing, but just as she has herself renounced her femininity, so also are the men she pleases usually correspondingly effeminate. A young girl of this kind really only becomes interesting through her relationship to men. Woman is the weaker sex, and yet for her, much more than for the man, it is essential to be alone with herself in her younger years. She must be sufficient unto herself, but what she is sufficient in and through is an illusion; it is the dowry that Nature has bestowed on her, as with the daughter of a king. But it is just this resting in illusion that isolates her. I have often wondered why nothing is more demoralizing for a young girl than constant association with other young girls. Evidently, it is due to that association being neither one thing nor the other. It disturbs the illusion but doesn’t bring light to it. Woman’s highest destiny is to be a companion to the man, but association with her own sex causes a reflection to focus upon this association, and instead of becoming a companion she becomes a lady’s companion. Language itself has much to say in this respect. The man is called Master but the woman is not called Handmaiden or anything of that sort; no, an essential qualification is used, she is a ‘companion’, not a ‘companioness’. If I were to imagine my ideal of a girl, she would always have to stand alone in the world and therefore be left to herself, but especially not have girl friends. True, the Graces were three, but surely it has never occurred to anyone to imagine them conversing with one another; in their silent trinity they form a beautiful feminine unity. In this respect I might almost be tempted to recommend the return of the lady’s bower, were this constraint not also injurious. It is always most desirable for a young girl to be allowed her freedom but no opportunity offered her. This makes her beautiful and saves her from being interesting. It is in vain to give a young girl who has spent a great deal of time with other girls a maiden’s veil or a bridal veil; on the other hand, a man with enough aesthetic appreciation always finds that a girl who is innocent in a deeper and truer sense is brought to him veiled, even if bridal veils are not in fashion.
She has been brought up strictly; I honour her parents in their graves for that. She lives a very reserved life, and for that I could fall on her aunt’s neck in gratitude. She is not yet acquainted with the pleasures of the world, does not have the chattering surfeit. She is proud, she defies what other young girls find pleasure in. That’s as it should be; it is an untruth which I shall know how to work to my profit. She takes no pleasure in ceremony and fuss as other young girls do; she is a little polemical, but that is necessary for a young girl with her enthusiasms. She lives in the world of imagination. Were she to fall into the wrong hands, it might bring something very unwomanly out of her, precisely because there is so much womanliness in her.
Everywhere our paths cross. Today I met her three times. I know of her every little excursion, when and where I shall come across her. But this knowledge is not used to secure a meeting. On the contrary, I squander on a frightful scale. A meeting which often has cost me several hours’ waiting is thrown away as a trifle. I do not meet her, I merely touch tangentially upon the periphery of her existence. If I know she is going to Mrs Jansen’s I prefer not to arrive there at the same time, unless it is important for me to carry out some particular observation. I prefer arriving a little early at Mrs Jansen’s, and then if possible meeting her at the door as she is coming and I am leaving, or on the steps where I run unheedingly past her. This is the first net she must be spun into. I do not stop her on the street, or I might exchange a greeting but always keep my distance. She must certainly be struck by our continual encounters; no doubt she notices that a new body has appeared on her horizon, whose movement in a curiously undisturbing way has a disturbing effect on her own, but of the law governing this movement she has no idea. To look for its point of attraction her inclination is rather to look right and left; that she is herself that point she is no more the wiser than her polar opposite. With her it is as with those with whom I associate in general, they believe I have a multiplicity of affairs; I am continually on the go and say, like Figaro, ‘One, two, three, four intrigues at once, that’s my delight.’ I must get to know her first and her whole state of mind before beginning my assault. Most men enjoy a young girl as they do a glass of champagne, in a single frothing moment; oh, yes! that’s really nice, and with many young girls it’s no doubt the most one can make of it. But here there is more. If the individual is too frail to stand clarity and transparency, well then, one enjoys obscurity, but she can obviously stand it. The more surrender one can bring into love, the more interesting it becomes. This momentary pleasure is a case of rape, if not in an outward sense at least spiritually, and in rape there is only an imaginary pleasure; it is like a stolen kiss, something with no substance behind it. No, when one brings matters to the point where a girl has just one task to accomplish for her freedom, to surrender herself, when she feels her whole bliss depends on that, when she almost begs to submit and yet is free, then for the first time there is enjoyment, but it always depends on a spiritual influence.
Cordelia! What a glorious name. I sit at home and practise it like a parrot. I say ‘Cordelia, Cordelia, my Cordelia, my own Cordelia’. I can scarcely forbear smiling at the thought of the routine with which I will come, at a decisive moment, to utter these words. One should always make preliminary studies, everything must be properly prepared. It is no wonder that the poets always portray this intimate moment, this beautiful moment, when the lovers, not content with being sprinkled (sure enough, there are many who never get further), but descending into love’s ocean divest themselves of the old person and climb up from this baptism, only now, for the first time, properly knowing each other as old acquaintances though only an instant old. For a young girl this is always the most beautiful moment, and properly to savour it one should always be a little higher, so that one is not only the one being baptized but also the priest. A little irony makes this moment’s second moment one of the most interesting; it is a spiritual undressing. One must be poet enough not to disturb the ceremony yet the joker must always be sitting in ambush.
June 2nd
She is proud; I have seen that for a long time. When she sits together with the three Jansens she talks very little, their chatter obviously bores her, and certainly the smile on her lips seems to indicate that. I am counting on that smile. – At other times she can surrender herself to an almost boyish wildness, to the great surprise of the Jansens. For me it is not inexplicable when I consider her childhood. She had only one brother, who was a year older. She knew only her father and brother, had been a witness to serious scenes which produce a distaste in general for jabber. Her father and mother had not lived happily together; what usually beckons, more or less clearly or vaguely, to a young girl does not beckon to her. She may possibly be puzzled about what it means to be a young girl. Perhaps at times she wished she were not a girl but a man.
She has imagination, soul, passion, in short, all substantial qualities, but not in a subjectively reflected form. A chance occurrence convinced me of that today. I gathered from Jansen & Co. that she did not play the piano, it is against her aunt’s principles. I have always regretted that attitude, for music is always a good avenue for communicating with a young girl, if one takes care, be it noted, not to pose as a connoisseur. Today I went to Mrs Jansen’s. I had half opened the door without knocking, an impertinence that has often stood me in good stead, and which, when necessary, I remedy with a bit of ridicule by knocking on the open door. She sat alone at the piano – she seemed to be playing on the sly (it was a little Swedish melody) – she was not an accomplished player, she became impatient, but then gentler sounds came again. I closed the door and stood outside, listening to the change in her moods; there was sometimes a passion in her playing which reminds one of the maiden Mittelil,28 who struck the golden harp with such vigour that milk gushed from her breasts. – There was something melancholy but also something dithyrambic in her execution. – I might have rushed in, seized the moment – that would have been foolish. – Memory is not just a preservative but also a means of enhancement; what is permeated by memory seems doubled. – In books, especially in psalters, one often finds a little flower – some beautiful moment has furnished the occasion for preserving it, and yet the memory is even more beautiful. She is evidently concealing the fact that she plays, or perhaps she plays only this little Swedish melody – has it perhaps a special interest for her? All this I do not know, but the incident is for that reason very important to me. Whenever I can talk more confidentially with her, I shall lead her quite secretly to this point and let her fall into this trap.
June 3rd
I still cannot decide how she is to be understood. I wait therefore as quietly, as inconspicuously – yes, as a soldier in a cordon of scouts who throws himself to the ground to listen for the most distant sound of an approaching enemy. I do not really exist for her, not in the sense of a negative relationship, but of no relationship at all. Still I have not dared any experiment. To see her and love her were the same – that’s what it says in romances – yes, it is true enough, if love had no dialectic; but what does one really learn about love from romances? Sheer lies that help to shorten the task.
When I think now, with the information I have gained, back upon the impression the first meeting made upon me, I’d say that my ideas about her have changed, but as much to her advantage as to mine. It isn’t quite the order of the day for a young girl to go out so much alone or for a young girl to be so self-absorbed. She was tested according to my strict critique and found: delightful. But delight is a very fleeting factor which vanishes like yesterday when that day is gone. I had not imagined her in the setting in which she lived, least of all so unreflectingly familiar with life’s storms.
I wonder how it is with her emotions. She has certainly never been in love, her spirit is too free-soaring for that; least of all is she one of those virgins experienced in theory who, well before the time, can so fluently imagine being in the arms of a loved one. The real-life figures she has met with have been less than such as to confuse her about the relation of dreams to reality. Her soul is still nourished by the divine ambrosia of ideals. But the ideal that floats before her is hardly a shepherdess or a heroine in a romance, a mistress; it is a Jeanne d’Arc or some such.
The question is always whether her femininity is strong enough to reflect itself; or whether it is only to be enjoyed as beauty and charm. The question is whether one dares to tense the bow more strongly. It is a wonderful thing in itself to find a pure immediate femininity, but risking change gives you the interesting; in which case the best thing is simply to saddle her with a suitor. There is a superstition that this would harm a young girl. – Indeed, if she is a very refined and delicate plant with just the one outstanding quality, charm, the best thing for her would be never to have heard of love. But if this is not the case it is an advantage, and I would never have scruples about getting hold of a suitor if none is at hand. Nor must this suitor be a caricature, for then nothing is gained; he must be a respectable young man, if possible even amiable, but too little for her passion. She looks down on such a man, she acquires a distaste for love, she almost despairs of her own reality when she senses what she might be and sees what reality offers. If this is love, she says, it’s nothing to get excited about. She becomes proud in her love, this pride makes her interesting, it transfigures her being with a higher incarnation; but she is also nearer her downfall – all of which only makes her more and more interesting. However, it is best to check her acquaintances first to see whether there might not be such a suitor. At home there is no opportunity, for next to no one comes there, but she does go out and there could well be one. Getting hold of one before knowing this is always a risky matter. Two individually insignificant suitors could have an injurious effect by their relativity. I must find out now whether there isn’t such a lover sitting in secret, lacking the courage to storm the citadel, a chicken-thief who sees no opportunity in such a cloistered house.
The strategic principle then, the law of all motion in this campaign, is always to involve her in an interesting situation. The interesting is the field on which this conflict must constantly be waged, the potentialities of the interesting are to be exhausted. Unless I am quite mistaken, this is what her whole being is based on, so what I demand is just what she herself offers, indeed, what she demands. Everything depends on spying out what the individual has to offer and what, as a consequence, she demands. My love affairs therefore always have a reality for me, they form an element in my life, a creative period, of which I am fully aware; often they even involve some or other acquired skill. I learned to dance for the first girl I loved; for a little dancer’s sake I learned French. At that time, like all blockheads, I went to the market-place and was frequently made a fool of. Now I go in for pre-market purchasing.29 But perhaps she has exhausted one aspect of the interesting; her secluded life seems to indicate that. Now it is a matter of finding another aspect which seems to her at first sight not at all interesting, but which, just because of this resistance, will become so. For this purpose I select not the poetic but the prosaic. That then is the start. First her femininity is neutralized by prosaic common sense and ridicule, not directly but indirectly, together with what is absolutely neutral: spirit. She comes close to losing the sense of her femininity, but in this condition she cannot stand alone; she throws herself into my arms, not as if I were a lover, no, still quite neutrally. Then her femininity awakens, one coaxes it to its greatest resilience, one lets her come up against something effectively real, she goes beyond it, her femininity attains almost supernatural heights, she belongs to me with a worldly passion.
I did not have to go far. She visits at the home of Baxter, the wholesaler. Here I found not only Cordelia, but also a person just as opportune. Edvard, the son of the house, is head over heels in love with her, one needs only half of one eye to see it in both of his. He is in trade, in his father’s office; a good-looking young man, quite pleasant, rather shy, which last I suspect does not hurt him in her eyes.
Poor Edvard! He simply doesn’t know how to tackle his love. When he knows she is there in the evening he dresses up just for her, puts on his new dark suit just for her, cuff-links just for her, and cuts an almost ridiculous figure among the otherwise commonplace company in the drawing-room. His embarrassment borders on the unbelievable. If it were a pose, Edvard would become a very dangerous rival. Awkwardness has to be used very expertly, but with it one can come a long way. How often have I used it to fool some little virgin! Girls generally speak very harshly about awkward men, yet secretly they like them. A little embarrassment always flatters a young girl’s vanity, she feels her superiority, it is change in the hand. Then when you have lulled them to sleep, you find an occasion on which they are made to believe you are about to die of embarrassment, to show that, far from it, you can quite well shift for yourself. Embarrassment deprives you of your masculine importance, and it is therefore a relatively good way of neutralizing sexual difference. So when they realize that it is only a pose, ashamed they blush inwardly, they are very conscious of having gone too far; it’s as though they had gone on treating a boy too long as a child.
the 7th
We are firm friends now, Edvard and I; there exists a true friendship between us, a beautiful relationship, the like of which has not occurred since the finest days of the Greeks. We soon became intimates when, having embroiled him in diverse observations concerning Cordelia, I got him to confess his secret. When all secrets assemble, it goes without saying that this one can come along too. Poor fellow, he has already sighed for a long time. He dresses up every time she conies, then escorts her home in the evening, his heart throbs at the thought that her arm is resting on his, they walk home gazing at the stars, he rings her bell, she disappears, he despairs – but hopes for next time. He still hasn’t had the courage to set his foot over her threshold, he who has so excellent an opportunity. Although I cannot refrain inwardly from making fun of Edvard, there is something nice about his childlikeness. Although ordinarily I fancy myself fairly experienced in the whole quintessence of the erotic, I have never observed this state in myself, this lovesick fear and trembling, or not to the extent that it removes my self-possession; I know it well enough in other ways, but in my case it tends to make me stronger. One might perhaps say that in that case I’ve never been in love. Perhaps. I have taken Edvard to task, I have encouraged him to rely on my friendship. Tomorrow he is going to take a decisive step: go in person and invite her out. I have led him to the desperate idea of begging me to go with him; I have promised to do so. He takes this to be an extraordinary display of friendship. The occasion is exactly as I would have it: we burst in on her in the drawing-room. Should she have the slightest doubt as to the meaning of my conduct, this will once more confuse everything.
Hitherto I have not been accustomed to preparing myself for my conversation; now it has become a necessity in order to entertain the aunt. I have taken on the honourable task of conversing with her to cover up Edvard’s infatuated advances to Cordelia. The aunt has previously lived in the country, and through a combination of my own painstaking studies in the agronomic literature and the aunt’s reports of her practical experience, I am making significant progress in insight and efficiency.
With the aunt I am totally successful; she considers me a steady, reliable man with whom it is a decided pleasure to have dealings, unlike our dandies. With Cordelia I seem not to be particularly in favour. No doubt her femininity is of too purely innocent a kind for her to require every man to dance attendance on her, yet she is all too aware of the rebel in me.
Sitting thus in the comfortable drawing-room while she, like a good angel, diffuses her charm everywhere, over everyone with whom she comes in contact, over good and evil, I sometimes begin to grow inwardly impatient; I am tempted to rush out from my hiding-place; for though I sit there before everyone’s eyes in the drawing-room, I am really sitting in ambush. I am tempted to grasp her hand, to take the whole girl in my arms, to hide her within me in case someone else should take her from me. Or when Edvard and I leave them in the evening, when in taking leave she offers me her hand, when I hold it in mine I find it difficult sometimes to let the bird slip out of my hand. Patience – quod antea fuit impetus, nunc ratio est30– she must be quite otherwise woven into my web, and then suddenly I let the whole power of love rush forth. We have not spoiled that moment for ourselves with kisses and cuddles, by premature anticipations, for which you can thank me, my Cordelia. I work at developing the contrast, I tense the bow of love to wound the deeper. Like an archer, I slacken the bowstring, tighten it again, listen to its song – it is my martial music – but I do not take aim with it yet, do not even lay the arrow on the string.
When a small number of people often come together in the same room, a kind of tradition soon develops in which each one has his own place, his station; it becomes a picture one can unfold at will, a chart of the terrain. That is also how we unite now to form a picture in the Wahl home. In the evening we drink tea there. Generally the aunt, who until now has been sitting on the sofa, moves over to the little work-table, which place Cordelia in turn vacates. She goes over to the tea-table in front of the sofa, Edvard follows her. I follow the aunt. Edvard tries to be secretive, he wants to whisper, and he usually succeeds so well as to become entirely mute. I make no secrets of my outpourings to the aunt – market prices, a calculation of how many quarts of milk are needed to produce a pound of butter, through the middle-term of cream and the dialectic of the butter-churn; not only do these things form a reality which any young girl can listen to without harm, but, what is far rarer, it is a solid, thorough and edifying conversation, equally improving for mind and heart. I generally sit with my back to the tea-table and the day-dreamings of Edvard and Cordelia. Meanwhile I day-dream with the aunt. And is Nature not great and wise in her productions, is not butter a precious gift, what a glorious result of Nature and art! Certainly the aunt would be unable to hear what passed between Edvard and Cordelia, provided anything passed between them at all; I have promised Edvard that, and I always keep my word. On the other hand, I can easily overhear every word exchanged between them, hear every movement. This is important for me, for one cannot tell how far a desperate man will venture. The most cautious and faint-hearted men sometimes do the most desperate things. Although I thus have nothing at all to do with these two people, I can readily observe from Cordelia that I am constantly an invisible presence between her and Edvard.
Nevertheless it is a peculiar picture we four make. If I were to look for a familiar analogy, I might think of myself as Mephistopheles; but the difficulty is that Edvard is no Faust. If I were to be his Faust, there is the difficulty again that Edvard is no Mephistopheles. Neither am I a Mephistopheles, least of all in Edvard’s eyes. He looks on me as his love’s good genie, and so he should, for at least he can be sure that no one can watch over his love more solicitously than I. I have promised him to engage the aunt in conversation and I discharge that honourable assignment with all seriousness. The aunt practically vanishes before our own eyes in sheer agricultural economics; we go into the kitchen and cellar, up to the attic, look at the chickens, ducks, and geese, and so on. All this offends Cordelia. What I am really after she cannot of course conceive. I become a riddle to her, but not a riddle that tempts her into wanting to guess, one which irritates her, yes makes her indignant. She has a strong sense that her aunt is almost being made fun of, yet her aunt is a very respectable lady who certainly doesn’t deserve that. On the other hand, I do it so well that she is perfectly aware that it would be useless for her to try to put me off. Sometimes I carry things so far that Cordelia secretly has to smile at her aunt. These are necessary exercises. Not that I do this with Cordelia’s connivance; far from it, I would never make her smile at her aunt. My expression remains unalterably earnest, but she cannot keep from smiling. It is the first false teaching; we must teach her to smile ironically; but this smile is aimed almost as much at me as at the aunt, for she simply does not know what to think of me. After all, I might be one of those prematurely old young men; it’s possible; there might be another possibility, and a third, and so on. When she has smiled at her aunt she is indignant with herself, I turn around and, without interrupting the conversation with the aunt, look at her quite seriously, then she smiles at me and the situation.
Our relationship is not the tender and loyal embrace of understanding, not attraction, it is the repulsion of misunderstanding. My relationship to her really amounts to nothing at all. It is purely spiritual, which of course to a young girl is nothing at all. The method I am now following has nevertheless extraordinary advantages. Someone who appears as a gallant arouses mistrust and evokes resistance; I am exempt from all that. I am not watched, on the contrary one would rather look upon me as a trustworthy person fit to watch over the young girl. The method has only one fault, it is slow; but for that reason it can be used, and only to advantage, against individuals in whom the prize is the interesting.
What rejuvenating power a young girl has! Not the freshness of the morning air, not the soughing of the wind, not the coolness of the ocean, not the fragrance of wine and its delicious bouquet – nothing else in the world has this rejuvenating power.
Soon I hope to have brought it to the point of her hating me. I have taken on totally the character of a bachelor. I talk of nothing else but sitting at ease, lying comfortably, having a reliable servant, a friend of good standing I can thoroughly trust when on intimate terms. If I can now get the aunt to abandon her agronomic deliberations I shall introduce her to these and so get a more direct opportunity for irony. A bachelor one may laugh at, indeed have some sympathy for, but a young man not without spirit outrages a young girl by such conduct; the significance of her sex, its beauty and poetry, are all destroyed.
So the days pass; I see her, but I do not talk with her. In her presence I talk with the aunt. Occasionally at night it occurs to me to give my love air. Then, wrapped in my cloak, with my hat pulled down over my eyes, I go and stand outside her window. Her bedroom looks out over the yard, but since the house is on a comer it is visible from the street. Sometimes she stands for a moment at the window, or she opens it, looks up at the stars, unobserved by all but the one whom she would least of all think was aware of her. In these night hours I steal about like a wraith, like a wraith I inhabit the place where she lives. I forget everything, have no plans, no calculations, throw reason overboard, expand and strengthen my chest with deep sighs, an exercise I need in order not to suffer from the system which rules my behaviour. Others are virtuous by day and sin at night; by day I am dissimulation, at night pure desire. If she saw me, if she could look into my soul. If!
If this girl would only understand herself, she would have to admit that I am the man for her. She is too intense, too deeply emotional to be happy in marriage, it would not be enough to let her yield to a common seducer; if she yields to me she salvages the interesting from the shipwreck. In relation to me, she must, as the philosophers say with a play on words, zu Grunde gehen.31
Really, she is tired of listening to Edvard. As always happens, where the interesting is narrowly confined, one discovers all the more. Sometimes she listens to my conversation with the aunt. When I see that, there comes a flash on the far horizon intimating a quite different world, to the surprise of the aunt as well as Cordelia. The aunt sees the lightning but hears nothing, Cordelia hears the voice but sees nothing. The same instant everything is as it was before, the conversation between the aunt and myself proceeds at its uniform pace, like the hooves of post horses in the still of the night; it is accompanied by the samovar’s sad singing. At moments like these the atmosphere in the drawing-room can sometimes be unpleasant, especially for Cordelia. She has no one she can talk with or listen to. If she turns to Edvard, she faces the risk of him doing something foolish in his embarrassment. If she turns the other way, to her aunt and me, then the certainty prevailing here, the monotonous hammerblow of our steady conversation, forms the most disagreeable contrast. I can well understand that to Cordelia it must seem that her aunt is bewitched, so completely does she keep in step with my tempo. Nor can she take part in our entertainment; for this is also one of the ways I have used to provoke her, that is, by letting myself treat her altogether as a child. Not that I would permit myself any liberties with her on that account, far from it. I know too well what a disturbing effect such things can have, and it is especially important that her womanliness be able to rise up again pure and lovely. Owing to my intimate relation to the aunt, it is easy for me to treat her like a child who is no judge of the world. Her femininity is not offended by this but merely neutralized; for though it cannot offend her femininity that she knows nothing of market prices, it can irritate her that they should be the most important thing in life. With my powerful support, the aunt outbids herself in this direction. She has become almost fanatical, something she has to thank me for. The only thing about me which she cannot stand is that I am not anything. I have now begun the habit, every time something is said about a vacant position, of saying, ‘That’s a job for me!’, and discussing it very seriously with her. Cordelia always notices the irony, which is exactly as I wish.
Poor Edvard! Too bad he isn’t called Fritz. Whenever in my quiet thoughts I dwell on my relation to him, I am reminded of Fritz in The Bride.32 Like his prototype, Edvard is also a corporal in the militia. To tell the truth, Edvard is also distinctly tiresome. He doesn’t tackle the matter properly, and he is always too well-dressed and stiff. Entre nous, for the sake of our friendship I turn up as casually as possible. Poor Edvard! The only thing that pains me is that he is so infinitely obliged to me that he almost doesn’t know how to thank me. To let myself be thanked for it, that’s really too much.
But why can’t you be good children and behave? What have you done all morning except shake my awning, pull at my window mirror and its string, play with the bell-rope from the third floor, push against the windowpanes, in brief, in every possible way proclaim your existence, as if you would beckon me out with you? Yes, the weather is fine, but I have no desire, let me stay at home … After all, you boisterous, wanton zephyrs, you happy lads, you can go alone, amuse yourselves with the young maidens as usual. Yes, I know, no one can embrace a maiden as seductively as you; she tries in vain to squirm away from you, she cannot untwine herself from your tangle – and she doesn’t want to; for, cool and refreshing, you do not inflame … Go your own way, leave me out … But then, you say, there’s no satisfaction in it, it’s not for your own sake … very well, then, I’ll come with you, but on two conditions. Here is the first. There lives on Kongens Nytorv a young maiden; she is very pretty, but she has the impudence not to want to love me, and what is worse, she loves another, and it has got to the point where they go out walking arm in arm. I know he goes to fetch her at one o’clock. Promise me now that the strongest blowers among you hide somewhere in the vicinity when he comes out of the street door with her. The moment he is about to turn down Store Kongensgade, this detachment rushes forward, in the politest possible manner takes his hat from his head, and carries it at an even speed just two feet in front of him, no faster, for then he might turn back home again. He thinks he is always just on the point of catching it, he doesn’t even let go of her arm. In this way you bring them through Store Kongensgade, along the rampart to Nørreport, as far as Høibroplads … How long will that take? I’d say about half an hour. At exactly half-past one I approach from Østergade. When the detachment has brought the lovers out into the middle of the Plads, a violent assault is made on them, in which you also whisk off her hat, tangle her curls, carry off her shawl, while all the time his hat floats jubilantly higher and higher into the air; in short, you bring about a confusion, so that not just I but the entire public breaks out into roars of laughter, the dogs begin to bark, and the watchman to toll his bell in the tower. You make her hat fly over to me, so I become the happy individual who restores it to her. – Secondly: the section following me must obey my every signal, keep within the bounds of propriety, offer no affront to any pretty maiden, take no liberty greater than will allow her to preserve her joy during the whole jest, her lips their smile, her eye its tranquillity, and to stay unanxious. If a single one of you dares behave otherwise, your name will be cursed. – And now off with you, to life and joy, to youth and beauty; show me what I have often seen, and never weary of seeing, show me a beautiful young woman, disclose her beauty for me in such a way that she herself becomes even more beautiful; put her to a test that she will enjoy being put to! – I choose Bredgade, but as you know, I have only until half-past one.
There comes a young girl, all smart and starched; today’s Sunday, of course … Fan her a little, waft her with your coolness, glide in gentle currents about her, embrace her with your touch! I sense the delicate blushing of her cheek, her lips redden, her bosom lifts… It’s indescribable, isn’t it, my girl, it is a blissful delight to inhale these refreshing airs? The little collar bends to and fro and like a leaf. How deeply and soundly she breathes! Her pace slackens, she is almost carried off by the gentle breeze, like a cloud, like a dream … Blow a little stronger, in longer puffs! … She gathers herself together, the arms drawn closer to her bosom, which she covers more carefully lest a gust of wind prove too forward and steal softly and coolingly beneath the light covering … She assumes a more healthy colouring, her cheeks become fuller, her eye clearer, her steps firmer. All vexation makes a person more beautiful. Every young girl should fall in love with the zephyr, for no man knows so well how to enhance her beauty by struggling against her … Her body bends a little forward, she looks towards the tips of her toes … Stop a little! It is too much, her figure becomes broader, loses its pretty slenderness … Cool her a little! … It’s refreshing, isn’t it, my girl, after being warm to feel those invigorating shivers? One could fling open one’s arms in gratitude, in joy over existence … She turns her side to the breeze … Now quick! a powerful gust, so that I can divine the beauty of her contours! … A little stronger! to let the draperies close about her more precisely … That’s too much. Her posture becomes awkward, the light step is disturbed … She turns again … Blow, now, blow, try her! … Enough, too much! One of her curls has fallen … will you kindly keep control of yourselves! – Here comes a whole regiment on the march:
Die eine ist verliebt gar sehr;
Die andre wäre er gerne.33
Yes, it is an undeniably bad appointment in life to walk on one’s future brother-in-law’s left arm. For a girl this is about the same as a man’s being a reserve clerk … But the clerk can get preferment and has his place in the office, he is called in on exceptional occasions, and that is not the sister-in-law’s lot. But her preferment, on the other hand, is not so slow – once she gets promoted and is moved into another office … Blow now a little more briskly! When one has something firm to hold on fast to, one can offer resistance … the centre advances vigorously, the wings on either flank were unable to follow … He stands his ground firmly enough, the wind can’t move him, he is too heavy for that – but also too heavy for the wings to be able to lift him from the ground. He thrust himself forward in order to show – that he is a heavy body; but the more unmoved he stands, the more the young girls suffer from it … My beautiful young ladies, may I not offer a piece of good advice: leave the future husband and brother-in-law out of it, try to walk alone, and you will see, you will find it much more satisfactory … Blow now a little more softly! … How they riot in the wind’s billows; soon they will be cutting figures in front of each other down the street – can any dance music produce a more frolicsome gaiety? And yet the wind is not exhausting, it gives strength … Now they sweep along side by side, in full sail down the street – can any waltz carry a young woman away more seductively? And yet the wind does not weary, it supports … Now they turn round to face the husband and brother-in-law … Isn’t a little opposition pleasant? One likes to struggle to gain possession of what one loves; and one will no doubt succeed, for there is a Providence that comes to the aid of love, that is why the man has the wind in his favour … Haven’t I arranged it well? When you have the wind at your back you can easily steer the loved one past you; but when it blows against you, you are pleasantly excited, then you seek refuge near him, and the wind’s breath makes you more wholesome and more tempting, and more seductive, and the wind’s breath cools the fruit of your lips which should preferably be enjoyed cold because it is so hot, as champagne is said to be when kept near freezing … How they laugh and talk – and the wind carries off the words – is there anything to talk about here now? – and they laugh again and bend before the wind, and hold on to their hats, and watch their feet… Stop now, lest the young girls get impatient and angry at us, or afraid of us! – That’s it, resolutely and vigorously, the right foot in front of the left … How bravely and buoyantly she looks about in the world … Do I see correctly? She is hanging on to a man’s arm, so she’s engaged. Show me, my child, what kind of present you have received on life’s Christmas tree? … Aha! really it seems to be a very solid fiancé. She’s in the first stage of the engagement, then, she loves him – that’s certainly possible, and yet her love flutters loosely about him, wide and spacious; she still has the cloak of love which can conceal many … Blow a little more! … Yes, when one walks so fast it is no wonder the ribbons on her hat stiffen in the wind, that it looks as if they bore this light body like wings – and her love – it follows too, like a fairy veil that the wind plays with. Yes, when you see love like this, it seems so spacious; but when you are about to put it on, when the veil must be resewn into an evening dress – then one won’t be able to afford many puffs … Lord preserve us! When one has had the courage to take a decisive step for one’s entire life, surely one has the heart to walk straight into the wind. Who doubts it? Not I; but temper, temper, my little miss! Time is a hard taskmaster, and the wind is not bad either … Tease her a little! … What became of the handkerchief? … Oh, so you did recover it again … There went one of the hat ribbons … it is really quite embarrassing for the intended who is present. A girl friend approaches who must be greeted. It is the first time she has seen you since the engagement; of course, showing that you are engaged is the reason you are here on Bredgade, and moreover are thinking of going on to Langelinie. I believe it is the custom for a newly wedded couple to go to Church the first Sunday after the wedding, but engaged couples, on the other hand, go to Langelinie. Yes, an engagement really also has much in common with Langelinie … Watch out now! The wind is taking hold of your hat, hold on to it a little, bend your head down … What a real shame you got no chance at all to greet your girl friend, not enough calm to greet her with the superior air that an engaged girl ought to assume before the unengaged … Blow a little more softly now! … Now come the good days … how she clings to the beloved; she is just far enough ahead to be able to turn her head back and look up at him, and rejoice in him, her riches, her happiness, her hope, her future … Oh my girl, you make too much of him … Or won’t you allow that he owes it to me and the wind that he looks so vigorous? And don’t you yourself owe it to me, and to the soft breezes that now bring you healing and turn pain into oblivion, that you look so full of vitality, so full of longing, so expectant?
And I will not have a student
Who lies and reads at night,
But I will have an officer
With feathers in his hat.34
One can see it in you at once, my girl, there is something in your look … No, a student won’t do for you … But why exactly an officer? A graduate, finished with his studies, couldn’t he do just as well? … Just now, however, I cannot help you to either an officer or a graduate. But I can help you to some cooling breezes … Blow a little harder now! … That’s right, throw the silk shawl back over your shoulder; walk quite slowly, that should make your cheek a little paler and the eye’s lustre more subdued … That’s it. Yes, a little exercise, especially on a fine day like this, and a little patience, then no doubt you will get your officer. – There’s a couple over there who are meant for each other. How measured their steps, what poise their whole appearance presents, built on mutual confidence, what pre-established harmony in all their movements, what assured solidity. Their carriage is not light and graceful, they do not dance with each other, no, there is a durability in them, a forthrightness, which arouses infallible hope and inspires mutual respect. I will wager that their view of life is ‘Life is a road’. And they also seem bent on walking with each other arm in arm through life’s joys and sorrows. They are so much in harmony that the lady has even given up the privilege of walking on the flagstones … But, my dear zephyrs, why are you so busy with that couple? They don’t seem worth paying attention to. Is there anything special to take note of? … But it is half-past one; off to Høibroplads.
One would not think it possible to calculate so accurately a soul’s historical development. It shows how healthy Cordelia is. Truly, she is a remarkable girl. Although she is quiet and modest, undemanding, there is an immense demand lying there unconsciously. – It was obvious to me today when I saw her coming in from the street. It’s as though the slight resistance a gust of wind can offer arouses all her powers but without there being any internal conflict. She is not a little insignificant girl who slips between your fingers, so fragile that you are almost afraid she will go to pieces just by looking at her; but neither is she a showy ornamental flower. Like a physician I can therefore observe with pleasure all the symptoms in this case history.
Gradually I am beginning to close in on her in my attack, to go over into a more direct assault. If I were to describe this change on my military map of the family, I would say that I have turned my chair round so that now I am facing her. I have more to do with her, address remarks to her, elicit answers from her. Her soul has passion, intensity, and though not overblown in absurd and vain reflections, it has a hankering for the unusual. My irony at the foolishness of human beings, my scorn of their cowardice, of their lukewarm indolence, fascinate her. She is fond enough of driving the chariot of the sun across the arch of the heavens, of coming too near to the earth and scorching people a bit.35 She does not trust me, however. Up to now I have obstructed every approach, even in spiritual respects. She must become stronger in herself before I can let her find her repose in me. It may look in flashes as though it were her I would make the confidante in my freemasonry, but it is only in flashes. She herself must be developed inwardly; she must feel her soul’s resilience, she must test the world’s weight. From her conversation and her eyes I can easily see what progress she is making. Just once I have seen a destructive anger in them. She must owe me nothing, for she must be free; love exists only in freedom, only in freedom are there recreation and everlasting amusement. For although I intend her to fall into my arms through, as it were, natural necessity, and am striving to bring things to the point where she gravitates towards me, it is nevertheless also important that she does not fall as a heavy body, but gravitates as spirit towards spirit. Although she is to belong to me, it mustn’t be just in the unaesthetic sense of resting on me like a burden. She must neither be a hanger-on physically speaking nor an obligation morally. Between the two of us must prevail only the proper play of freedom. She must be so light for me that I can take her on my arm.
Cordelia occupies me almost too much. I am losing my equanimity again, not directly in her presence but when alone with her in the strictest sense. I can yearn for her, not to talk with her but just to have her image float by me. When I know she has gone out I can steal after her, not to be seen but to see. The other evening we all left the Baxter house together. Edvard escorted her. In the greatest haste I left them, hurried off to another street where my servant was waiting for me. In a trice I had changed clothes and met her once more without her suspecting. Edvard was silent as usual. Certainly I am in love, but not in the usual sense, and therefore one must also be very careful; there are always dangerous consequences; and after all one is in love only once. Nevertheless, the god of love is blind and if one is clever one can delude him. The trick is to be as receptive in regard to impressions as possible, to know the impression you are making and the impression each girl makes on you. In this way you can even be in love with many at the same time, because with each particular girl you are differently in love. Loving just one is too little; loving all is being superficial; knowing yourself and loving as many as possible, letting your soul hide all the powers of love in itself, so that each gets its particular nourishment while consciousness nevertheless embraces it all – that is enjoyment, that is living.
July 3rd
Edvard cannot really complain of me. Certainly, I want Cordelia to burn her fingers on him, so that through him she gets a distaste for run-of-the-mill love and in that way goes beyond her own limitations; but for that very reason it is necessary for Edvard not to be a caricature, for that would not help. Now Edvard is a good match, not just in the bourgeois sense of the word, which means nothing in her eyes (things like that do not cross a seventeen-year-old girl’s mind), he has a number of attractive personal qualities which I try to get him to show to best advantage. Like a costumier, like a decorator, I fit him out as well as the house’s resources stretch. Indeed, I sometimes hang a little borrowed finery on him. Then when we accompany each other to Cordelia’s it is quite strange walking beside him. It is as though he were my brother, my son, and yet he is my friend, my contemporary, my rival. He could ever become a danger to me. So, since he is bound to fall, the higher I can raise him the better; the more consciousness it awakens in Cordelia of what she scorns, the more intense her presentiment of what she desires. I help him to adjust, I commend him, in short I do everything a friend can do for a friend. To set my coldness properly in relief, I behave almost as though I were Edvard’s ardent admirer. I portray him as a visionary. Since Edvard has no idea of how to help himself, I have to haul him forward.
Cordelia hates and fears me. What does a young girl fear? Spirit. Why? Because spirit constitutes the negation of her whole feminine existence. Masculine good looks, a charming personality, etc. are good expedients, one can also make conquests with them, but never win a complete victory. Why? Because then one is making war upon a girl on her own ground, and there she is always the stronger. With these methods one can make a girl blush, put her out of countenance, but never call forth that indescribable, captivating anxiety which makes her beauty interesting.
Non formosus erat, sed erat facundus Ulixes,
et tamen aequoreas torsit amore Deas.36
Everyone should know his own powers. But something that has often disturbed me is that even those who have natural endowments bungle things so. Really one ought to be able straightaway to see in any young girl who has become the victim of another’s, or rather of her own love, in what way she has been deceived. The practised murderer uses a definite stab, and the experienced policeman knows the perpetrator as soon as he sees the wound. But where does one meet such systematic seducers, such psychologists? For most men, seducing a girl means seducing a girl, full stop. And yet there is a whole language concealed in this thought.
As a woman she hates me; as a gifted woman she fears me; as a woman of intelligence she loves me. Now for the first time I have produced this conflict in her soul. My pride, my defiance, my cold scorn, my heartless irony tempt her; not as though she might wish to love me – no, there is certainly no trace of such feelings in her, least of all towards me. She wants to compete with me. What tempts her is the proud independence of people, a freedom like that of the Arabs in the desert. My laughter and oddity neutralize every erotic impulse. She is fairly at ease with me, and so far as there is any reserve, it is more intellectual than feminine. Far from her regarding me as a lover, our relation to each other is that of two able minds. She takes my hand, presses it a little, laughs, is attentive to me in a purely Platonic sense. Then when the ironist and the scoffer have fooled her long enough, I shall follow the directions to be found in an old verse: ‘The knight spreads out his cape so red, and begs the beautiful maiden to sit thereon.’ However, I do not spread out my cape in order to sit with her on the greensward, but to vanish with her into the air on the wings of thought. Or I do not take her with me but set myself astride a thought, wave farewell, blow a kiss, and vanish from her sight, audible only in the murmur of winged words; not, like Jehovah,37 in his voice more and more visible, but less and less, because the more I speak, the higher I climb. Then she wants to go with me, off on the wings of bold thoughts. Still, that’s only for a single moment; the next instant I am cold and impassive.
There are different kinds of feminine blushes. There is the gross brick-red blush; that’s the one romantic writers are always so free with when they have their heroines blush all over. There is the refined blush; it is the blush of the dawn’s early light. In a young girl it is above all price. The fleeting blush produced by a happy idea is beautiful in the man, more beautiful in a youth, lovely in a woman. It is a flash of lightning, the sheet lightning of the spirit. It is most beautiful in the young, charming in the girl, because it appears in its virginal state, and for that reason has the bashfulness of surprise. The older one becomes, the less frequently this blush appears.
Sometimes I read something aloud to Cordelia; usually something very inconsequential. Edvard must as usual keep the spotlight. So I have drawn his attention to the fact that a very good way of getting on good terms with a young girl is to lend her books. He has also gained considerably through this, for she is directly beholden to him. It is I who gain most, for I dictate the choice of books and remain remote. This gives me broad scope for my observations. I can give Edvard whatever books I wish, since he is no judge of literature; I can risk what I will, to whatever extreme. Then when I visit her in the evening, I make as if to pick up a book by chance, turn over a few pages, read half-aloud, commend Edvard for his attentiveness. Yesterday evening I wanted to assure myself of her mental resilience by an experiment. I was undecided whether to have Edvard lend her Schiller’s poems, so that I could accidentally chance on Thekla’s song38 which I’d then recite, or Bürger’s poems. I chose the latter particularly because his ‘Lenore’, however beautiful, is after all somewhat extravagant. I opened it at ‘Lenore’, read this poem aloud with all the pathos I could muster. Cordelia was moved, she sewed with a rapid intensity as though it were her Vilhelm had come to fetch.39 I stopped. The aunt had listened without particular concern. She fears no Vilhelms, living or dead – in any case her German is not all that good – but found herself quite in her element when I showed her the beautifully bound copy and began a conversation about the art of bookbinding. My purpose was to destroy in Cordelia the impression of pathos at the very moment of its arousal. She became a little anxious, but it was clear to me that this anxiety had an uncomfortable effect on her, not a stimulating one.
Today my eyes have rested upon her for the first time. It is said that sleep can make an eyelid so heavy that it closes of its own accord; perhaps this glance of mine has a similar effect. Her eyes close, and yet obscure forces stir within her. She does not see that I am looking at her, she feels it, feels it through her whole body. Her eyes close and it is night, but inside her it is broad daylight.
Edvard must go. He is treading on the boundary. Any moment I can expect him to go to her and make a declaration of love. No one can know that better than I who am his confidant, and who diligently maintains this exaltation so that his effect upon Cordelia can be the greater. To let him confess his love is nevertheless too risky. Although I know quite well she will refuse him, that will not be the end of the affair. He will no doubt take it very much to heart. That might move and touch Cordelia. Although in that event I need not fear the worst, that she should change her mind, still, possibly her self-esteem might suffer through this pure compassion. Should that happen, my plans concerning Edvard are altogether wasted.
My relation to Cordelia is beginning to take a dramatic turn. Something must happen, whatever it may be; I can no longer remain a mere observer without letting the moment slip from me. She has to be surprised, that is necessary; but to surprise her one must be on the alert. What would normally cause surprise might have no effect on her. Really she has to be surprised in such a way that the initial cause of the surprise is, to all intents and purposes, that something quite ordinary happens. It has to appear gradually that there was something surprising in it after all. This is always the law of the interesting, and the latter the law in turn governing all my movements with regard to Cordelia. If only you know how to surprise someone, you have always won the game; for a moment you suspend the energy of the one concerned, make it impossible for her to act, and it makes no difference whether one resorts to the ordinary or the extraordinary. I recall with some satisfaction a foolhardy experiment upon a lady of distinguished family. For some time I had been sneaking around her secretly looking for an interesting form of contact, but in vain; then one day I met her on the street. I was certain she didn’t know me or know I belonged here in town. She was walking alone. I slipped past her so that I could meet her face to face. I stepped aside for her; she kept to the flagstones. Just then I cast a sorrowful glance at her, I think I almost had tears in my eyes. I took off my hat. She paused. In an agitated voice and with a dreamy look, I said, ‘Do not be angry, gracious lady; the resemblance between you and someone I love with all my soul, but who lives far away from me, is so striking that you must forgive my strange behaviour.’ She thought me an extravagant dreamer, and a young girl can well put up with a little extravagance, especially when she also feels her superiority and dares to smile at one. Just so, she smiled, which became her indescribably. With aristocratic condescension she bowed to me, and smiled. She resumed her walk. I walked a few steps by her side. Some days later I met her; I presumed to greet her. She laughed at me … Patience is a precious virtue, and he who laughs last laughs best.