4 Shadowgraphs

4 Shadowgraphs

4 SHADOWGRAPHS

Psychological Entertainment

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Symparanekromenoi

    Love may always breach its oath;

Love’s spell in this cave does lull

    The drunken, startled soul

Into forgetting it pledged its troth.

*

Yesterday I loved,

Today I suffer,

Tomorrow I die.

Yet fain would I think

Today and tomorrow,

Of yesterday.¹

IMPROVISED ADDRESS

We celebrate, in this hour, the founding of our Society. We rejoice once more at the recurrence of the happy event of the longest day’s passing and the commencement of the victory of night. This long, livelong day we have waited; even a moment ago we were sighing at its length, but now our despair is turned to joy. True, the victory is but trifling and the day will remain in the ascendant yet a while, but the fact that its dominion has been broken does not escape us. So we do not put off our celebrations until night’s victory can be seen by all, do not wait until the sluggish bourgeois life reminds us that the day is waning. No, as a young bride impatiently awaits nightfall, we longingly await the first onset of night, the first announcement of its coming victory, and the nearer we approach despair at what to do should the days not shorten, the greater our joy and surprise.

A year has passed and our Society is still in being. Shall we rejoice at this fact, dear Symparanekromenoi, rejoice that its survival mocks our teaching that everything must end? Or should we not rather sorrow over the fact that it is still there, and be glad that in any case it has just one more year to go, seeing we decided to dissolve it if it had not vanished of itself before then? – In founding it we have formed no far-reaching plans, for knowing life’s misery and the perfidy of existence we are resolved to lend the law of the world a hand and destroy ourselves if it does not get there first. A year has passed and our numbers are still complete, no vacancies have occurred. And none has been made; we are each of us too proud for that, for we all look upon death as the greatest good fortune. Should we rejoice over this and not rather sorrow, and be glad only in the hope that life’s tumult will soon separate us, that life’s storm will soon snatch us away? Thoughts like these are indeed better suited to our Society, accord best with the moment’s celebration, with the whole setting. For is it not a stroke of genius and a matter of significance that the floor of this little room, according to the custom of the land, should be strewn with green as though for a funeral, and does not the nature that surrounds us itself lend its approval if we heed the wild storm raging around us, the mighty voice of the wind? Yes, let us be silent for a moment and listen to the music of the storm, its sturdy course, its bold challenge, the defiant roaring of the ocean, and the anguished sighing of the forest, the despairing creaking of the trees, and the faint-hearted rustling of the grass. It is true men say the divine voice is not in the rushing wind but in the gentle breeze,² but our ears are not made to pick up gentle breezes, only to gulp in the din of the elements. And why does it not break forth in still greater violence, making an end of life and the world and this brief speech, which at least has the supreme advantage that it is soon ended! Yes, let that vortex which is the innermost principle of the world, even though people are not aware of it but busily eat and drink and marry and propagate without a heed, let it break forth and in its resentment shrug off the mountains and the nations and the cultural achievements and clever inventions of man, let it break forth with the last terrible shriek, which more surely than the last trump proclaims the overthrow of everything, let it move and whirl away this naked cliff on which we stand, as easily as fluff before the breath of our nostrils.³ – And yet night is winning and the day is shortening and hope is growing! So fill your cups once more, dear drinking companions; with this goblet I toast you, the eternal mother of all things, silent night!⁴ From you all things come, to you they all return. Then take pity once more upon the world, open yourself again to gather everything in and protect us all safely in your womb! I toast you, dark night, I toast you as victor, and this is my solace, for you make everything shorter, the day, time, life, and memory’s tribulation, in eternal oblivion!

Ever since Lessing, in his famous essay Laocoön, resolved the boundary disputes between poetry and art,⁵ we may take it that the upshot unanimously accepted by all aestheticians is that the difference lies in the fact that art belongs in the category of space and poetry in that of time, that art represents repose, poetry movement. Whatever, then, is to be an object of artistic representation must have that quiet transparency in which the inner reposes in a corresponding outer. The less this is the case, the more difficult the artist’s task becomes, until finally the difference becomes insistent and tells him that the task just isn’t his. If we apply the distinction, not propounded here but only loosely acknowledged, to the relation between sorrow and joy, it is easy to see that joy is far easier to represent in art than sorrow. That does not at all mean that art cannot represent sorrow, but only that there comes a point at which the essential thing is to posit an opposition between inner and outer, which makes its representation impossible for art. This stems in turn from the very nature of sorrow. It is of the essence of joy to reveal itself, but sorrow wants to hide, yes, sometimes even to deceive. Joy is communicative, sociable, open-hearted, and wants to express itself; sorrow is reserved, silent, solitary, and seeks to retire into itself. Surely not even life’s most casual observer will deny that this is correct. There are those so constituted that under affect their blood rushes to the skin, making the inner movement outwardly visible. Others are so constituted that the blood flows inwards, seeking the ventricles of the heart and the inner parts of the organism. Something of the same difference is to be found in the ways joy and sorrow express themselves. The first type of constitution described is much easier to observe than the second. In the first you see the expression, the inner movement is outwardly visible; in the second the inner movement is intimated. It is as though the outward pallor were the inner’s leave-taking, and thought and imagination hasten after the fugitive in its secret hiding-place. This is especially true of the kind of sorrow I shall now consider, what may be termed reflective sorrow. Here the outer contains at most only a hint that puts you on the track, sometimes not even that much. This sorrow cannot be represented in art; since the equilibrium between inner and outer has been revoked, it does not lend itself to spatial specifications. In another respect, too, it is not susceptible of representation in art, since it lacks that inner repose and is constantly in movement. This movement, though it gives no richer content, is nevertheless the essential thing. Like a squirrel in its cage it goes round in itself, though not so uniformly as that animal but constantly varying the combinations of sorrow’s inner elements. What prevents reflective grief from being represented in art is that it lacks repose, that it fails to come into accord with itself, does not come to rest in any single definite expression. As the sick person throws himself from one side to the other in pain, so does reflective sorrow toss about, looking for its object and its expression. When sorrow finds repose, then its interior also gradually works its way outwards, becomes visible in the exterior, and so becomes an object of representation for art. If sorrow has calm and composure, it invariably begins its movement from inside outwards; reflective sorrow moves inwards, like the blood that runs away from the surface, giving only a hint of its presence through a sudden pallor. Reflective sorrow brings with it no characteristic outward change; from its very first moment it hastens inwards and only a reasonably careful observer suspects its vanishing; afterwards it takes great care that the exterior obtrude as little as possible.

Seeking its way thus inwards, it finds at last an enclosure, an innermost recess, where it thinks it can stay,⁶ and now it begins its monotonous movement. Like the pendulum in a clock it swings back and forth and cannot find rest. It begins always at the beginning and ponders anew, interrogates the witnesses, collates and tests their various statements, as it has already done a hundred times, yet it is never finished. In the course of time monotony has a somewhat numbing effect. As the monotonous drip from a roof, the steady whirl of a spinning-wheel, the monotonous sound of the measured paces of someone walking up and down on the floor above all make us numb, so in the end reflective sorrow finds relief in this movement, which becomes a necessity for it in the form of an illusion of motion. Finally a certain equilibrium emerges. The need for sorrow to break through, to whatever extent it may on occasion have expressed itself, ceases to exist; the exterior is calm and composed, and deep inside, in its little nook, sorrow lives like a well-guarded prisoner in an underground gaol, where it spends year after year in its monotonous movement, walking back and forth in its by-chamber, never wearying of putting sorrow’s long or short road behind it.

What gives rise to reflective sorrow can lie partly in the individual’s own subjective nature, partly in the objective sorrow itself or its occasion. A pathologically reflective individual will transmute every sorrow into a reflective sorrow, his individual structure and organization make it impossible for him to assimilate the sorrow without further ado. This, however, is a morbid condition of no particular interest, since any accidental happening can undergo a metamorphosis in this way and so become a reflective sorrow. Such is always the case when the objective sorrow has not been dealt with, where it leaves a doubt behind, whatever its nature otherwise. A great multiplicity is immediately offered to thought, the more in proportion to how much one has lived and experienced, or is disposed to employ one’s powers of discernment in such experiments. I have no intention, however, of working through all this diversity; I shall bring out just one single aspect as this has revealed itself to my observation.

When the occasion for the sorrow is a case of deception, then the nature of the objective sorrow is such as to beget reflective sorrow in the individual. That a deception really is such is often very hard to ascertain, and yet everything depends on this; as long as it remains disputable, sorrow will find no rest but must continue wandering back and forth in reflection. Moreover, when this deception touches, not something external, but a person’s whole inner life, the innermost core of his life, then the probability of the reflective sorrow’s persisting becomes greater and greater. But what, indeed, can with greater truth be called a woman’s life than her love? So when the sorrow of an unhappy love is rooted in a deception, we have unreservedly a case of reflective sorrow, whether this persists for a lifetime or she overcomes it. Unhappy love is certainly of itself the most profound of sorrows for a woman; but it does not follow that every unhappy love generates a reflective sorrow. Thus when the loved one dies or perhaps she simply finds her love is unrequited, or life’s circumstances make it impossible to realize her wish, certainly there is an occasion for sorrow but not for reflective sorrow, unless the individual is already sick, in which case she falls outside the scope of our interest. If, on the other hand, she is not sick, her sorrow will be an immediate sorrow and as such also able to become an object of representation in art, whereas on the contrary, it will be quite impossible for art to express and represent reflective sorrow or the point of it. For immediate sorrow is that immediate copy and expression of the sorrow’s impression which is entirely congruent with the original, just like the image Veronica kept on her handkerchief; and sorrow’s sacred script is stamped in the external, beautiful and clear, and legible by all.⁷

Reflective sorrow cannot, therefore, be an object of representation in art, partly because it never subsists but is always in the process of becoming, partly because it is unconcerned with and indifferent to the external, the visible. So unless art is to limit itself to the naivety one finds examples of in old books, where a figure is depicted which can represent just about anything while on its breast one discovers a piece of armour in the form of a heart, or some such, on which one can read all about it, especially if the figure by its posture draws attention to itself, or even simply points to it – an effect the artist could just as well have produced by writing ‘Please note’ above the picture – he will have to give up the idea of representation in this area, leaving it to poets and psychologists.

It is this reflective sorrow I now propose to draw out and render visible, so far as that is possible, in some pictures. I call them ‘shadowgraphs’, partly to remind the reader by the very designation that I am summoning them from the dark side of life, partly because, just like shadowgraphs, they are not visible straightaway. If I take a shadowgraph in my hand, I gain no impression from it, can form no real idea of it; it is only when I hold it up to the wall and look not at the immediate image but at what appears on the wall, it is only then that I see it. Similarly the picture I want to show here is an inner picture which can also only be detected by looking through the exterior. There may be nothing striking about the exterior, it is only when I look through it that I discover the inner picture, which is what I want to show, an inner picture too refined to be visible on the outside, woven as it is of the softest moods of the soul. If I look at a sheet of paper, to outward observation there may be nothing remarkable about it; it is only when I hold it up to the light of day and see through it that I discover the delicate inner picture which is as though too insubstantial to be seen immediately.

So fasten your gaze, dear Symparanekromenoi, upon this inner picture, do not let yourselves be distracted by the exterior, or rather, do not introduce it yourselves, for I shall constantly draw it aside in order the better to view the interior. But that, surely, is something for which this Society, of which I have the honour to be a member, needs no encouragement; for although fairly young, we are all still old enough not to let the outer deceive us or be satisfied with that. Would I be flattering myself with a vain hope, then, were I to believe that you would grant these pictures your attention? Or must these efforts of mine be alien and indifferent to you, not in harmony with the interests of our association, a fellowship that knows but one passion, namely sympathy with sorrow’s secret? We, too, form an order; we, too, sally forth now and then into the world like knights errant, each along his own path, although not to fight monsters or to come to the aid of innocence or be tried in adventures of love. None of that occupies us, not even the latter, for the arrow in a woman’s glance cannot hurt our hardened breast, and it is not the merry smile of happy maidens that moves us, but the secret beckoning of sorrow. Let others be proud that no girl near or far can withstand the power of their love, we do not envy them; we would be proud if no secret sorrow escaped our attention, no private sorrow were too coy and too proud for us to succeed in probing triumphantly into its innermost hiding-places!

What is the most hazardous conflict, what presupposes the most skill and provides the greatest enjoyment, into that we will not inquire; our choice is made, we love only sorrow, it is sorrow alone we seek out and wherever we find its footprints we follow them, undaunted, unwavering, until it stands revealed. For this battle we arm ourselves, we train ourselves in it every day. And it is true that sorrow steals through the world so very secretively that only someone with sympathy for it succeeds in getting a whiff of it. You walk down the street, one house looks like the other, and only the experienced observer suspects that in that house, at midnight, everything looks quite different: an unhappy person wanders about, unable to rest; he climbs the stairs, nis steps echo in the stillness of the night. We pass one another in the street, the one person looks like the other, and the other just like anyone else, and only the experienced observer suspects that, in that head, there lives a lodger who has nothing to do with the world, but lives out his lonely life confined to quiet domesticity. So the outer is the object of our observation, but not of our interest. Thus the fisherman sits and directs his attention unwaveringly on the float, yet the float does not interest him at all, only the movements down on the sea-bed. So the outer does indeed have significance for us, yet not as an expression of the inner but like a telegram telling of something hidden deep within. When you look long and attentively at a face, you sometimes discover that it is as if there were another face within the one you see. This is in general an unmistakable sign that the soul conceals an emigrant who has withdrawn from the outside world to watch over a hidden treasure, and the direction observation must take is intimated by the way one face lies as though inside the other, from which one understands that in order to discover anything one must try to probe inwards. The face, which is ordinarily the mirror of the soul, assumes here an ambiguity which cannot be represented in art, and which usually only lasts for a fleeting moment. It needs a special eye to see it, a special glance to pursue this infallible index of a secret sorrow. This glance is a covetous one and yet so painstaking, disturbing and compelling, yet so sympathetic, persistent and subtle, yet so frank and benevolent; it lulls the individual into a certain pleasant languor in which he finds a sensual rapture in gushing out his sorrow, just like the rapture enjoyed in bleeding to death. The present is forgotten, the outer is penetrated, the past resurrected, sorrow’s breathing is made easy. The sorrowing person finds relief, and sorrow’s sympathetic knight rejoices at having found what he was seeking. We seek not the present but the past, not joy, for that is always present, but sorrow, because its nature is to pass by, and in the instant of the present one sees it only as one sees a person of whom one just catches sight the moment he turns the corner and disappears.

But sometimes sorrow is even better at concealing itself, and the outer gives us not the least hint of anything. For long it can escape our attention, but when it happens that a look, a word, a sigh, a tone of voice, a twitch of the eye, a trembling of the lips, a fumbled handclasp, treacherously betrays what was painstakingly hidden, then passion is aroused, then the contest begins. Now we have need of vigilance and tenacity and cunning; for what after all is as inventive as private sorrow – a prisoner for life in solitary confinement also has ample time to think up a great deal; and what so quick to hide itself as private sorrow, for no young girl can cover a bared bosom in greater alarm and haste than hidden sorrow when taken by surprise. Unflinching fearlessness is called for in this conflict, then, for one struggles with a Proteus,⁸ but if only one holds out it has to give up. Like that old man of the sea, whatever shape it puts on to slip free, twining itself like a serpent around us, terrifying us like a lion with its roar, turning itself into a tree with the wind howling in its leaves, or a foaming lake, or a crackling fire, in the end he still has to prophesy, and the sorrow must finally be revealed.

Behold, these adventures are our pleasure, our pastime, testing ourselves in them is our chivalry. For their sake we get up like thieves in the night, for their sake we risk everything, for no passion is as savage as that of sympathy. Nor need any shortage of adventures be our fear, only that we may encounter opposition that is too hard and unyielding; for as naturalists tell that by blasting huge rocks that have defied the centuries, they have found deep inside a living animal which has supported life undetected, so it should be possible for there to be humans with exteriors as firm as a rock who have safeguarded an eternally hidden life of sorrow. Yet this shall not quench our passion or cool our ardour. Quite the contrary, it will inflame it, for our passion is not indeed curiosity, content with the external and the superficial, but a sympathetic dread which searches hearts and hidden thoughts, evokes through magic and incantation what is secret, even what death has withheld from our gaze. It is said that Saul came in disguise to a witch before the battle,⁹ and demanded that she show him the image of Samuel. Surely it was not mere curiosity that drove him, not simply a desire to see Samuel’s visible image; it was his thoughts he wanted to learn, and no doubt he waited anxiously until he heard the stern judge’s verdict. Neither, then, will it be mere curiosity, dear Symparanekromenoi, that moves one or another of you to contemplate the images I shall now present to you. For although I have indicated them by certain poetic names, this in no way suggests that it is these poetic figures alone presenting themselves before you. The names must be regarded as common nouns, and I for my part shall not object should one or other of you feel inclined to call the particular picture by another name, a dearer name, or some name that perhaps comes more naturally to you.

1. Marie Beaumarchais

We make this girl’s acquaintance in Goethe’s Clavigo, which we shall keep to except that we shall accompany her a little further forward in time, to where she has lost her dramatic interest and sorrow’s retinue is gradually thinning out. We, however, continue to accompany her; for we knights of sympathy have as much the native gift as the acquired art of keeping pace with sorrow in its progress. Her story is brief: Clavigo was betrothed to her, Clavigo left her. This information suffices for the person who is used to observing life’s phenomena as one inspects curiosities in an art cabinet; the shorter the better for the more one can see. One can similarly relate, quite briefly, that Tantalus thirsts and that Sisyphus rolls a stone up a mountain.¹⁰ If one is in a hurry it would only delay matters to dwell further on these things, since one can learn no more than one already knows, which is the whole story. Whatever claims more attention has to be something quite different. One gathers round the tea-table in a familiar cluster, the samovar sings its final refrain, the lady of the house begs the mysterious stranger unburden his heart, to which end she has sugared water and jam brought in, and now he begins: it is a long and complicated story. That’s how it goes in novels, and that too is something quite different: a long-drawn-out story with such a short little advertisement. Whether it is a short story for Marie Beaumarchais is another matter; so much is certain, it is not long drawn out, for a long story has after all a measurable length; on the other hand, a short story sometimes has the puzzling property of being longer than the most long-drawn-out one.

In the foregoing I have already remarked that reflective sorrow is not visible in the exterior, that is, does not find its peaceful, beautiful expression there. The inner unrest does not allow this transparency, rather the exterior is consumed by it; to the extent that the inner does proclaim itself in the outer, that would be a morbidity which can never be an object of representation in art, for then it lacks the interest of beauty. Goethe has given us a few hints about this. But even if one were agreed on the correctness of this observation, one might still be tempted to consider it something accidental; it is only when one is convinced by purely poetic and aesthetic considerations that what observation teaches is aesthetically true, only then does one acquire the deeper awareness. Suppose I imagine a reflective sorrow and ask whether it might not be represented in art; immediately it would be evident that in relation to it the exterior is entirely accidental. But in that case the idea of artistic beauty has been abandoned. Whether the subject is large or small, significant or insignificant, beautiful or not so beautiful, none of that matters; to consider whether it would be more correct to let her head incline to one side or to the other or towards the ground, to have her stare in melancholy or fix her gaze sadly upon the ground, all such things are entirely irrelevant – the one is no more adequate at expressing reflective sorrow than the other. Compared with the internal, the external becomes insignificant and of no consequence. The point in reflective sorrow is that the sorrow is constantly in search of its object; the searching is the unrest of sorrow and its life. But this searching is a constant fluctuation, and if the outer were at every moment a perfect expression of the inner, to represent reflective sorrow would require an entire series of pictures and no one picture would acquire genuine artistic value, since it would not be beautiful but true. We would have to look at the pictures as we do at the second hand of a watch; the works themselves are invisible, but the inner movement constantly expresses itself in the constant change in the outer. But this change cannot be represented in art, yet it is the whole point. Thus when unhappy love has its ground in a deception the pain and suffering are this: that the sorrow cannot find its object. If the deception is proved and if the victim perceives that it is a deception, the sorrow does not cease but it becomes an immediate sorrow, not a reflective one. The dialectical difficulty is easy to see, for what does she sorrow for? If he was a deceiver, it was just as well he left her, the sooner the better; she should be glad indeed and sorrow only at the fact that she loved him; and yet it is a profound sorrow that he was a deceiver. But this question of whether it is indeed a deception, that is the unrest in sorrow’s perpetuum mobile. To establish with certainty the external fact that a deception is a deception is itself very hard, but even that would by no means settle the matter or bring the movement to a standstill. For love, deception is an absolute paradox, and in this lies the necessity for reflective sorrow. The various factors in love could be put together in the individual in very different ways, so that love in the one will not be as in the other. Egoism may be the dominant factor, or sympathy. But however the love may be, in its elements as much as its constitution, a deception is a paradox it cannot think and which it nevertheless wants, in the end, to think. Yes, if either the egoism or the sympathy were present absolutely, the paradox would be removed; that is, the individual is, on the strength of the absolute, beyond reflection, does not think the paradox in the sense of abolishing it through a ‘how’ of reflection, but is saved precisely by not thinking it; he does not trouble with the busy deliverances or confusions of reflection, but rests in himself. Egoistically proud love, because of its pride, considers deception impossible; it does not bother to find out what might be said for or against, how the party in question can be defended or exonerated; it is absolutely sure, because it is too proud to believe that anyone should dare to deceive it. Sympathetic love possesses the faith that can move mountains; for it, every defence is nothing compared with its unshakeable certainty that there was no deception; every accusation proves nothing against the witness who testifies that there was no deception, testifies to it not in this way or that but absolutely. Yet seldom in life does one see such a love, or perhaps never. Generally love contains both factors, and this puts it in relation to the paradox. In the two cases described, the paradox is no doubt also there for love but does not occupy it; in this latter case the paradox is there before it. The paradox is unthinkable and love nevertheless wants to think it, and according to the different factors as they momentarily come to the fore, it comes near, and often in a contradictory manner, to thinking it, but does not succeed. This line of thought is infinite and ends only when the individual voluntarily breaks it off by bringing something else into the picture, a volitional factor, but in that case the individual comes within ethical categories and does not concern us aesthetically. It is by a decision that he reaches what he cannot reach by way of reflection, namely rest.

This is true of every unhappy love based on a deception. What must evoke reflective sorrow even more in Marie Beaumarchais is the fact that it is only an engagement that has been broken off. An engagement is a possibility, not something actual, yet just because it is only a possibility, it might seem that the effect of its being broken off would be less, that it is much easier for the individual to withstand this blow. And sometimes that may well be true. On the other hand, the fact that it is only a possibility that is destroyed tempts reflection much more to the fore. When something actual is brought to an end, generally the break is far more radical, every nerve is cut asunder and in itself the fracture, regarded as such, remains complete. When a possibility is broken off, the instantaneous pain may not be as great, but then it often leaves one or another small ligament whole and unharmed, which becomes a constant source of continued suffering. The destroyed possibility appears transfigured in a higher possibility; while the temptation to conjure up such a new possibility is less when it is something actual that is broken off, because actuality is higher than possibility.

So Clavigo has abandoned her; he has faithlessly broken the tie. Used to depending on him, when he rejects her she hasn’t the strength to stand, she sinks helplessly into the arms of the environment. That is how it seems to have been with Marie. One could imagine another beginning; one could imagine that from the very first she had the strength to turn her sorrow into a reflective form; that either to escape the humiliation of hearing others talk of her being deceived, or because she still cared so much for him that it would pain her to hear him constantly reviled as a deceiver, she straightaway broke off every connection with others in order to consume her sorrow in her self and herself in her sorrow. We follow Goethe. Those around her are not unsympathetic, they feel her pain with her, and in doing so say it will be the death of her. Now, aesthetically, that is quite right. The nature of unhappy love can be such that suicide is to be considered aesthetically correct, but in that case it must not be based on deception, for then a suicide loses all nobility and implies an admission which pride must refuse to make. On the other hand, if it is indeed the death of her, this amounts to his having murdered her. That expression is in total harmony with the strength of the emotion within her and the idea gives her relief. But it is not often that life adheres closely to aesthetic categories, it does not always obey an aesthetic imperative, and she does not die. This causes those around her embarrassment. They feel that it won’t do to keep on repeating the assurance that she is dying when she continues to live; besides, they find themselves unable to proclaim it with the same energetic pathos as at the start; and yet this was the condition on which she was to receive any comfort. So they change their method. He was, they say, a blackguard, a trickster, a detestable person not worth taking one’s own life for; forget him, think no more of the matter, it was just an engagement, erase this incident from your memory; you are still young, can still hope. They set her aflame, for this pathos of wrath harmonizes with other moods within her; her pride feeds on the vindictive thought of making nothing of it all; it was not because he was exceptional that she loved him, far from it; she could see his faults very well, but believed him to be a good person, a faithful person, that’s why she loved him, it was from pity, and so it will be easy to forget him because she has never actually needed him. The environment and Marie are in unison again and the duet between them proceeds excellently.

For those around her it is not hard to think of Clavigo as a deceiver, for they have never loved him and so it is no paradox; and if there was any fondness for him (something Goethe suggests in connection with the sister), just this interest arms them against him, and this good will, which may have been something more than good will, becomes an excellent incendiary for feeding the flames of hate. Nor does her circle find it hard to erase its memory of him, so it demands that Marie do the same. Her pride breaks out in hatred, the circle adds fuel to the fire, she gives vent to her feelings in strong words and forthright declarations of intent with which she intoxicates herself. Those around her rejoice. They fail to notice, what she will hardly admit to herself, that in the next instant she is weak and faint; they fail to notice the anxious suspicion taking hold of her that the energy she now and then has is an illusion. She assiduously conceals this and admits it to no one. The circle goes on happily with its theoretical exercises, but nevertheless begins to demand evidence of practical results. This fails to appear. Her circle continues to incite her, since her words reveal inner strength, and yet they harbour a suspicion that all is not well. They become impatient, they risk extreme measures, they drive the spurs of ridicule into her flank to spur her on. Too late, the misunderstanding has taken effect. It is no humiliation for those around her that he really deceived Marie, but it is for her. The revenge offered, however, to despise him has little meaning; for he does not love her, and her scorn becomes a bank draft that no one honours. On the other hand, although for the circle there is nothing painful in Clavigo’s being a deceiver, there is for Marie; and yet he does not altogether want for an advocate in her heart. She feels she has gone too far, she has given hint of a strength she does not possess. That is not something she will admit to. And what consolation is there in contempt? It is better, then, to sorrow. Besides, perhaps there is some secret note or other in her possession, of great significance for interpreting the text, but also such that it can present him, according to circumstances, in a better or worse light. But she has let no one in on this, nor will she; for if he wasn’t a deceiver he might conceivably rue the step and turn back, or perhaps – what would be even more glorious – have no need to rue it. He might justify himself absolutely or explain everything, and then it could be a hindrance were she to make use of it; the old relationship could no longer be evoked, and that would be her own fault, for it would have been she who had made others privy to the most secret growth of his love. Were she really able to convince herself that he was a deceiver, yes, then it would make no difference anyway, and in any case the nicest thing for her to do would be not to make use of it.

The environment has thus been her unwilling assistant in developing a new passion, jealousy over her own sorrow. Her decision is made. On every side the environment lacks the energy to harmonize with her passion; she takes the veil. She does not enter a convent, but she takes the veil of sorrow which hides her from every alien glance. Outwardly she is calm, all is forgotten, her conversation betrays no hint; she takes the vow of sorrow and now begins her solitary, secret life. At that moment everything is changed; before, it seemed at least she could talk to others, but now not only is she bound by the vow of silence wrung from her by her pride with love’s connivance, or demanded by her love and assented to by her pride, she simply doesn’t know where to begin, or how, and not because new factors have appeared, but because reflection has triumphed. If someone were now to ask her what it was she sorrowed over, she could give no answer, or she would answer in the same way as that wise man¹¹ who, when asked what religion was, kept on demanding time to think it over and so was perpetually at a loss for an answer. Now she is lost to the world, lost to her surroundings, immured alive; it is with sadness she covers the last opening, for even then she feels it might be possible to reveal herself; the next moment she is removed from them for ever. Yet it is decided, irrevocably decided, and she need have no fear that, as with anyone else walled in alive, once the meagre portion of bread and water provided for her is used up she shall perish, for she has nourishment for a long time; she need have no fear of boredom, she can keep herself busy. Her exterior is calm and peaceful, there is nothing unusual about it, and yet her heart is not the incorruptible being of a quiet spirit,¹² but a restless spirit’s fruitless occupation. She seeks solitude or its opposite. In solitude she rests from the effort it always costs to force one’s outward appearance into a definite form. In the way someone who has been standing or sitting in a forced position stretches his body with pleasure, as a branch long bowed under pressure joyfully regains its normal position when what binds it is broken, so she too finds her recreation. Or she seeks the opposite – noise, distraction – so that while everyone’s attention is directed elsewhere, she can be safely occupied with herself; and what goes on nearest her, the sound of music, the noisy conversation, sound so far away that it is as if she were sitting in a little room by herself, removed from all the world. And if perchance she cannot force back the tears, she is certain to be misunderstood, maybe she is just having a good cry; for when one lives in an ecclesia pressa,¹³ it is a real joy when one’s way of expressing one’s worship coincides with the public way of doing so. Only the quieter forms of contact make her anxious, for here she is less unguarded, here it is so easy to make a mistake, so hard to prevent its being noticed.

So outwardly there is nothing to remark, but inside there is ceaseless activity. Here there is an examination which one might quite justly and with special emphasis call interrogation under torture; everything is brought out and carefully examined: his form, his appearance, his voice, his words. In interrogations of this kind it sometimes happens that a judge, captivated by the beauty of the accused, has broken off the examination and found himself unable to carry on. The court expectantly awaits the results of his investigation, but they fail to materialize, and yet not at all because the judge is in neglect of his duties; the gaoler can testify that he comes every night, that the accused is brought before him, that the examination lasts several hours, that in his experience no judge has ever kept going like this. And so the court concludes that it must be a very complicated case. Thus it goes with Marie, not once but again and again. Everything is presented as it occurred, faithfully, justice demands that – and love. The accused is summoned. ‘There he comes, he turns the corner, he opens the wicket gate, look how he hastens, he has longed for me, it’s as though he threw everything aside so as to come to me as soon as possible, I hear his swift steps, swifter than my own heartbeat, he comes, there he is’ – and the interrogation – it is postponed.

‘Good Lord, this little phrase! I have so often repeated it to myself, recalled it in the midst of much else, but never before have I noticed what really lies concealed in it. Yes, it explains everything; he is not serious about leaving me, he is coming back. What is the whole world to this little phrase? People wearied of me, I had no friend, but now I have a friend, a confidant, a little phrase that explains everything – he is coming back, his eye is not downcast, he looks at me half reproachfully and says, “You of little faith”, and this little phrase hovers like an olive leaf upon his lips – there he is’ – and the interrogation is postponed.

In circumstances like these it is natural enough that giving a verdict should be attended with great difficulty. Obviously a young girl is not a jurist, but it by no means follows that she cannot pass judgement, and yet this girl’s verdict will always be such that, while at first glance looking like a verdict, it contains something else that shows it is no verdict, and which also shows that the next moment a quite opposite verdict can be given. ‘He was no deceiver, for to be that he must have been aware of it from the beginning; but he wasn’t, my heart tells me he loved me.’ If one raises the requirements of deception in this way, perhaps in the final analysis no deceiver has ever lived. To acquit him on that ground shows a partiality for the accused which is not consistent with strict justice, nor does it stand up to a single objection. ‘He was a deceiver, an abhorrent creature who has callously and heartlessly made me boundlessly unhappy. I was content before I knew him. Yes, it’s true, I had no idea I could be so happy, or that there was such a wealth of joy as he taught me; but nor did I have any idea I could become as unhappy as I am now, and this too he has taught me. Therefore I will hate him, abhor him, curse him. Yes, I curse you, Clavigo, in the inmost depths of my soul I curse you. But no one must know this, I cannot allow anyone else to do the same, for no one but myself has the right to do so. I have loved you as no one else has, but I hate you too, for no one knows your cunning as I do. Ye good gods to whom vengeance belongs, grant me it just a while! I shall not misuse it, I shall not be cruel. I shall then creep into his soul when he wants to love another, not to kill that love, that would be no punishment, as well I know, for he loves her as little as he loved me; he simply does not love people, he loves only the idea, the thought, his mighty influence at court, his intellectual power, none of which I can understand how he can love. I take these away from him, then he will learn to know my pain. And when he is near to despair I will give it all back to him, but it is me he shall thank for it – and then I am avenged.

‘No, he was no deceiver. He loved me no more and so left me, but that was no deceit. If he had stayed without loving me, then he would have been a deceiver, then I would have lived like a pensioner on the love he once had for me, lived on his compassion, on the mite he might have thrown to me, though generously, lived as a burden on him and as a torment to myself. Cowardly, wretched heart, despise yourself, learn to be great; learn it from him; he has loved me better than I have known how to love myself. And should I be angry with him? No, I shall continue to love him, because his love was stronger, his thought prouder than my weakness and my cowardice. And perhaps he loves me still, yes, it was out of love for me that he left me.

‘Yes, now I see the truth, I am no longer in doubt, he was a deceiver. I saw him, his look was proud and triumphant, he looked down upon me with his scornful glance. At his side walked a Spanish girl, radiantly beautiful; why was she so beautiful? – I could murder her – why am I not as beautiful? And was I not? I didn’t know it, but he taught me that I was, and why am I no longer? Who is to blame? A curse upon you, Clavigo! If you had stayed with me I would have become even more beautiful, for with your words and your assurances my love grew, and with it my beauty. Now I am faded, I thrive no more, what power has all the world’s tenderness compared with a word from you? Oh, that I were beautiful again! Would that I could be pleasing to him again, for that is the only reason I want to be beautiful. Oh, think if he could no longer love youth and beauty; then I would grieve more than before, and who can grieve as I?

‘Yes, he was a deceiver. How else could he have stopped loving me? Have I stopped loving him? Is it not the same law for a man’s love as for a woman’s? Or should a man be weaker than the weak? Or has he perhaps made a mistake, perhaps it was an illusion that he loved me, an illusion that vanished like a dream; does this befit a man? Or was it an instability, is it proper for a man to be unstable? And why did he assure me in the beginning, then, that he loved me so much? If love has no endurance, what then can endure? Yes, Clavigo, you have taken everything from me, my faith, my faith in love, not just in yours!

‘He was no deceiver. What it was that snatched him away, I do not know. I am not familiar with this dark power; but it pained him, pained him deeply; he did not want to share it with me, so he made himself out to be a deceiver. Yes, if he had taken up with another girl, I would say he was a deceiver and no power in the world would make me believe otherwise; but he has not done that. Perhaps he thinks that by adopting the appearance of a deceiver he can lessen my pain, arm me against him. That’s why he shows himself now and then with young girls, that’s why he looked so scornfully at me the other day, in order to make me angry and so set me free. No, he was certainly no deceiver, and how would that voice be capable of deception? It was so calm, yet full of feeling; as if clearing a path through solid rock, that’s how it sounded from an interior whose depth I scarcely managed to suspect. Can this voice deceive? What, then, is the voice, is it a movement of the tongue, a noise one can produce at pleasure? Somewhere in the soul it must have a home, it has to have a birthplace. And that it has, it had its home in his inmost heart. There he loved me, there he loves me. True, he had another voice too, one that was cold, icy, it could kill every joy in my soul, stifle every joyful thought, could even make my kiss cold and disgusting to myself. Which was the true one? He could deceive in every way, but this vibrant voice in which all his passion trembles, this I feel was no deception, it is impossible. The other was a deception, or evil powers took control of him. No, he was no deceiver – that voice which has bound me to him for ever, that is not a deception. A deceiver he was not, even if I never understood him.’

She is never finished with the interrogation, nor with the verdict. Not with the interrogation, because it keeps on being interrupted; not with the verdict, because it is only a mood. So once begun, this movement can continue as long as it will, and no end is in sight. Only a breach can bring it to a close, that is, breaking off the whole line of thought; but this cannot happen, because the will is always in the service of reflection, which gives the momentary passion energy.

When she tries at times to break away from it all, to make nothing of it, this is again only a mood, a momentary passion, and reflection remains constantly the victor. There can be no mediation.¹⁴ If she sets off in such a way that the beginning is in one way or another the result of processes of reflection, she is immediately carried away. The will has to be wholly indifferent, to begin on the strength of its own willing; only then can there be any question of a beginning. If that happens, she may indeed begin, but this falls altogether outside our field of interest; we can then hand her over with pleasure to the moralists or whoever else would take care of her; we wish her an honourable marriage and promise to dance on her wedding-day, where the change of name will also conveniently let us forget that it was the Marie Beaumarchais we have been speaking of.

We return nevertheless to Marie Beaumarchais. The peculiarity of her sorrow, as we noted above, is the restlessness that prevents her finding the object of sorrow. Her pain cannot find calm, she lacks the peace necessary for a life that can assimilate its nourishment and be refreshed by it; no illusion overshadows her with its quiet coolness while she absorbs the pain. She lost childhood’s illusion when she gained that of love; she lost that of love when Clavigo deceived her. If she could gain the illusion of sorrow, that would help. Her sorrow would then grow to a man’s maturity and she would have compensation for the loss. But her sorrow does not thrive, for she has not lost Clavigo, he has deceived her; it remains ever an infant child with its wail, a child without father and mother; for if Clavigo had been torn away from her, then in the memory of his faithfulness and love it would have had a father, and in Marie’s infatuation a mother. And she has nothing on which to rear it, for though the experience was a beautiful one, it had no significance in itself, only as a foretaste of the future. And she cannot hope this child of pain may be transformed into a son of joy, she cannot hope for Clavigo to return, for she would not have the strength to endure a future; she has lost the glad confidence with which she would have followed him undaunted into the abyss, and she has acquired instead a hundred scruples; the most she could do would be to experience the past once again. When Clavigo left her, there stretched before her a future so beautiful, so enchanting, that it nearly threw her thoughts into confusion; it exerted its power dimly over her, her metamorphosis was already begun, then the development was checked. A new life had been hinted at, she had felt its forces at work in her, then it was destroyed and she recoiled, and there is no compensation for her, neither in this nor the future world. The future smiled to greet her so richly and was mirrored in her love’s illusion, and still everything was so natural and straightforward. Now an impotent reflection may sometimes paint her an impotent illusion, with no power to tempt her but able momentarily to soothe her. And so will time pass for her until she has consumed the very object of her sorrow, which was not identical with her sorrow but the occasion that made her constantly search for an object of sorrow.

If someone possessed a letter which he knew or believed contained information concerning what he had to consider his life’s blessedness, but the written characters were thin and faded, the handwriting almost illegible, he would read it and reread it, with anxiety and disquiet certainly, but with passion. At one moment he would get one meaning out of it, the next another. When he was quite sure he had managed to read a word, he would interpret everything in the light of that word. But he would never pass beyond the same uncertainty with which he began. He would stare, more and more anxiously, but the more he stared the less he saw; sometimes his eyes filled with tears, but the more that happened, again the less he saw. In due course the writing became weaker and less distinct; finally the paper itself crumbled away and he had nothing left but eyes blinded with tears.

2. Donna Elvira

We make this girl’s acquaintance in the opera Don Giovanni, and it will be of some importance for our later investigation to take heed of the hints of her earlier life contained in that piece. She had been a nun;¹⁵ it is from the peace of a convent that Don Giovanni has snatched her. This gives some indication of the intensity of her passion. Here was no frivolous hussy from a boarding-school who had learned to love in class and to flirt at dances; there is no great significance in someone like that being seduced. Elvira, on the other hand, has been brought up in the discipline of the convent, yet this has not been able to root out passion, though it has indeed taught her to suppress it and so made it even more violent once it is allowed to emerge. She is a sure prey for a Don Giovanni; he will know how to coax out her passion, wild, ungovernable, insatiable, to be satisfied only in his love. In him she has everything and the past is nothing; if she leaves him she loses everything, including the past. After she had renounced the world, there appeared a figure she could not renounce, and that is Don Giovanni. Henceforth she renounces everything in order to live with him. The more important the life she leaves behind, the more she must cling to him; the more tightly she has embraced him, the more frightful her despair when he abandons her. Already from the beginning her love is a despair; nothing in heaven or on earth means anything to her except Don Giovanni.

In the opera Elvira interests us only so far as her relationship to Don Giovanni has importance for him. Were I to suggest what this importance of hers is in a few words, I would say, ‘She is Don Giovanni’s epic fate, the Commendatore his dramatic fate.’ There is a hatred in her which will seek out Giovanni in every out-of-the-way corner, a flame of fire which will illumine the darkest hiding-place, and should she still not bring him to light, there is a love within her that will find him. She joins in with the others in pursuit of Don Giovanni, but were I to imagine all powers neutralized, the efforts of his pursuers cancelling each other out, so that it was up to Elvira alone and Don Giovanni was in her power, then the hatred would arm her to murder him, but her love would forbid it; not from sympathy, since for that he is too great in her eyes, and so she would constantly keep him alive, for were she to kill him she would kill herself. So if there were no other forces than Elvira turned against Don Giovanni, the opera would never end; for, in order to avenge herself, Elvira would, if possible, prevent the lightning itself from striking him, and yet she would again be unable to take revenge herself. Such is the interest she has for us in the opera; but here we are only concerned with her relationship to Don Giovanni so far as it is significant for her. She is an object of interest to many, but in very different ways. Don Giovanni has an interest in her before the piece begins; the audience bestows its dramatic interest upon her; but we friends of sorrow, we follow her not just to the end of the street, not only for the instant she crosses the stage; no, we follow her upon her solitary way.

So Don Giovanni has seduced Elvira and abandoned her; it is quickly done, as quickly as ‘a tiger can snap a lily’.¹⁶ From the fact that in Spain alone there are 1,003, we can see that Don Giovanni is in a hurry and to some extent reckon the speed. Don Giovanni has abandoned her, but there is no environment into whose arms she can helplessly fall; she need have no fear of the environment closing too tightly around her; it realizes, rather, that it should open wide its ranks to make her departure easier. She need have no fear of anyone disputing her loss with her, on the contrary, someone or other may perhaps take it upon himself to try to prove it. She stands alone and abandoned, and there is no doubt that can tempt her; it is clear that he was a deceiver who has taken everything from her and exposed her to shame and dishonour. Aesthetically, however, this is not the worst that can happen; it saves her, for a while, from that reflective sorrow which is certainly more painful than immediate sorrow. The fact here is indubitable and reflection cannot turn it now into one thing, now into another. A Marie Beaumarchais may have loved a Clavigo just as violently, as wildly and passionately; as far as her own passion goes, it may be altogether accidental that the worst has not happened; she could almost wish that it had, for then, after all, there would be an end of the story; she would be much more strongly armed against him; but it has not happened. So in her case the fact is far more doubtful, its reality will always be a secret between her and Clavigo. When she considers the cold cunning, the shabby calculation required so to deceive her that in the eyes of the world it appears something far less serious, and she herself is exposed to the sort of sympathy that says, ‘Well now, good gracious, it’s not as bad as all that’, it can arouse her, she can become practically insane at the thought of the proud superiority in the face of which she has nevertheless meant nothing, which has set her a limit and said, ‘thus far and no further’. And yet the whole story can also be interpreted in another way, a nicer way. But as the interpretation changes, so does the fact. Reflection, therefore, straightaway gets enough to do and reflective sorrow is inescapable.

Don Giovanni has abandoned Elvira; at that instant everything is clear to her, and there is no doubt to lure her grief into the seminar room of reflection. She is mute in her despair. Her sorrow courses through her with a single beat of the pulse, and it flows outwardly, the passion shines through her in a blaze and can be seen in her outward appearance. Hate, despair, vengeance, love, all break forth to make themselves visibly revealed. At this moment she is picturesque. The imagination also therefore immediately presents us with a picture of her, and here the external is not rendered indifferent, reflection upon it is not empty, and its activity not without significance, as it proposes and disposes.

Whether she is at this moment an object of artistic representation is another question. But what is certain is that at this moment she is visible and can be seen, not of course in the sense that this or that actual Elvira can actually be seen, which in most cases amounts to her not being seen, but the Elvira we imagine is visible in her essentiality. Whether art is able to provide just that shade in her expression that renders visible the point of her despair I leave open, but she can be described, and the picture which thus appears is not a mere burden for the memory that is neither here nor there, but has its validity. And who has not seen Elvira!

It was early morning when I undertook a journey by foot in one of the romantic parts of Spain. Nature awoke, the trees of the forest shook their heads, and it was as though the leaves rubbed the sleep from their eyes; one tree bent to the other to see if it had arisen, and the whole forest billowed in the fresh cool breeze; a light mist rose from the earth, the sun snatched it away as if it were a carpet under which it had rested during the night, and now looked down like a loving mother upon the flowers and everything that had life, and said, ‘Arise, dear children, the sun is already shining.’ As I rounded the end of a gully my eye fell upon a monastery high up on the peak of the mountain, to which there led a footpath with many turnings. My thoughts dwelt upon it. Thus it stands there, I thought, like a house of God founded firmly upon the rock. My guide told me that it was a convent famous for its strict discipline. My pace slackened, like my thought; why hurry when so near the monastery? I should probably have come to a full stop had I not been startled by a rapid movement nearby. Involuntarily I turned; it was a knight who hastened past me. How handsome he was, his step so light yet so full of strength, so royal and yet so fugitive! He turned his head to look back, his countenance so captivating yet his glance so uneasy; it was Don Giovanni. Is he hurrying to an assignation or is he coming from one? Yet he was soon gone from my sight and out of my mind, and my glance was fixed on the convent. I sank once more into contemplation of the joys of life and the quiet peace of the convent, when up on the mountain I saw the figure of a woman. She was hurrying headlong down the footpath, but the path was steep and it looked all the time as though she were plunging down from the mountain. She came nearer. Her countenance was pale, only her eyes blazed terribly, her body was trembling, her bosom rose and fell violently, but still she hurried faster and faster, her locks Hung about and scattered in the wind, but not even the fresh morning breeze and her hurried pace could bring colour to her cheeks; her nun’s veil was torn in shreds and flew behind, her thin white gown would have betrayed much to a profane glance had not the passion in her face attracted even the most depraved person’s glance. She rushed by me – I dared not address her, her brow was too majestic, her glance too royal, her passion too high-born. Where does this girl belong? In the convent? Have these passions their home there? In the world? But the costume? – Why does she hurry? Is it to hide her shame and disgrace or to catch up with Don Giovanni? She hastens on to the forest and it closes around her and conceals her, and I see her no more but hear only the forest’s sigh. Poor Elvira! Perhaps the trees have found out something – and yet the trees are better than men, for the trees sigh and keep silent; men whisper.

In this first moment Elvira can be represented, and even though art really cannot take the measure of it, because it would be hard to find a unified expression that also contained all the multiplicity of her passion, the soul demands to see her. This I have tried to suggest through the little picture just sketched. The idea of it was not actually to present her but only to suggest that a description of her was in place, that it was not an arbitrary whim on my part but a legitimate requirement of the idea. Yet this is just one moment and we must follow Elvira further.

The most obvious movement is one in time. She maintains herself on that almost picturesque point suggested in the foregoing, through a series of moments in time. This gives her dramatic interest. In the haste with which she sped past me she overtakes Don Giovanni. This, too, is quite as it should be seeing he has abandoned her, but he has drawn her into his own life’s pace and she must reach him. If she does reach him, her whole attention is then turned outward again and we still do not get reflective sorrow. She has lost everything, she lost heaven when she chose the world, the world when she lost Don Giovanni. So she has nowhere to seek refuge except with him, it is only by being in his presence that she can keep despair at a distance, either by drowning out the inner voices with the clamour of hate and resentment, which resound only when Don Giovanni is present, or by hoping. This latter indicates that the elements of reflective sorrow are present already but have not yet been able to gather themselves inwardly. ‘She must first be cruelly convinced,’ reads Kruse’s adaptation,¹⁷ but this requirement completely betrays the inner disposition. If what has happened hasn’t convinced her that Don Giovanni was a deceiver, nothing will. But as long as she requires a further proof, she can succeed, with a restless, rootless life constantly occupied in pursuing Don Giovanni, in escaping the inner unrest of a quiet despair. The paradox already exists in her soul, but so long as she can keep the soul agitated by external evidences not designed to explain the past but to provide information about Don Giovanni’s present condition, she escapes reflective sorrow. Hate, resentment, curses, prayers, imprecations alternate, but her soul is still not turned back on itself in order to rest in the contemplation that she is deceived. So when Kruse has Don Giovanni say:

‘Are you now disposed to hear,

To believe my words, you who suspect me;

Then I might almost say improbable

Is the cause that compelled,’ etc.,

one must be careful not to think that what, to the spectator’s ear, sounds like mockery has the same effect upon Elvira. For her the words are a relief, for it is the improbable she wants, and she wants to believe it just because it is improbable.

If we now let Don Giovanni and Elvira come together, we have the choice of letting either Don Giovanni or Elvira be the stronger. If he is the stronger, her appearance on the scene loses all its point. She demands ‘proof to be cruelly convinced’; he is gallant enough not to withhold it. But, naturally, she is not convinced and demands a new proof; for demanding a new proof is an alleviation, and the uncertainty is a relief. She then becomes but one witness more to the exploits of Don Giovanni. But we could also imagine Elvira as the stronger. It rarely happens, but we would do it out of gallantry to the sex. She stands, then, in her full beauty still, for though she has wept, the tears have not quenched the lustre in her eye, and though she has sorrowed, the sorrow has not wasted her youthful vitality, and though she has fretted, her fretting has not gnawed away the vitality of her beauty, and though her cheek has become pale, the expression has become for that reason all the more soulful, and though she does not glide with the lightness of childlike innocence, she steps forward with the energetic firmness of womanly passion. This is how she confronts Don Giovanni. She has loved him more than the whole world, more than the blessedness of her own soul, she has lavished everything upon him, even her honour, and he was unfaithful. Now she knows only one passion, it is hate; only one thought, it is revenge. Thus she is as great as Don Giovanni; for seducing all girls is the male equivalent of the woman’s letting herself be seduced once with all her soul and now hating, or if you will, loving her seducer with an energy no spouse possesses. This is how she confronts him, she does not lack the courage to dare to have at him, she does not fight for moral principles, she fights for her love, a love she does not base upon respect; she does not fight to be his mate, she fights for her love, and this is not satisfied with a contrite faithfulness, it demands revenge; for love of him she has thrown away her blessedness, and if it were offered her once more she would throw it away again in order to avenge herself.

Such a figure cannot fail to make an impression upon Don Giovanni. He knows what pleasure lies in sucking in the finest and most fragrant flower of first youth, he knows it is only a moment, and he knows what follows, he has seen these pale figures often enough wither so quickly that one can almost see it happening. But here a miracle has taken place, the laws of life’s ordinary course are broken. He has seduced a young girl but her life is not extinguished, her beauty has not faded; she is transformed and is more beautiful than ever. He cannot deny it, she captivates him more than any girl has captivated him, more than Elvira herself has done; for the innocent nun was still, in spite of all her beauty, a girl like many others, his infatuation with her an adventure like many another; but this girl is the only one of her kind. This girl is armed, she does not conceal a dagger in her breast but she has an armour,¹⁸ not visible, for her hatred is not satisfied with speeches and declamations, but unseen, and it is her hatred. Don Giovanni’s passion is aroused, she must be his once more; but not so. Yes, if it were a girl who knew his baseness, who hated him although she had not been deceived by him, then Don Giovanni would have won; but this girl he cannot win, all his seduction is powerless. Had the voice been more ingratiating than his own, the approach more insidious than his own, he still would not have moved her; had the angels prayed for him, had the Mother of God been willing to be bridesmaid at the wedding, still it would have been in vain. She will turn, not away from him, as even, in the underworld, Dido turned away from Aeneas who had deceived her, but towards him, even more coldly than Dido.¹⁹

But this encounter of Elvira with Don Giovanni is only a moment of transition; she walks across the stage, the curtain falls, but we, dear Symparanekromenoi, we steal after, for only now does she really become Elvira. As long as she is in the presence of Don Giovanni she is beside herself, when she comes to herself it is time to think the paradox. Thinking a contradiction, in spite of all the assurances of modern philosophy and the foolhardy courage of its young adherents, must always involve great difficulty.²⁰ A young girl may well be forgiven for finding it hard, and yet this is the task that is set for her, to think that the one she loves was a deceiver. This she has in common with Marie Beaumarchais, and yet there is a difference between the way in which they each come to the paradox. The fact which Marie had to go on was in itself so dialectical that reflection had straightaway to grasp hold of it with all its appetitive urgency. In Elvira’s case the factual proof of Don Giovanni’s deception seems so evident that it is not easy to see how reflection can get hold of it. It therefore attacks the matter from another angle. Elvira has lost everything, and yet her whole life lies before her and her soul demands a pittance to live on. Here two possibilities present themselves: either to observe ethical and religious categories or to preserve her love for Giovanni. If she does the former she falls outside our interest; we gladly let her retire to a Magdalene Institution,²¹ or wherever else she wants. This, however, will probably strike her as difficult, for to make it possible she must first despair; she has already known the religious once, and a second time it makes great demands. The religious is, altogether, a dangerous power to have anything to do with; it is jealous of itself and will not be ridiculed. When she chose the convent her proud soul may have found a rich satisfaction in it, for say what you will, no girl makes so brilliant a match as she who gives herself in marriage to heaven; now, however, as a penitent she must return in repentance and contrition. Moreover, there is always the question of whether she can find a priest who can preach the gospel of repentance and contrition with the same pith as Don Giovanni preached the glad tidings of pleasure. In order, then, to save herself from this despair she must hold on to Don Giovanni’s love, something she finds so much the easier seeing she does after all still love him. Any third possibility is unthinkable; to be able to seek comfort in the love of another would be more frightful still than the most frightful of all. So she must love Don Giovanni for her own sake; self-defence bids her do so. And this is the spur of reflection which forces her to gaze at this paradox of whether she can love him although he deceived her. Whenever despair would take hold of her, she takes refuge in the memory of Don Giovanni’s love, and in order properly to come to terms with this refuge she is tempted to think that he is no deceiver, even though she does this in many ways; for a woman’s dialectic is remarkable, and only someone who has had the opportunity to observe it can emulate it, whereas even the greatest dialectician who has loved could speculate himself silly trying to produce it. […]

So Elvira cannot bring Don Giovanni to light, and now she has to find her way out of her entanglement alone; she must come to herself. She has changed her environment and so the support that might perhaps have helped to bring her sorrow into the open is also removed. Her new circle knows nothing of her earlier life, suspects nothing, for there is nothing peculiar or noteworthy in her appearance, no marks of grief, no signpost saying ‘Here there is sorrow’. She can control her every expression, for this is indeed something the loss of her honour can teach her; and even though she sets no great store by people’s judgements, she is at least able to avoid their condolences. So everything is in order and she can reckon fairly safely on going through life without awakening any suspicion in the minds of the inquisitive rabble which as a rule is as dimwitted as it is inquisitive. She is in legal and undisputed possession of her sorrow, and it is only if she is unlucky enough to fall foul of a professional dealer in contraband²² that she need fear any more penetrating search. What is going on inside her? Does she sorrow? Indeed she does! But how are we to describe this sorrow? I would call it an anxiety about how to support life; for people’s lives consist not of food and drink alone, the soul too needs nourishment. She is young and yet her life’s supply is exhausted, but it does not follow that she dies. Every day she is in this respect anxious for the morrow. She cannot stop loving him and yet he deceived her, but if he deceived her, then her love has lost its power to sustain. Yes, had he not deceived her, had a higher power torn him away, then she would have been as well supplied as any girl could wish; for the memory of Don Giovanni amounted to considerably more than many a living husband. But if she gives up her love she is reduced to beggary, she will have to return to the convent in shame and dishonour. Yes, if even that could buy back his love! So she lives on. This, the present day, it seems to her she can still last out, she still has some left-over to live on; but the day after, she fears for that. Then she ponders over and over again, she grasps at every expedient yet finds none, and so she can never sorrow consistently and soundly because she is always trying to find out how to sorrow.

‘Forget him, that’s what I want, tear his image from my heart, ransack myself like a consuming fire, and every thought that belongs to him shall be incinerated; only then will I be saved; it is self-defence, and if I do not tear out every thought of him, even the remotest, I am done for. Only thus can I protect myself. Myself – what is this self of mine? Wretchedness and misery. To my first love I was unfaithful and am I now to try to make up for it by being unfaithful to my second?

‘No, I will hate him; only so can I find rest and occupation. I will weave a garland of curses out of all that reminds me of him, and for every kiss I say “A curse on you!”, and for every embrace “Ten curses on you!”, and for every time he swore that he loved me I shall swear that I will hate him. This will be my work, my task, to this I shall dedicate myself. At the convent I am used to repeating my rosary, and so I shall be a nun after all, praying early and late. Or should I be content that he once loved me? Maybe I should be a sensible girl who didn’t throw him away in proud contempt, now that I know he is a deceiver. Perhaps I ought to be a good housewife who knows how to be frugal and make a little go as far as possible. No, I will hate him, for that is the only way I can tear myself away from him and prove to myself that I am not in need of him. But am I not in his debt when I hate him? Am I not then living at his expense? For what else is it that feeds my hate except my love of him?

‘He was no deceiver, he had no idea what a woman can suffer. If he had, he would not have left me. He was a man, sufficient unto himself. Is that a consolation for me? Certainly, for my suffering and torment show me how happy I have been, so happy that he has no conception of it. So why do I complain? A man is not like a woman, not as happy as she when she is happy, not as unhappy as she when she is boundlessly unhappy because her happiness knew no bounds.

‘Did he deceive me? No! Had he promised me anything? No! My Giovanni was no suitor, he was a wretched poultry thief; a nun does not degrade herself for the likes of that. He did not ask for my hand, he stretched out his own; I grasped it; he looked at me, I was his; he opened his arms, I belonged to him. I went with him, I twined myself around him like a plant, I rested my head upon his breast and gazed into that omnipotent countenance with which he conquered the world, and yet which rested on me as if for him I were the whole world. Like a child at the breast I sucked abundance, wealth and bliss. Can I ask for more? Was I not his? Was he not mine? And if he was not, was I any the less his? When the gods roamed the earth and fell in love with women, were they faithful to their loved ones? Yet no one thinks of saying that they deceived them! And why not? Because they will have it that a girl should be proud of having been loved by a god. And what are all the gods of Olympus compared to my Giovanni? And should I not be proud, should I degrade him, should I insult him in my thoughts, let them force him into the narrow, miserable laws that apply to ordinary men? No, I will be proud that he has loved me; he was greater than the gods, and I will honour him by making myself nothing. I will love him because he belonged to me, love him because he left me, and still I am constantly his and will treasure what he squanders.

‘No, I cannot think of him. Every time my thoughts approach that hiding-place in my soul where his memory dwells, it is as if I committed a sin. I feel an anguish, an inexpressible anguish, an anguish like that I felt in the convent when I sat in my solitary cell waiting for him, terrified of the thought of the prioress’s stern contempt, the convent’s terrible punishment, my crime against God. And yet wasn’t this anguish part of it? What would my love for him have been without it? After all, he was not consecrated to me, we had not received the blessing of the Church, the bells had not tolled for us, the hymn had not been sung, and yet what were all the music and festivity of the Church? What power could it have to prepossess me compared with my anguish? – But then he came, and the discord of my anguish resolved itself into the harmony of the most blissful security, and only sweet tremblings luxuriantly moved my soul. Am I then to fear this anguish? Does it not remind me of him, does it not announce his coming? If I could remember him without the anguish it would not be him I remembered. He comes, he invites quiet, he is master of spirits which would tear me from him. I am his, blessed in him.’

If I were to imagine someone in distress at sea, unconcerned for his own life, remaining on board because there was something he wanted to save and could not because he was at a loss what it was he should save, I would have a picture of Elvira; she is in distress at sea, her destruction is approaching, but that does not concern her, she does not notice, she is at a loss what it is she is to save.

3. Margrete

We know this girl from Goethe’s Faust. A young, commonplace girl, not, like Elvira, destined for the convent, yet brought up in the fear of the Lord, even if her soul was too childlike to feel the gravity of it, as Goethe so incomparably says:

Half sport of childhood,

Half God within thee!²³

What we especially love in this girl is the delightful simplicity and humility of her pure soul. Straightaway, the first time she sees Faust, she feels too inferior to be loved by him, and it is not out of curiosity to learn whether Faust loves her that she plucks the petals of the daisy, but from humility because she feels herself too unworthy to make a choice, and therefore bows to the oracle-myth of a mysterious power. Yes, lovely Margrete! Goethe has told us how you plucked the petals and recited the words, ‘He loves me, he loves me not’; poor Margrete, you can just carry on this occupation, only changing the words, ‘He deceived me, he deceived me not’. You can cultivate a little plot of ground with flowers of this kind, and you will have employment for the rest of your life.

It has been pointed out how remarkable it is that, while the Don Juan legend tells of 1,003 seductions in Spain alone, the story of Faust tells of only one girl seduced.²⁴ It is worth bearing this observation in mind, since it will be important for what follows; it will help us to determine the special nature of Margrete’s reflective sorrow. At first glance it might seem that the only difference between Elvira and Margrete was that between two distinct individuals who have had the same experience, but the difference is far more essential than that, though based not so much upon the difference in their feminine natures as in the essential difference to be found between a Don Juan and a Faust. There must be a difference from the beginning between an Elvira and a Margrete, inasmuch as a girl who is to have an effect on a Faust must differ in essentials from one who has an effect on a Don Juan; yes, even if I imagined that the same girl occupied the attentions of both, the one would still be attracted by something different from the other. This difference, at the beginning present only as a possibility, will, by being brought into relation with a Faust or a Don Juan, develop into something completely actual. Certainly Faust is a reproduction of Don Juan; but precisely his being a reproduction makes him, even in that stage of his life when he can be called a Don Juan, differ essentially from the latter; for to reproduce another stage means not just to become that stage, but to become it with all the elements of the preceding stage within one. Therefore, even if what he desires is the same as a Don Juan, still he desires it in a different manner. But in order for him to desire it in a different manner, it must also be present in a different manner. There are elements in him which make his method different, just as there are also elements in Margrete which make another method necessary. His method depends in turn upon his liking, and that differs from Don Juan’s even if there is an essential similarity between them.

People usually think there is great wisdom in pointing out that Faust ends up becoming a Don Juan; yet it says very little, for the question is in what sense he becomes one. Like Don Juan, Faust is a demonic figure, but at a higher level. The sensual only becomes important for him after he has lost a whole world, but awareness of this loss is not erased, it is constantly there, and therefore what he seeks in the sensual is not so much pleasure as distraction. His doubting soul finds nothing it can rest in and now he grasps for love, not because he believes in it but because it has an element of presenthood in which there is rest for a moment and a striving which distracts and diverts his attention from the nothingness of doubt. Hence his enjoyment does not have the cheerfulness that distinguishes a Don Juan. His countenance is not smiling, his brow is not unclouded, and happiness is not his companion; young girls do not dance into his embrace, he attracts them through fear. What he seeks is not just sensual pleasure, what he desires is the immediacy of spirit. As the shades of the underworld, when they got hold of someone living, sucked the blood from him and lived as long as this blood warmed and nourished them, so Faust seeks an immediate life that can renew and strengthen him. And where better can this be found than in a young girl, and how more perfectly can he imbibe it than in the embrace of love? As the Middle Ages tell of sorcerers who knew how to prepare an elixir for the renewal of youth, and used the heart of an innocent child for that purpose, so his enervated soul needs this strengthening potion, the only thing that for a moment can satisfy him. His sick soul needs what one might call a young heart’s first green shoots; and with what else am I to compare an innocent feminine soul’s first youth? To call it a bloom would be to say too little; for it is more, it is a blossoming. The good health of hope and faith and trust sprouts forth and blossoms in rich variety, and gentle yearnings move the delicate shoots, and dreams cast their shadow on its fruitfulness. This is how it affects a Faust; it beckons his restless soul like an island of peace in the tranquil sea. That it is transient no one knows better than Faust; he believes in it as little as he believes in anything else; but that it exists, of that he convinces himself in love’s embrace. Only the fullness of innocence and childlikeness can for a moment refresh him.

In Goethe’s Faust, Mephistopheles lets Faust see Margrete in a mirror. His eye finds pleasure in beholding her, but it is not after all her beauty he desires, although he accepts that too. What he desires is the pure, untroubled, rich, immediate happiness of a woman’s soul, yet he desires this not spiritually but sensually. In a sense, then, he does desire like Don Juan, but still he desires quite differently. Here perhaps one or another privatdocent,²⁵ convinced he has been a Faust, since otherwise he could never have become privatdocent, will remark that Faust requires intellectual development and culture in the woman who is to attract him. Perhaps a considerable number of privatdocents will find this an excellent remark, and their respective wives and sweethearts will nod in assent. However, it completely misses the mark, for Faust would desire nothing less. A so-called cultured woman would belong within the same relativity as himself and this, notwithstanding, would have no significance at all for him, would simply be nothing. With her crumb of culture, she might perhaps tempt this old magister of doubt to take her out on the river, where she would then soon despair. An innocent young girl, on the other hand, belongs within another relativity, and is therefore, in a sense, nothing as against Faust, yet in another sense tremendously much, since she is immediacy. Only in this immediacy is she an object of his desire, and that is why I said that he desires immediacy not spiritually but sensually.

All this Goethe has seen to perfection, and so Margrete is a commonplace little girl, a girl one might almost be tempted to call insignificant. Now, since it is important for Margrete’s sorrow, we shall consider a little more closely the effect Faust must have had upon her. The individual traits Goethe has emphasized are naturally of great value, yet I believe that for the sake of completeness we must imagine a little modification. In her innocent simplicity, Margrete soon notices that with Faust all is not as it should be in respect of his faith. In Goethe this is brought out in a little catechism scene,²⁶ which is undeniably an excellent invention by the poet. The question now is what consequences this examination can have on their relation to each other. Faust appears as the doubter, and for want of further evidence it seems that Goethe intended to let Faust remain a doubter also in Margrete’s eyes. He has done his best to keep her mind off all such inquiries and to fix it solely on the reality of love. But, on the one hand, I think Faust would find that difficult once the issue had been raised, and on the other, I believe it is incorrect psychologically. It is not for Faust’s sake that I shall dwell further on this point but for Margrete’s, for if he has not revealed himself to her as a doubter her sorrow contains an additional element. Faust is a doubter, then, but he is no vain dupe who merely wants to feel his own importance by doubting what others believe; his doubt has an objective ground in himself. Let that much be said in Faust’s favour.

On the other hand, the moment he wants to implicate others in his doubt, an impure passion can easily become mixed up in it. As soon as the doubt is made to implicate others, an envy is involved that takes pleasure in depriving them of what they take to be certainties. But for this passion of envy to be aroused in the doubter, there must be some question of an opposition on the part of the individual concerned. Where either no such question can arise or it would be inapposite to imagine it, the temptation ceases. This latter is the case with a young girl. Confronted with her, a doubter always finds himself in difficulties. Depriving her of her faith is no task for him; on the contrary, he feels it is only faith that makes her the great thing she is. He feels himself humbled, for there is a natural demand in her that he should be her protector inasmuch as she herself has become hesitant. Yes, a poor wretch of a doubter, a conceited smatterer, might perhaps find satisfaction in depriving a young girl of her faith and pleasure in frightening women and children, since he cannot terrify men. But this is not true of Faust; he is too big for that. We may well agree with Goethe, then, that Faust betrays his doubt a first time, but on the other hand I hardly think it will happen to him a second time.

This is of great importance for our understanding of Margrete. Faust readily sees that Margrete’s entire significance depends on her innocent simplicity; take this away and she is nothing in herself, nothing to him. So this has to be preserved. He is a doubter, but as such has within himself all it takes to conceive positively of faith, for otherwise he is a poor doubter. What he lacks is the final conclusion and it is this that makes all the components of his outlook negative. She, on the contrary, has the conclusion; she has childlikeness and innocence. Nothing is therefore easier than for him to equip her. His experience has taught him often enough that what he propounded as doubt seemed to others to be positive truth. So now he finds his happiness in enriching her with the rich content of a view of life; he brings out all the finery of immediate faith; he delights in adorning her with it because it looks well on her and she thereby becomes more beautiful in his eyes. From this he also derives the advantage that her soul clings more and more closely to his. Really she doesn’t understand him at all. She clings to him like a child, for what is doubt to him is for her unfailing truth. But while he thus builds up her faith, at the same time he undermines it, for in the end he becomes for her an object of faith, a god and not a man.

Except that I must try to avert a misunderstanding. It might seem that I make Faust out to be a contemptible hypocrite. This is not at all the case. It is Gretchen herself who has brought the matter up; with half an eye he surveys the glory she thinks she possesses and sees that it cannot withstand his doubt, but he does not have it in his heart to destroy it, and now his conduct is even motivated by a certain kindliness. Her love gives her meaning for him and yet she remains almost a child; he descends to her childlike level and finds his joy in seeing how she makes everything her own. For Margrete’s future, however, this has the most sorrowful consequences. Had Faust revealed himself to her as a doubter, she might perhaps later have been able to save her faith; she would then in all humility have known that his high-flown and daring thoughts were not for her; she would have kept hold of what she had. But now, on the contrary, she owes him the content of her faith, and yet she realizes, seeing he has abandoned her, that he has not believed in it himself. As long as he was with her, she did not discover the doubt; now that he is gone, everything is changed for her and she sees doubt everywhere, a doubt she cannot control, since she always associates it with the circumstance that Faust himself has been unable to master it.

What it is about Faust that captivates Margrete, according to Goethe, is not the seductive talent of a Don Juan but his immense superiority. Therefore, as she so touchingly puts it, she simply cannot understand what Faust finds in her.²⁷ Her first impression of him is altogether overwhelming, over against him she becomes nothing at all. She belongs to him, therefore, not in the same sense as Elvira belongs to Don Juan, for that still expresses an independent existence in relation to the latter, but she altogether disappears in him. Nor does she break with heaven to belong to him, for that would give her a claim on him; imperceptibly, without the remotest reflection, he becomes her all. But just as she is thus nothing from the beginning, so, if I may put it in this way, she becomes less and less the more she is convinced of his almost divine superiority; she is nothing and exists only in him. What Goethe has somewhere said about Hamlet,²⁸ that in relation to his body his soul was an acorn planted in a flower-pot which finally shatters the vessel, is true of Margrete’s love. Faust is too great for her, and her love must end by splitting her soul apart. And the moment for this cannot be long awaiting, for Faust no doubt feels she cannot remain in this immediacy; but then he does not carry her up into the higher regions of the spirit, for it is from these that he is fleeing; he desires her sensually – and abandons her.

So Faust has abandoned Margrete. Her loss is so terrible that her circle itself forgets for a moment what it usually finds so hard to forget, that she has been dishonoured. She reclines in a total impotence in which she is unable even to think of her loss; the strength even to conceive her misfortune is taken from her. Were this condition to continue, it would be impossible for reflective sorrow to occur. Yet, little by little, the consolations she can derive from her environment will bring her to herself, give her thought a jolt that sets it in motion again; but once it is mobilized it is clear that she is incapable of holding on to a single one of its considerations. She listens to her thoughts as though they were not addressed to her, and not a word of them halts or accelerates the unrest in her mind. Her problem is the same as Elvira’s, to believe that Faust was a deceiver; but it is even more difficult because she is far more profoundly influenced by Faust; he wasn’t just a deceiver, but he was indeed a hypocrite; she has not surrendered anything for him, but she owes him everything, and to some extent she still possesses this everything, except that it now proves to be a deception. But then is what he said less true because he himself did not believe it? Not at all, and yet that is how it is for her, for it was through him that she believed it.

It might seem more difficult for reflection to be mobilized in Margrete; what stops it is her feeling that she was absolutely nothing. Yet there is a tremendous dialectical elasticity in this feeling. Were she able to hold on to the thought that she was, in the strictest sense of the word, absolutely nothing, reflection would be excluded. She would then not have been deceived, for when you are nothing there is no relation, and where there is no relation there can be no question of a deception. So far she is at rest. This thought cannot be kept hold of, however, but immediately veers to its opposite. That she was nothing is merely the expression of the fact that all the finite differences of love are negated, and is therefore precisely the expression of her love’s absolute validity, and in that in turn lies her absolute justification. His conduct, then, is not just a deception but an absolute deception, because her love was absolute. And here again she will not rest, for since he has been everything to her she will not be able to hold on even to this thought except through him; but she cannot think it through him, because he was a deceiver.

As her environment now becomes increasingly alien to her, so begins the inner movement. She has not merely loved Faust with all her soul, he was her vital force; it was through him she came into being. The effect of this is that while her soul will not be less agitated in its mood than an Elvira’s, the individual moods will be less agitated. She is on the way to having a fundamental mood, and the individual mood is like a bubble rising from the depths, without the strength to maintain itself nor yet displaced by another bubble but dissolved in the general mood that she is nothing. This fundamental mood is again a state that is felt, which does not express itself in any individual outburst; it is inexpressible, and the attempt the individual mood makes to give it life, to raise it up, is in vain. The total mood therefore constantly resounds in the particular mood, creating its resonance in the form of impotence and vapidity. The individual mood is expressed but it does not soothe, it does not ease; it is […] a false sigh which frustrates, and not the healthy exercise of a normal sigh. Nor is the individual mood full-toned and energetic; for that her utterance is too troubled.

‘Can I forget him? Can the brook, however far it flows, forget its source, forget its head-spring, cut itself off from it? Then it would have to cease flowing! Can the arrow, however swiftly it flies, forget the bowstring? Then its flight would have to halt! Can the raindrop, however far it falls, forget the sky from which it fell? Then it would have to dissolve! Can I become another, can I be born again of a mother who is not my mother? Can I forget him? Then I would have to cease to be!

‘Can I remember him? Can my memory call him forth, now, when he has vanished, I who am myself merely my memory of him? This faded, nebulous picture, is it the Faust I worshipped? I remember his words but I do not possess the harp in his voice! I remember his speeches but my breast is too weak to give them content! They ring out meaninglessly for deaf ears!

‘Faust, oh Faust! come back, satisfy the hungry, clothe the naked, restore the faint, visit the lonely! Well I know that my love had no meaning for you, but neither did I demand that. My love laid itself humbly at your feet, my sigh was a prayer, my kiss a thank-offering, my embrace an act of adoration. Is that why you forsake me? Did you not know it beforehand? Or is it not a reason to love me that I love you, that my soul expires when you are not with me?

‘God in heaven, forgive me for having loved a man more than you, yet I do so still. I know it is a sin that I speak thus to you. Eternal love, oh! let your mercy sustain me; do not reject me; give him back to me, incline his heart once more to me; have pity on me, oh pity! that I pray thus again!

‘Can I curse him, then? What am I, that I should be so bold? Can the earthen vessel presume against the potter? What was I? Nothing! The clay in his hand, a rib from which he made me! What was I? A lowly plant, and he bent down to me, he caused me to grow; he was everything to me, my god, the origin of my mind, the nourishment of my soul!

‘Can I sorrow? No, no! Sorrow broods like a night mist over my soul. Oh! come back, I will give you up, never demand to belong to you; just sit with me, look at me, that I might gain strength to sigh; speak to me, speak of yourself, as though you were a stranger; I will forget that it is you; speak, that the tears may burst forth. Am I then absolutely nothing, unable even to weep without him?

‘Where shall I find rest and peace? The thoughts rise up in my soul, the one against the other, the one confounding the other. When you were with me, they obeyed your beck and call, I played with them as a child, I wove garlands with them and placed them on my head; I let them flutter loose like my hair in the wind. Now they coil themselves terrifyingly about me, like snakes they twine about and crush my anguished soul.

‘And I am a mother! A living creature demands nourishment of me. Can the hungry satisfy the hungry, the faint slake the thirst of the thirsty? Am I to become a murderer; then? Oh! Faust, come back, save the child in the womb, even if you will not save the mother!’

Thus is she moved, not by moods, but in her mood. But the individual mood does not relieve her, because it dissolves in the total mood she cannot annul. Yes, if Faust had been taken from her, then Margrete would not have looked for relief; her lot would still have been enviable in her eyes – but she is deceived. She lacks what might be called the situation of sorrow, for she is not able to sorrow alone. Yes, if, like a poor Florine in the fairytale,²⁹ she could find access to some grotto of echoes, from which she knew that every sigh, every complaint, was heard by the loved one, she would not, like Florine, spend only three nights there, she would stay there day and night; but in Faust’s palace there is no echo-grotto, and he has no ear in her heart.

I have, perhaps, already held your attention for too long, dear Symparanekromenoi; the more so since, however much I have spoken, nothing visible has appeared before you. Yet the reason for this lies not in the deceptiveness of my presentation, but in the matter itself and in sorrow’s cunning. When the favourable occasion is offered, the hidden reveals itself. This we have in our power, and in farewell we shall let these three brides of sorrow come together, let them embrace one another in a unison of sorrow, let them form a group before us, a tabernacle where the voice of sorrow does not become silent, where the sigh does not cease, because they themselves watch more scrupulously and faithfully than vestal virgins over the observance of the holy rites. Ought we to interrupt them in this occupation? Should we wish them their loss restored? Would that be a gain for them? Have they not already received a higher consecration? And this consecration will unite them, and cast a beauty upon their union, and bring them relief in their union. For only someone who has been bitten by snakes knows what the victim of a snake-bite suffers.

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