Monday, August 14:
A good night of beautiful easy slumber. Stretched full length as in a coffin and without turning, I lay and bathed in wholesome sweat. Now it’s passing, and the supposed ‘major’ illness has not appeared. I’m weary but clear headed and feel better. - We must not part again, do you hear? — That’s one thing, and if we stay together for ever we’ll see what happens about the rest. —
You have, it’s true, got your beautiful letter writing only from our being so much apart! —
But at the present moment I would like to talk to you.
Ah, dear wife! How dreadful the world is! — In my fever I’ve just been reading those dreadful things by Hugo: — once again I’ve been lucky as I was that time with the underground passages in Rudolstadt! — Enormous talent! — couldn’t help exclaiming as much out loud a few times. But why hang about for ever with this awful stuff into old age, as Hugo does? That ought to be left to the police, chambers of deputies, councils and councillors, etc. Plain statistical reports say it all better. Awriter is only he who knows of all that, only without ever even having observed it, and, because it is so clearly and obviously comprehensible just wastes not one word more over it but simply and solely devises and offers deliverance from evil. True, even here at times sublimity is allowed: e.g., the former Jean-Valjean’s struggles of heart and mind before he denounces himself are masterly. — Ah, what dreadful stuff! A lovely world! —
I have read your letter once more, and then my poem. I didn’t know what to say about it, I was quite stupid, with regard to my poem, that is. —