Johannes, The 20th One must restrict oneself, this is a main condition of all enjoyment. I cannot expect so soon to get any information about her, I shall stay quite calm.

There is a sweet side to the intense unrest I feel. Longing and impatient expectation toss me about on the breast of the waves which lap against my rudderless ship, and yet how enjoyable thus to splash up and down on a stormy lake. How enjoyable to be stirred in oneself.

Johannes, The 21st The days pass and I am no nearer. I seek her everywhere. It often makes me unreasonable, blurs my vision, enervates my pleasure.

Though there is much a young girl can forget, she cannot forget a situation. The conventional structure of social life can indeed bring one in contact with the fair sex, but there is no artistry in starting an affair there. In social life, at gatherings, the young girl is armed, the occasion is threadbare and banal, she gets no voluptuous thrill.

When she is out on the street, she is in the open sea. She imbues life with intensity and it is as if there were mystery in everything. A smile on the street and a handclasp at a party are currencies of quite different kinds.

Only once the affair is underway do you seek out the subject at parties. Secret communication is the most effective stimulant I know.

She dares not speak of it and yet she thinks of it; she doesn’t know if you’ve forgotten or not; you lead her astray in one way and then another.

Johannes, The 5th

Damned chance!

Is this perhaps some new invention of yours, you unfathomable being, barren mother of all that exists?

Damned chance!!

You, my only confidant, the only being I consider worthy of being my ally and my enemy, always the same however different, always unfathomable, always a riddle!

Damned chance!!!

Has the turbulence in the world’s structure come to a standstill? Is your riddle solved, so that you too have plunged into the ocean of eternity? Curse the thought, for then the world has come to a standstill from sheer boredom!

Damned chance!!!!

I am waiting for you. I do not wish to defeat you with principles, or with what foolish people call character. No. I want to be your poet, and I’ll not be a poet for another! Show yourself! I compose you, I consume my own verse and it is my sustenance. Or do you find me unworthy?

Damned chance!!!!!

I renounce everything, I own nothing, I have no mind to own anything, I love nothing, I have nothing to lose; but haven’t I then become more worthy of you, you who long ago must have wearied of depriving people of what they loved, wearied of their cowardly sighs and prayers?

Let her hate me, despise me, be indifferent to me, love another, I’m not afraid; but stir up the waters, break your silence. It’s cheap of you to starve me in this way, you who after all fancy yourself stronger than I.

Johannes, May 6th

Spring is at hand. Perhaps after all she doesn’t live here in town, perhaps she is from the country, perhaps, perhaps - I could go crazy over all these perhapses, and the more crazy I become, the more perhapses.

In vain I look for her at concerts, at ballets, and on promenades. This pleases me in a way; a young girl who takes too much part in such entertainments is usually not worth conquering; she lacks that originality which for me is second to none.

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