Johannes, June 3rd

I wait inconspicuously; I still cannot decide how she is to be understood. I do not really exist for her yet, not even in the sense of a negative relationship - I have not ventured any direct experiments.

To see her and love her were the same - that’s what it says in romances. True enough if love had no dialectic; but what does one really learn about love from romances? Sheer lies that help to shorten the task.

I do wonder how it is with her emotions, but I feel certain she has never been in love. Her spirit is too free soaring, it is still nourished by the divine ambrosia of ideals. The strategic principle, then, is to involve her in an interesting situation. The interesting is the field on which the conflict is waged, all potentialities are to be exhausted. Romantic potentiality seems to be what her being is based on, so what I demand is what she herself offers, indeed, what she demands. It all depends on discerning what the individual has to offer: what she demands will always be a consequence of what she offers.

My love affairs always have an intense reality for me, they form creative periods of my life in which my awareness is sharpened and most of my skills are acquired. For the first girl I loved, I learned to dance. Next, for the little dancer, I learned French. At that time, like all blockheads, I went to the marketplace and I was made a fool of. Now I go in for pre-market purchasing.

The question is whether her femininity is powerful enough to reflect itself, or whether it is to be enjoyed only as beauty and charm. Pure and immediate femininity is wonderful, but you risk disturbing calm waters and inviting her to become interesting. If charm and beauty are her only outstanding qualities, it would be better for her to never have heard of love. She needs to be saddled with a suitor - not a caricature, but a respectable young man. He must be amiable, but too little for her passions. She looks down on such a man, acquires a distaste for love, despairs of her own reality when she senses what she might be and sees what reality offers. If this is love, she says, it’s nothing to get excited about.

Johannes, The 5th

I didn’t have to look far: at the home of Baxter, the wholesaler, I find Cordelia in the company of someone just as opportune. It requires no special awareness to see that Edvard, the son of the house, is head over heels in love with her. A good looking young man, pleasant and rather shy, which I suspect does not hurt him in her eyes.

Poor Edvard! He is simply flabbergasted by his love. When he knows she’ll be there in the evening, he dresses up just for her, puts on his dark suit and cuff links just for her, and cuts an almost ridiculous figure among the commonplace company of the room. His embarrassment is almost unbelievable. If he were only striking a pose, he would be a very dangerous rival.

Used expertly, one can come a very long way with awkwardness. Girls generally speak harshly about awkward men; yet secretly they like them. A little embarrassment is change in the hand of a young girl, she feels her superiority and can thus be lulled to sleep. Embarrassment will deprive you of your masculine importance, it’s a good way to neutralize sexual differences. Then when she realizes it is only a pose, when she sees with what ease you shift out of your embarrassment, she blushes inwardly; she feels as if she’s gone too far, as in treating a boy too long as a child.

Johannes, The 7th

Edvard and I are firm friends now. We’re true friends, beautiful friends, the likes of which haven’t been seen since the finest days of the Greeks. We quickly became intimates when, having embroiled him in diverse observations concerning Cordelia, I got him to confess his secret.

Poor fellow, he has already sighed over her for a long time. He escorts her home in the evening with a throbbing heart at the thought that her arm is resting on his. They walk home gazing at the stars, he rings her bell, she disappears, he despairs. He, who has so excellent an opportunity, hasn’t the courage to set foot over her threshold.

I cannot refrain from inwardly insulting Edvard, yet there is something nice about his childlikeness. Ordinarily I fancy myself experienced in the whole quintessence of the erotic; yet I have never observed such lovesick fear and trembling in myself, certainly not to such a degree that it removes my self-possession. I have experienced it only in other ways, which tend to make me stronger.

I have led Edvard to the decisive step of going to Cordelia in person and inviting her out, just as I have led him to the desperate idea of begging me to accompany him. He takes this to be an extraordinary display of friendship. The occasion is exactly as I would have it. Should she have the slightest doubt as to the meaning of my conduct, this will once more confuse everything.

It has become necessary to entertain the aunt: I have taken on the honorable task of conversing with her to cover up Edvard’s infatuated advances on Cordelia. The aunt previously lived in the country, I’m learning more about agronomy every day through a combination of painstaking study and listening to the aunt relate her experiences. With the aunt I am quite successful: she considers me a steady and reliable man. I do not seem to be particularly in favor with Cordelia however, no doubt her femininity is of too innocent a kind to require every man to dance attendance on her.

Sitting in the comfortable drawing room while Cordelia diffuses her charms over everything she comes in contact with, over good and evil, I sometimes grow inwardly impatient. Though I sit before everyone’s eyes in a drawing room, I am really sitting in ambush and I feel briefly tempted to rush out from my hiding place. Patience. What before was impulse is now method. She must be quite otherwise woven into my web, and then I will suddenly let the whole power of love burst forth.

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