What have I in common with Jews?
I have hardly anything in common with myself
and should stand very quietly in a corner,
content that I can breathe. – January 8-11, 1914
June, 1914 (pp. 279-280)
There are certain relationships which I can feel distinctly
but which I am unable to perceive.
It would be sufficient to plunge down a little deeper;
but just at this point the upward pressure is so strong
that I should think myself at the very bottom
if I did not feel the currents moving below me.
In any event, I look upward to the surface
whence the thousand-times-reflected brilliance of the light falls upon me.
I float up and splash around on the surface,
in spite of the fact that I loathe everything up there and –
August 6, 1914 (p. 302)
What will be my fate as a writer is very simple.
My talent for portraying my dreamlike inner life
has thrust all other matters into the background;
my life has dwindled dreadfully,
nor will it cease to dwindle.
Nothing else will ever satisfy me.
But the strength I can muster for that portrayal is not to be counted upon:
perhaps it has already vanished forever,
perhaps it will come back to me again,
although the circumstances of my life didn’t favour its return.
Thus I waver,
continually fly to the summit of the mountain,
but then fall back in a moment.
March 11, 1915 (p. 332)
Eastern and Western Jews, a meeting.
The Eastern Jews’ contempt for the Jews here.
Justification for this contempt.
The way the Eastern Jews know the reason for their contempt,
but the Western Jews do not.
March 13, 1915 (p. 333)
Occasionally I feel an unhappiness which almost dismembers me,
and at the same time am convinced of its necessity
and the existence of a goal to which one makes one’s way
by undergoing every kind of unhappiness
(am now influenced by my recollection of Herzen,
but the thought occurs on other occasions too.)
