Vienna, August 2, 1909.
My greetings to you, Franka! As an actual man I am not justified in addressing you thus familiarly, but this is only a kind of wave-motion from soul to soul. The reason for this letter is, that you appeared to me last night in a dream. You looked sad and troubled. Something of questioning and yearning was expressed in your face and was evident in your outstretched arms. In what direction would your desires, your longings, your questionings wing their flight? Your surroundings will give no fulfillment of them, no answer to them. Perhaps I may be able to serve as a guide—perhaps I may be able to solve some of the riddles for you. And since you have appeared to me in a dream—and because I am fond of you—I venture to approach you as a bodyless teacher, a formless brother, a lover who hopes for nothing. Or rather—do not call it presumptuous!—I come to you as a priest. I have religious consolation in readiness for you and I will lay down religious commandments for you.
Yet, let this be for the last. We will first speak of worldly things. The question which a pretty girl of twenty asks of fate—even though she does not acknowledge it to herself—is, “Shall I be happily married?” She might just as well ask, “Shall I find a needle in a haystack?” For it is just as difficult, out of the hundred thousand chances of an unhappy marriage, to secure the one slender chance of a happy one, although every young woman believes that for her particularly there are several ready for choice. And the claims are not modest. Dozens of conditions cluster around the idea of “happiness”—above all, love. And in it are united all the attributes and aspects of this manifold phenomenon:—the platonic and erotic; passion, sentimentality, devotion, sweet torment and tearful ecstasy, hot desire and the full and peaceful possession—and this whole medley, presumably to last as long as life, based on eternal faithfulness ... (il faut en rabattre!)
But love alone is not sufficient. To happiness, as dreamed by the young maiden, some other things are needed: if not wealth, at least perfect pecuniary independence, a comfortable and fairly elegant household, continued good health, social recognition, pleasant occupation, pretty toilettes—perhaps also handsome children. I am speaking of the average girl, not of the ultra-modern type before whom a quite special expression of personality is held up, or from whom the well-known “call of motherhood” is extorted.
To that class you do not belong; you are not eccentric, you are calm and reflective, but assuredly you are also hungry for happiness.
Now the question for you is: “Will Destiny pay the note which Youth and Beauty have drawn on her?” Who can tell? It is a matter of accident. Accident is only another name for Fate, and cannot give you any remedy against her tricks. Consequently we must possess something to raise us above all perils, above poverty and loneliness, above illness and sorrow, yes, verily, above the terrors of death!
If you had been educated in a convent, such a talisman would have been put into your possession: the knowledge that you were a child of God, the belief in happiness beyond the grave, the union with all that is sacred in the eternal and in the infinite. But this golden talisman would have been handed to you in a tin capsule of dogmas, and you, like so many others to whose riper taste and judgment the capsule no longer appealed, would have flung the whole thing away, contents and cover; or, like so many others, you would have only clung to the outward wrapping as a kind of symbol, as a ceremonial necessity.
At the present time, in this country, it is a part of good form to be pious. By assiduous church attendance, by friendly intercourse with the clergy, by scorn and contempt for all free thinking, one tickets one’s self as belonging to fine society. They are mere forms, to be sure, but how can the man and the woman of society differentiate themselves from the ordinary mass of humanity if not by the observance of forms? Signing the cross, as one sits at table,—the way it is done of late in aristocratic houses,—is not a mark of reverence, but a “correct” gesture—equal to the conventional court curtsy.
I would not wish to imply that there are not actually honest believers who in spite of the tin capsule penetrate to the golden center of the talisman and are thereby elevated and strengthened. “Be good!” is certainly the profoundest meaning of every religious imperative—honor to the man who with voluntary obedience listens to this commandment by reason of his faith.
You were not educated in a nunnery—as I happen to know. Do you possess that fervent Something, by means of which a person is raised above all the eventualities of life and above one’s self? That I do not know. Let me explain to you what I understand by this “Something”: let me be for half an hour your catechist!