490.
Those petty Truths.—“You know all that, but you have never lived through it—so I will not [pg 344] accept your evidence. Those ‘petty truths’—you deem them petty because you have not paid for them with your blood!”—But are they really great, simply because they have been bought at so high a price? and blood is always too high a price!—“Do you really think so? How stingy you are with your blood!”
491.
Solitude, therefore!—
A. So you wish to go back to your desert?
B. I am not a quick thinker; I must wait for myself a long time—it is always later and later before the water from the fountain of my own ego spurts forth, and I have often to go thirsty longer than suits my patience. That is why I retire into solitude in order that I may not have to drink from the common cisterns. When I live in the midst of the multitude my life is like theirs, and I do not think like myself; but after some time it always seems to me as if the multitude wished to banish me from myself and to rob me of my soul. Then I get angry with all these people, and afraid of them; and I must have the desert to become well disposed again.
492.
Under the South Wind.—
A. I can no longer understand myself! It was only yesterday that I felt myself so tempestuous and ardent, and at the same time so warm and sunny and exceptionally bright! but to-day! Now everything is calm, wide, oppressive, and dark like the lagoon at Venice. I wish for nothing, and [pg 345] draw a deep breath, and yet I feel inwardly indignant at this “wish for nothing”—so the waves rise and fall in the ocean of my melancholy.
B. You describe a petty, agreeable illness. The next wind from the north-east will blow it away.