"That something I found in the organ over my head. I went up to it as to a thirst-quenching fountain. And when with its mighty tones I shook the nightly church and the deaf and dumb dead, and when the dust flew around me which had hitherto lain upon their mute lips then did all the transitory beings that I had loved, with their transitory scenes, pass along before me; thou camest, and Milan, and the Still Land; I related to them in organ tones what had become a bare narration, I loved them all once more in their fleeting life, and would fain for love have died upon their bosoms and pressed my soul into their hands--but my hand pressed only wooden keys. I struck out fewer and fewer tones, which circled around me like a magnetic whirlpool--at last I laid the choral book upon a low tone and continued to press the bellows in order not to have to endure the mute interval between the tones--there streamed forth a humming sound, as if it were pursuing the wings of time--it bore all my memories and hopes, on its waves floated my throbbing heart.... As far back as I can remember a continued tremulous tone has always made me sad.
"I left my place of resurrection and looked toward the white pyramid of the hermitage-mountain, where nothing rose again and where life more soundly slept; the pyramid stood steeped in the moon-light and a long cloud-shadow traveled on with me.
"Leaves and trees were bent by the touch of autumn; over the prickly stubbles of the pastures the flowers danced no longer, it had perished in the mouths of the cattle; the snail encoffined itself in its house and bed with spittle; and when in the morning the earth turned round with full-blooded flecked clouds, toward the faint sun, I felt that I had no longer my former glad earth, but that I had left it forever in the sepulchre, and the people whom I found again seemed to me corpses, which Death had lent the upper world, and which Life set up and shoved along, in order to act with these figures in Europe, Asia, Africa and America....
"So I still think. And so long as I live, I shall carry round with me the mournful impression of this certainty, that I must die. For I have only known this within eight days; although I formerly gave myself very great credit for my sensibility at death-beds, theatres and funeral sermons. The child has no conception of death; every minute of his sportive existence interposes its dazzling light between him and his little grave. Busy men and pleasurelings comprehend it quite as little, and it is incomprehensible with what coldness thousands of people can say, life is short. It is incomprehensible, that one should not be able to get the benumbed multitude, whose talk is an articulate snoring, to lift up their heavy eyelids when one demands of them. Pray look through thy two or three years of life to the bed wherein thou art to lie--see thyself with the heavy hanging dead hand, with the mountainous sick face, with the white marble eye, let thy ear draw over into the present hour the jangling fancies of the last night--that great night which is ever stalking on to meet thee, and which every hour comes an hour nearer, and beneath which thou, the ephemeron, whether thou now hoverest round in the gleam of the evening sun or in the glow of the evening twilight, wilt certainly be crushed. But the two eternities tower up on both sides of our earth, and we creep and grub on in our deep narrow pass, stupid, blind, deaf, chewing, wriggling, without seeing any greater path than that which we plough with our chafer-heads into one ball of dirt.
"But since that there is also an end of my plans; one can complete nothing here below. Life is so small a thing to me, that it is almost the least thing I can sacrifice for a fatherland; I am merely moving on with a greater or lesser retinue of years toward the grave-yard. But with joy it is all over, as well; my rigid hand, which death has once touched like an electric eel, too easily rubs the butterfly dust from its four wings, and I merely let it flutter round me without seizing it. Only misfortune and occupation are opaque enough to shut out the future; and you shall be welcome to my house, especially if you come out from another, where the landlord would rather take in joy.--Oh! ye poor pale images made out of earthly colors, ye human creatures, I have now a redoubled love and toleration for ye; for what power but love raises us up again through the feeling of immortality out of the ashes of death? Who would make your two December days, which you call eighty years, still colder and shorter? Ah! we are only trembling shadows! and yet will one shadow tear another to pieces?
"Now I understand why a man, a king, in his latter days, goes into a cloister; what would he do at a court or on 'change, when the world of sense recedes from him and all looks like a great outstretched veil, while only the upper world, the world to come, hangs with its rays down into this blackness. Thus does the sky when one beholds from high mountains, lay aside its blue and become black, because the former is not its own color, but that of our atmosphere; but the sun is then stamped upon this night like a burning seal and keeps on blazing.
"I have just looked up to the starry heaven; but it no longer illumines my soul as once; its suns and planets wither just as this one does into which I crumble. Whether a minute insert its mite's tooth, or a millenium its shark's-tooth into a world, is all one, it is crushed in either case. Not merely the earth is vanity, but all which flies beside it through the heavens and is distinguished from it only in size. And thou thyself, fair sun, thou that like a mother, when her child says good-night, regardest us so tenderly, when the earth carries us away and draws the curtain of night around our beds, thou too shalt sink at last into thy night, into thy bed, and shalt need a sun to give thee rays!
"It is singular, therefore, that one should make higher stars or indeed planets and their daughter-lands to be the flower-pots, into which Death is to plant us, somewhat as the American hopes after death to go to Europe.[[77]] The European would reciprocate his delusion and hold America to be the Walhalla of the departed, if our second hemisphere, instead of being only one thousand miles[[78]] off, hung at a distance of sixty thousand, as that of the moon notoriously does. Oh my spirit craves something different from a warmed-over, newly laid-out earth, a different satisfaction from what grows on any dung-heap or fire-mound of the heavens, a longer life than a crumbling planet bears upon it; but I have no conception of it at all....
"Only come right down to my head from which thou hast taken the lock; so long as I live shall that side, on which thou hast committed the Rape of the Lock, in memory of what I was and am to be, remain undressed, etc."
"Ottomar."