In English novels, with their insipid sweetness that always reminds me of the smell of frost-bitten potatoes, the heroine sometimes permits herself the luxury of being blind, lame, or disfigured by smallpox. The hero adores her just the same. How false to life! My existence would have been very different if ten years ago I had lost my long eyelashes, if my fingers had become deformed, or my nose shown signs of redness....
A red nose! It is the worst catastrophe that can befall a beautiful woman. I always suspected this was the reason why Adelaide Svanstroem took poison. Poor woman, unluckily she did not take a big enough dose!
My senses are reawakening. Light and sound now bring me entirely new impressions; what I see, I now also feel, with nerves of which hitherto I did not suspect the existence. When evening draws on I stare into the twilight until everything seems to shimmer before my eyes, and I dream like a child....
Yesterday, before going to bed, I went on my balcony, as I usually do, to take a last glance at the sea. But it was the starry sky that fixed my attention. It seemed to reveal and offer itself to me. I felt I had never really seen it before, although I sleep with it over my head!
Each star was to me like a dewdrop created to slake my thirst. I drank in the sky like a plant that is almost dead for want of moisture. And while I drank it in, I was conscious of a sensation hitherto unknown to me. For the first time in my life I was aware of the existence of my soul. I threw back my head to gaze and gaze. Night enfolded me in all its splendour, and I wept.
What matter that I am growing old? What matter that I have missed the best in life? Every night I can look towards the stars and be filled with their chill, eternal peace.
I, who never could read a poem without secretly mocking the writer, who never believed in the poets' ecstasies over Nature, now I perceive that Nature is the one divinity worthy to be worshipped.
⁂ ⁂ ⁂