Liebestod
A perfect autumn morning—cool, fine and still. What sweet music a horse and cart make trundling slowly along a country road on a quiet morning! I listened to it in a happy mood of abstraction as it rolled on further and further away. I put my head out of the window so as to hear it up to the very last, until a Robin's notes relieved the nervous tension and helped me to resign myself to my loss. The incident reminded me of the Liebestod in "Tristan," with the Robin taking the part of the harp.
For days past my emotions have been undergoing kaleidoscopic changes, not only from day to day but from hour to hour. For ten minutes at a time I am happy or miserable, or revengeful, venomous, loving, generous, noble, angry, or murderous—you could measure them with a stop-watch. Hell's phantoms course across my chest. If I could lie on this bed as quiet and stony as an effigy on a tomb! But a moment ago I had a sharp spasm at the sudden thought that never, never, never again should I walk thro' the path-fields to the uplands.
September 7.
My 28th birthday.
Dear old R—— (the man I love above all others) has been in a military hospital for months. It is a great hardship to have our intercourse almost completely cut off.
Dear old Journal, I love you! Good-bye.
September 29.
I could never have believed so great misery compatible with sanity. Yet I am quite sane. How long I or any man can remain sane in this condition God knows.... It is a consummate vengeance this inability to write.[4] I cannot help but smile grimly at the astuteness of the thrust. To be sure, how cunning to deprive me of my one secret consolation! How amusing that in this agony of isolation such an aggressive egotist as I should have his last means of self-expression cut off. I am being slowly stifled.
Later. (In E.'s handwriting.)