of circumstance, and remain isolated and see about them only ignorance, envy, enmity, and spite.”
31 January. Wrote nothing. Weltsch brings me books about Goethe that provoke in me a distracted excitement that can be put to no use. Plan for an essay, “Goethe’s
Frightening Nature,” fear of the two hours’ walk which I have now begun to take in the evening.
4 February. Three days ago Wedekind: Erdgeist [Earth Spirit]. Wedekind and his wife, Tilly, act in it. Clear, precise voice of the woman. Narrow, crescent-shaped
face. The lower part of the leg branching off to the left when she stood quietly. The play clear even in retrospect, so that one goes home peaceful and aware of
oneself. Contradictory impression of what is thoroughly well established and yet remains strange.
On my way to the theater I felt well. I savored my innermost being as though it were honey. Drank it in an uninterrupted draught. In the theater this passed away at
once. Orpheus in the Underworld with Pallenberg. The performance was so bad, applause and laughter around me in the standing room so great, that I could think of
no way out but to run away after the second act and so silence it all.
Day before yesterday wrote a good letter to Trautenau about a guest appearance for Löwy. Each fresh reading of the letter calmed and strengthened me, there was in
it so much unspoken indication of everything good in me.
The zeal, permeating every part of me, with which I read about Goethe (Goethe’s conversations, student days, hours with Goethe, a visit of Goethe’s to Frankfurt) and
which keeps me from all writing.
S., merchant, thirty-five years old, member of no religious community, educated in philosophy, interested in literature for the most part only to the extent that it pertains to
his writing. Round head, black eyes, small, energetic moustache, firm flesh on his cheeks, thickset body. For years has been studying from nine to one o’clock at night.
Born in Stanislau, knows Hebrew and Yiddish. Married to a woman who gives the impression of being limited only because of the quite round shape of her face.
For two days coolness towards Löwy. He asks me about it. I deny it.
Quiet, restrained conversation with Miss T. in the balcony between the acts of Erdgeist. In order to achieve a good conversation one must, as it were, push one’s hand
more deeply, more lightly, more drowsily under the subject to be dealt with, then it can be lifted up astonishingly. Otherwise one breaks one’s fingers and thinks of
nothing but one’s pains.
Story: The evening walks, discovery of quick walking. Introduction, a beautiful, dark room.
Miss T. told me about a scene in her new story where a girl with a bad reputation enters the sewing school. The impression on the other girls. I say that they, who feel
clearly in themselves the capacity and desire to earn a bad reputation and who at the same time are able to see for themselves at first hand the kind of misfortune into
which one hurls oneself by it, will pity her.
A week ago a lecture in the banquet room of the Jewish Town Hall by Dr Theilhaber on the decline of the German Jews. It is unavoidable, for (1) if the Jews collect in
the cities, the Jewish communities in the country disappear. The pursuit of profit devours them. Marriages are made only with regard to the bride’s settlement.
Two-child system. (2) Mixed marriages. (3) Conversion.
Amusing scene when Prof. Ehrenfels, who grows more and more handsome and who—with his bald head sharply outlined against the light in a curve that is puffed out
at the top, his hands pressed together, with his full voice, which he modulates like a musical instrument, and a confident smile at the meeting—declares himself in favor
of mixed races.
5 February. Monday. Weary even of reading Dichtung und Wahrheit [Poetry and Truth]. I am hard on the outside, cold on the inside. Today, when I came to Dr.
F., although we approached each other slowly and deliberately, it was as though we had collided like balls that drive one another back and, themselves out of control, get