to play because he had to keep riding around on this boarding-bag.
So, since the Gutsgeschichte wouldn’t do, they agreed on the other program: Dehmel, Rideamus, “Prometheus,” and Swet Marten. But now, in order to show Mrs.
Durège in advance the sort of person he really was, he brought her the manuscript of am essay, “The Joy of Life,” which he had written this summer. He wrote it in a
summer resort, wrote it in shorthand during the day, in the evening made a clean copy, polished, crossed out, but really it wasn’t much work because it came off at once.
He’ll lend it to me if I like, it’s written in a popular style, of course, on purpose, but there are good ideas in it and it is betamt, as they say. (Pointed laughter with chin
raised.) I may leaf through it here under the electric light. (It is an appeal to youth not to be sad, for after all there is nature, freedom, Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare,
flowers, insects, etc.) The Durège woman said she really didn’t have time to read it just then, but he could lend it to her, she would return it in a few days. He
suspected something even then and didn’t want to leave it there, evaded, said, for instance, “Look, Mrs. Durège, why should I leave it here, it’s really just ordinary, it’s
well written, of course, but . . .” None of it did any good, he had to leave it there. This was on Friday.
(28 February.) Sunday morning, while washing, it occurs to him that he hadn’t seen the Tagblatt yet. He opens it by chance just at the first page of the magazine
section. The title of the first essay, “The Child as Creator,” strikes him. He reads the first few lines—and begins to cry with joy. It is his essay, word for word his
essay. So for the first time he is in print, he runs to his mother and tells her. What joy! The old woman, she has diabetes and is divorced from his father, who, by the
way, is in the right, is so proud. One son is already a virtuoso, now the other is becoming an author!
After the first excitement he thinks the matter over. How did the essay get into the paper? Without his consent? Without the name of the author? Without his being
paid a fee? This is really a breach of faith, a fraud. This Mrs. Durège is really a devil. And women have no souls, says Mohammed (often repeated). It’s really easy
to see how the plagiarism came about. Here was a beautiful essay, it’s not easy to come across one like it. So Mrs. D. therefore went to the Tagblatt, sat down with
one of the editors, both of them overjoyed, and now they begin to rewrite it. Of course, it had to be rewritten, for in the first place the plagiarism should not be obvious at
first sight and in the second place the thirty-two-page essay was too long for the paper.
In reply to my question whether he would not show me passages which correspond, because that would interest me especially and because only then could I advise him
what to do, he begins to read his essay, turns to another passage, leafs through it without finding anything, and finally says that everything was copied. Here, for
instance, the paper says: The soul of the child is an unwritten page, and “unwritten page” occurs in his essay too. Or the expression “surnamed” is copied too, because
how else could they hit upon “surnamed.” But he can’t compare individual passages. Of course, everything was copied, but in a disguised way, in a different sequence,
abridged, and with small, foreign interpolations.
I read aloud a few of the more striking passages from the paper. Is that in the essay? No. This? No. This? No. Yes, but these are just the interpolated passages. In
its spirit, the whole thing, the whole thing, is copied. But proving it, I am afraid, will be difficult. He’ll prove it, all right, with the help of a clever lawyer, that’s what
lawyers are for, after all. (He looks forward to this proof as an entirely new task, completely separate from this affair, and is proud of his confidence that he will be able