unusually palpable, silent movement were her thin long legs and delicately playing little joints, the way she didn’t keep time, but didn’t let herself be frightened out of her
business, what a soft smile she had in contrast to the distorted ones of the others, how almost voluptuous her face and hair were in comparison with the sparseness of
her body, the way she called “slowly” to the musicians, for her sisters as well as for herself. Their dancing master, a young, strikingly dressed, thin person, stood behind
the musicians and waved one hand in rhythm, regarded neither by the musicians nor by the dancers and with his own eyes on the audience.
Warnebold, fiery nervousness of a powerful person. In his movements there is sometimes a joke whose strength lifts one up. How he hurries to the piano with long
steps after the number is announced.
Read Aus dem Leben eines Schlachtenmalers [Battle painters who work from life.]. Read Flaubert aloud with satisfaction.
The necessity of speaking of dancers with exclamation marks. Because in that way one imitates their motion, because one remains in the rhythm and the thought does
not then interfere with the enjoyment, because then the action always comes at the end of the sentence and prolongs its effect better.
17 March. During these days read Morgenrot [Morning Red] by Stössl.
Max’s concert Sunday. My almost unconscious listening. From now on I can no longer be bored by music. I no longer seek, as I did in vain in the past, to penetrate this
impenetrable circle which immediately forms about me together with the music, I am also careful not to jump over it, which I probably could do, but instead I remain
calmly in my thoughts that develop and subside in this narrowed space without it being possible for disturbing self-observations to step into their slow swarm. The
beautiful “magic circle” (by Max) that seems here and there to open the breast of the singer.
Goethe, “Trost in Tränen [Comfort in Tears].” Alles geben die Götter, die unendlichen,/ Siren Lieblingen ganz:/ Alle Freuden, die unendlichen,/ Alle
Schmerzen, die unendlichen, ganz. [The gods give everything, the infinite ones, / Darling siren, all: / All joys, the infinite ones, / All hurts, the infinite ones,
all.]
My incompetence in the presence of my mother, in the presence of Miss T., and in the presence of all those in the Continental at that time and later on the street.
Mam’zelle Nitouche on Monday. The good effect of a French word in a dreary German performance. Boarding-school girls in bright dresses, with their arms
outstretched, run into the garden behind a fence. Barracks-yard of the dragoon regiment at night. Some officers in a barracks in the background are having a farewell
celebration in a ball that is reached by going up a few steps. Mam’zelle Nitouche enters and is persuaded by love and recklessness to take part in the celebration. The
sort of thing that can happen to a girl! In the morning at the convent, in the evening a substitute for an operetta singer who couldn’t come, and at night in the dragoons’
barracks.
Today, painfully tired, spent the afternoon on the sofa.
18 March. I was wise, if you like, because I was prepared for death at any moment, but not because I had taken care of everything that was given to me to do, rather
because I had done none of it and could not even hope ever to do any of it.
22 March. (The last few days I have been writing down the wrong dates.) Baum’s lecture in the lecture hall. G. F., nineteen years old, getting married next week.
Dark, faultless, slender face. Distended nostrils. For years she has been wearing hats and clothes styled like a hunter’s. The same dark-green gleam on her face. The
strands of hair running along the cheeks, just as in general a slight down seems to cover all her face which she has bowed down into the darkness. Points of her elbows
resting lightly on the arms of her chair. Then on the Wenzelsplatz a brisk bow, completed with little energy, a turn, and a drawing erect of the poorly dressed, slender