This morning the empty open wagon and the large, emaciated horse pulling it. Both, making a final effort to get up a slope, stretched out to an unusual length. Seen at
an angle by the spectator. The horse, front legs raised a little, his neck stretched sideways and upwards. Over him the whip of the driver.
If Rowohlt would send it back and I could lock it up again as if it had all never happened, so that I should be only as unhappy as I was before.
Miss F. B. When I arrived at Brod’s on 13 August, she was sitting at the table. I was not at all curious about who she was, but rather took her for granted at once.
Bony, empty face that wore its emptiness openly. Bare throat. A blouse thrown on. Looked very domestic in her dress although, as it later turned out, she by no means
was. (I alienate myself from her a little by inspecting her so closely. What a state I’m in now, indeed, alienated in general from the whole of everything good, and don’t
even believe it yet. If the literary talk at Max’s doesn’t distract me too much, I’ll try to write the story about Blenkelt today. It needn’t be long, but I must hit it off right.)
Almost broken nose. Blonde, somewhat straight, unattractive hair, strong chin. As I was taking my seat I looked at her closely for the first time, by the time I was
seated I already had an unshakeable opinion.
21 August. Read Lenz incessantly and—such is my state—he restored me to my senses.
The picture of dissatisfaction presented by a street, where everyone is perpetually lifting his feet to escape from the place on which he stands.
30 August. All this time did nothing. The visit of my uncle from Spain. Last Saturday in the Arco Werfel recited his “Lebenslieder” and “Opfer.” A monster! But I
looked him in the eye and held it all evening.
It will be hard to rouse me, and yet I am restless. When I lay in bed this afternoon and someone quickly turned a key in the lock, for a moment I had locks all over my
body, as though at a fancy-dress ball, and at short intervals a lock was opened or shut here and there.
Questionnaire by the magazine Miroir, about love in the present and the way love has changed since the days of our grandparents. An actress answered: Never did
they love as well as today.
How shaken and exalted I was after hearing Werfel! How I behaved afterwards at L.’s party, wild, almost, and without a fault.
This month, which, because of the absence of the boss, could have been put to exceptionally good use, I have wasted and slept away without much excuse (sending the
book off to Rowohlt, abscesses, my uncle’s visit). Even this afternoon I stretched out on the bed for three hours with dreamy excuses.
4 September. My uncle from Spain. The cut of his coat. The effect of his nearness. The details of his personality. His floating through the anteroom into the toilet, in
the course of which he makes no reply to what is said to him. Becomes milder from day to day, if one judges not in terms of a gradual change but by the moments
which stand out.
5 September. I ask him: How is one to reconcile the fact that you are generally dissatisfied, as you recently said, and that nevertheless you are at home everywhere, as
can be seen time and again (and which is revealed in the rudeness always characteristic of this sort of being-at-home, I thought). He answers, as I remember it: “In
individual things I am dissatisfied, this doesn’t extend to the whole. I often dine in a little French pension that is very exclusive and expensive. For example, a room for a
couple, with meals, costs fifty francs a day. So I sit there between the secretary of the French legation, for example, and a Spanish general of artillery. Opposite me sit
a high official of the navy ministry and some count or other. I know them all well by now, sit down in my place, greeting them on all sides, because I am in a peculiar