and above all music. I atrophied in all these directions. This was necessary because the totality of my strengths was so slight that only collectively could they even
halfway serve the purpose of my writing. Naturally, I did not find this purpose independently and consciously, it found itself, and is now interfered with only by the
office, but that interferes with it completely. In any case I shouldn’t complain that I can’t put up with a sweetheart, that I understand almost exactly as much of love as I
do of music and have to resign myself to the most superficial efforts I may pick up, that on New Year’s Eve I dined on parsnips and spinach, washed down with a glass
of Ceres, and that on Sunday I was unable to take part in Max’s lecture on his philosophical work—the compensation for all this is clear as day. My development is now
complete and, so far as I can see, there is nothing left to sacrifice; I need only throw my work in the office out of this complex in order to begin my real life in which,
with the progress of my work, my face will finally be able to age in a natural way.
The sudden turn a conversation takes when in the discussion, which at first has dealt in detail with worries of the inner existence, the question is raised (not really
breaking the conversation off, but naturally not growing out of it, either) of when and where one will meet the next time and the circumstances that must be considered
in deciding this. And if the conversation also ends with a shaking of hands, then one takes one’s leave with momentary faith in the pure, firm structure of our life and
with respect for it.
In an autobiography one cannot avoid writing “often” where truth would require that “once” be written. For one always remains conscious that the word “once”
explodes that darkness on which the memory draws; and though it is not altogether spared by the word “often,” either, it is at least preserved in the opinion of the writer,
and he is carried across parts which perhaps never existed at all in his life but serve him as a substitute for those which his memory can no longer guess at.
4 January. It is only because of my vanity that I like so much to read to my sisters (so that today, for instance, it is already too late to write). Not that I am convinced
that I shall achieve something significant in the reading, it is only that I am dominated by the passion to get so close to the good works I read that I merge with them, not
through my own merit, indeed, but only through the attentiveness of my listening sisters, which has been excited by what is being read and is unresponsive to inessentials;
and therefore too, under the concealment my vanity affords me, I can share as creator in the effect which the work alone has exercised. That is why I really read
admirably to my sisters and stress the accents with extreme exactness just as I feel them, because later I am abundantly rewarded not only by myself but also by my
sisters.
But if I read to Brod or Baum or others, just because of my pretensions my reading must appear horribly bad to everyone, even if they know nothing of the usual quality
of my reading; for here I know that the listener is fully aware of the separation between me and what is being read, here I cannot merge completely with what I read
without becoming ridiculous in my own opinion, an opinion which can expect no support from the listener; with my voice I flutter around what is being read, try to force
my way in here and there because they don’t expect that much from me at all; but what they really want me to do, to read without vanity, calmly and distantly, and to
become passionate only when a genuine passion demands it, that I cannot do; but although I believe that I have resigned myself to reading badly to everyone except my