before the parson who, after a short examination in religion, established that they were honest boys, the cook told to serve them some soup, and then sent them on their
way with his spiritual blessing. As pupils in a clerical Gymnasium they had this soup and this blessing given to them in almost every parsonage they came to.
20 September. Letters to Löwy and Miss Taussig yesterday, to Miss B. and Max today.
[Text of “The Judgment” taken out here.]
23 September. This story, “The Judgment,” I wrote at one sitting during the night of the 22nd-23rd, from ten o’clock at night to six o’clock in the morning. I was hardly
able to pull my legs out from under the desk, they had got so stiff from sitting. The fearful strain and joy, how the story developed before me, as if I were advancing
over water. Several times during this night I heaved my own weight on my back. How everything can be said, how for everything, for the strangest fancies, there waits
a great fire in which they perish and rise up again. How it turned blue outside the window. A wagon rolled by. Two men walked across the bridge. At two I looked at
the clock for the last time. As the maid walked through the anteroom for the first time I wrote the last sentence. Turning out the light and the light of day. The slight
pains around my heart. The weariness that disappeared in the middle of the night. The trembling entrance into my sisters’ room. Reading aloud. Before that, stretching
in the presence of the maid and saying, “I’ve been writing until now.” The appearance of the undisturbed bed, as though it had just been brought in. The conviction
verified that with my novel-writing I am in the shameful lowlands of writing. Only in this way can writing be done, only with such coherence, with such a complete
opening out of the body and the soul. Morning in bed. The always clear eyes. Many emotions carried along in the writing, joy, for example, that I shall have something
beautiful for Max’s Arkadia, thoughts about Freud, of course; in one passage, of Arnold Beer; in another, of Wassermann; in one, of Werfel’s giantess; of course, also
of my “The Urban World.”
I, only I, am the spectator in the orchestra.
Gustav Blenkelt was a simple man with regular habits. He didn’t like any unnecessary display and had a definite opinion about people who went in for such display.
Although he was a bachelor, he felt he had an absolute right to say a few deciding words in the marital affairs of his acquaintances and anyone who would even have
questioned such a right would have fared badly with him. He used to speak his mind freely and did not in any way seek to detain those listeners whom his opinions
happened not to suit. As there are everywhere, there were people who admired him, people who honored him, people who put up with him, and, finally, those who
wanted to have nothing to do with him. Indeed, every person, even the emptiest, is, if one will only look carefully, the center of a tight circle that forms about him here
and there, how could it be otherwise in the case of Gustav Blenkelt, at bottom an exceptionally social person?
In his thirty-fifth year, the last year of his life, he spent an unusual amount of time with a young couple named Strong. It is certain that for Mr. Strong, who had opened
a furniture store with his wife’s money, the acquaintance with Blenkelt had numerous advantages, since the largest part of the latter’s acquaintances consisted of young,
marriageable people who sooner or later had to think of providing new furniture for themselves and who, out of old habit, were usually accustomed not to neglect
Blenkelt’s advice in this matter, either. “I keep them on a tight rein,” Blenkelt used to say.
24 September. My sister said: The house (in the story) is very like ours. I said: How? In that case, then, Father would have to be living in the toilet.
25 September. By force kept myself from writing. Tossed in bed. The congestion of blood in my head and the useless drifting by of things. What