one knows only the same things. There exists not the shadow of a thought to give the comforter an advantage over the comforted. Thus their conversations consist
only of a coming-together of their imaginations, outpourings of wishes from one upon the other. One will look down at the ground and the other up at a bird; it is in such
differences that their intercourse is realized. Sometimes they will unite in faith and, their heads together, look up into the unending reaches of the sky. Recognition of
their situation shows itself, however, only when they bow down their heads in common and the common hammer descends upon them.
14 June. How I calmly walk along while my head twitches and a branch feebly rustles overhead, causing me the worst discomfort. I have in me the same calm, the
same assurance as other people, but somehow or other inverted.
19 June. The excitement of the last few days. The calm that is transferred from Dr. W. to me. The worries he takes upon himself for me. How they moved back into
me early this morning when I awoke about four after a deep sleep. Pištekovo Divadlo. Löwenstein. Now the crude, exciting novel by Soyka. Anxiety. Convinced that
I need F.
How the two of us, Ottla and I, explode in rage against every kind of human relationship.
The parents’ grave, in which the son (Pollak, a graduate of a commercial school) is also buried.
25 June. I paced up and down my room from early morning until twilight. The window was open, it was a warm day. The noises of the narrow street beat in
uninterruptedly. By now I knew every trifle in the room from having looked at it in the course of my pacing up and down. My eyes had traveled over every wall. I had
pursued the pattern of the rug to its last convolution, noted every mark of age it bore. My fingers had spanned the table across the middle many times. I had already
bared my teeth repeatedly at the picture of the landlady’s dead husband.
Towards evening I walked over to the window and sat down on the low sill. Then, for the first time not moving restlessly about, I happened calmly to glance into the
interior of the room and at the ceiling. And finally, finally, unless I were mistaken, this room which I had so violently upset began to stir. The tremor began at the edges
of the thinly plastered white ceiling. Little pieces of plaster broke off and with a distinct thud fell here and there, as if at random, to the floor. I held out my hand and
some plaster fell into it too; in my excitement I threw it over my head into the street without troubling to turn around. The cracks in the ceiling made no pattern yet, but it
was already possible somehow to imagine one. But I put these games aside when a bluish violet began to mix with the white; it spread straight out from the center of
the ceiling, which itself remained white, even radiantly white, where the shabby electric lamp was stuck. Wave after wave of the color—or was it a light?—spread out
towards the now darkening edges. One no longer paid any attention to the plaster that was falling away as if under the pressure of a skillfully applied tool. Yellow and
golden-yellow colors now penetrated the violet from the side. But the ceiling did not really take on these different hues; the colors merely made it somewhat
transparent; things striving to break through seemed to be hovering above it, already one could almost see the outlines of a movement there, an arm was thrust out, a
silver sword swung to and fro. It was meant for me, there was no doubt of that; a vision intended for my liberation was being prepared.
I sprang up on the table to make everything ready, tore out the electric light together with its brass fixture and hurled it to the floor, then jumped down and pushed the
table from the middle of the room to the wall. That which was striving to appear could drop down unhindered on the carpet and announce to me whatever it had to