11 November, 1912
Fräulein Felice!
I am now going to ask you a favor which sounds quite crazy,
and which I should regard as such, were I the one to
receive the letter.
It is also the very greatest test that even the
kindest person could be put to.
Well, this is it:
Write to me only once a week, so that your letter arrives
on Sunday -- for I cannot endure your daily letters,
I am incapable of enduring them.
For instance, I answer one of your letters, then lie
in bed in apparent calm, but my heart beats through my
entire body and is conscious only of you.
I belong to you; there is really no other way of expressing
it, and that is not strong enough.
But for this very reason I don't want to know what you
are wearing; it confuses me so much that I cannot deal
with life; and that's why I don't want to know that you
are fond of me. If I did, how could I, fool that I am,
go on sitting in my office, or here at home,
instead of leaping onto a train with my eyes shut
and opening them only when I am with you?
Oh, there is a sad, sad reason for not doing so.
To make it short: My health is only just good enough for
myself alone, not good enough for marriage, let alone
fatherhood. Yet when I read your letter,
I feel I could overlook even what cannot possibly be
overlooked.
If only I had your answer now! And how horribly I
torment you, and how I compel you, in the stillness of
your room, to read this letter, as nasty a letter as has
ever lain on your desk! Honestly, it strikes me sometimes
that I prey like a spectre on your felicitous name!
If only I had mailed Saturday's letter, in which
I implored you never to write to me again, and
in which I gave a similar promise.
Oh God, what
prevented me from sending that letter?
All would be well. But is a peaceful solution possible now?
Would it help if we wrote to each other only once a week?
No, if my suffering could be cured by such means it would
not be serious. And already I foresee that I shan't be able
to endure even the Sunday letters. And so, to compensate for
Saturday's lost opportunity, I ask you with what energy
remains to me at the end of this letter: If we value our
lives, let us abandon it all.
Did I think of signing myself Dein? No, nothing could be
more false. No, I am forever fettered to myself,
that's what I am, and that's what I must try to live with.
Franz
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