14
PARTISAN REVIEW
understand Hoffmannsthal! as for George, I don't know his work.
What is true is that I feel a certain distrust for their mastery of form
and of the means of expression, and I'm afraid they lack a broad and
noble vision of the world. Because of this contradiction, what they
have to say rings hollow in my soul, and the most finished form ends
by affecting me like a grimace. They do know usually how to convey
marvelous states of mind, but man is not made only of states of
mind....
Yours,
ROSA
Breslau, mid-December, 1917
... It is a year now that Karl has been imprisoned at Luckau.
I have thought of it often during this month. And
it
is exactly a year
since you came to see me at Wronke and brought me the nice little
Christmas tree. . . . This time I had one bought, 'but it was hurt in
handling and some of its branches are off,-no comparison with last
year's.-I wonder how I am going to fasten on the eight little candles
I have just gotten for it. This is my third Christmas in uniform. But
don't take it tragically. I am calmer and happier than ever. Last night
I stayed awake a long time-I can't go to sleep any more before one
o'clock in the morning-and as we have to go to bed at ten, I have
time to dream about a good many things in the dark. This is what I
was thinking: how strange it is, I said to myself, that I am in a
COll–
stant state of joy, a kind of drunkenness, and for no reason at all. I am
stretched out in a dark cell, on a mattress hard as rock. Around me,
a deathly silence reigns in the house, I might believe I was in my
tomb. The lantern that burns all night in front of the prison casts a
glittering reflection on the ceiling. From time to time you hear, from
very.far away, a train passing, or very near, under the window, the
sentry coughing or taking a few slow, heavy steps to stretch his legs.
The gravel crunches so desperately beneath his boots, it seems the
breath, there in the damp, somber night, of everything desolate,
everything hopeless in the world. I am stretched out there alone,
wrapped in the dark folds of night, of weariness, of captivity, and
nevertheless my heart beats with an incomprehensible inner joy, a joy
new to me, as if I were walking in a field of flowers under a radiant
sun. And in the shadow of my dungeon I smile at life, as if I possessed .
a magic secret by which everything wicked and sad could be trans–
formed into light and happiness. I search in vain a reason for such
joy, but find nothing and can only rest amazed. I think the secret
is nothing else than life itself; the deep darkness of night is beautiful
and soft as velvet if one knows how to see into it. And in the crunch–
ing of the wet gravel, under the slow, heavy steps of the sentry, life
