JOURNAL, 1940
121
soon the gesture stands in its stead. This keeps the lapses and
vacancies of our sensibility from being too obvious.
Even Carco
(Figaro,
Sept. 21) hymns the return to the land.
It is what Barres would have called "falling back on our minima."
It
would he foolish to deny that this "return" is necessary and
fated. But I am distressed by the blindness of those who fancy
that it will make possible all by itself the revival of France, and
see in this failing back a promise of renewal. I see in it nothing
but recoil and resignation.
It is doubtless good and wise to be resigned when one has
no alternative; and I myself am not at all inclined to rebellion.
But it is bad not to he clear-sighted and not to understand what
this "return to the land" means.
"Investigate what is, not what is convenient," said Goethe,
wisely. In order not to have to falsify one's thought, it may he·
come advisable to keep it quiet; in this case the greatest sufferers
will he those who have not yet spoken.
To convince myself that advance is a vain hope at my time
of life would he the worst clouding-over of old age. Rest in con–
templation is not for me; I cannot put up with it. I enjoy life
only when active and intent ... intent on what? Ye gods! ...
Oh, simply self-development.
Zu. wild, zu bang
isf
s ringsum, und es
Trummert
und
wankt ja, wohin ich blicke.
•
But, in my interior skies, the same constellations are shining;
otherwise I would be at a loss to understand why I do not feel
the gloomier for having to navigate in uncertainty and beneath
this disastrous European sky.
Of the pages I have written lately, and have just re-read for
the first time, I now feel attached only to those not directly re–
lated to events, those it seems I might just as well have written at
any
other period. It is only in its untimely element that thought
can remain valid: in that which circumstances, no matter how
adverse, will be unable to modify.
•Too
wild, too gloomy is the world about me; it totters and falls
in
ruins
erever I look. (Holderlin).
