42
PARTISAN REVIEW
and the Disciples at Emmaus. When one reads how the disciples went
forth, the whole of nature is in those few words. It is a dim, twilit
evening, a straight red streak of red on the horizon, half dark in the
street; then a stranger approaches them, they speak, he breaks bread;
then they recognize Him, in a simply human manner, and the divinely
suffering features speak to them distinctly, and they are frightened,
for it is now dark and something incomprehensible confronts them;
but there is nothing ghostly about their fear, it is as though someone
we love and who is dead were to approach us at dusk in his old famil–
iar way; that's what the picture is like, with its surface of monotonous
brown, the dim, quiet evening. Then there's the other picture: a
woman sitting in her room, a prayer-book in her hand. Everything
is dressed in its Sunday best, sand has been strewn on the floor, all
homely, clean and warm. The woman has been unable to go to church
and she's conducting the service at home: the window is open, she
sits inclined toward it, and it seems as if the sound of the village
bells were drifting in through the window, across the wide flat land–
scape; and the singing of the nearby congregation were reaching her
faintly from the church, while the woman looks up the appropriate
text."
In this fashion they talked on; the others listened attentively,
much of what Lenz said impressed them. He had become flushed as
he spoke and, now smiling, now serious, shook his blond locks. He
had quite forgotten himself.
After the meal Kaufmann took him aside. He had received
letters from Lenz's f.ather, who said that his son must go back to
assist him. Kaufmann told him that he was idling away his life here,
wasting it recklessly, that he should set himself an aim-and more in
this strain. Lenz turned on him: "Leave here, leave? Go home? To
go mad there? You know I can't bear to live anywhere but in these
parts.
If
I weren't able to go up a mountain at times, to look at the
scenery and then go down again to the house, through the garden,
and then look in through the window-I'd go mad, I tell you, mad!
Why don't you leave me alone? Just a little peace now that I'm be–
ginning to feel almost well again. Go away? I don't understand you,
those two words make a mess of the world. Everyone needs something;
if he's able to rest, what more could he have? What's the use of con–
tinually climbing, struggling, eternally throwing away everything the
