LENZ
43
moment gives you, continually suffering so as to enjoy some future
state! To be thirsty while a bright spring flows across your path!
Here life is bearable to me, and here I'll stay. Why, you ask, why?
Simply because that's my will. What does my father want? What
can he give me? Impossible! Leave me alone, all of you!" He was
hot with anger; Kaufmann left. Lenz was upset.
On the following day Kaufmann wanted to go. He persuaded
Oberlin to accompany him to Switzerland. The wish to become per–
sonally acquainted with Lavater/ whom he had long known by cor–
respondence, decided him. He accepted; they had to spend one day
on preparations. To Lenz this was a burden. In order to rid himself
of his immeasurable torment he had clung anxiously to every person
and thing around him. At certain moments it was clear to him that
he was merely deceiving himself; he treated himself like a sick child.
Some thoughts, some violent emotions he could not ward off without
intense anxiety; then again he would suddenly be driven back to them
with boundless urgency, he would tremble, his h.air almost on end,
until the enormous tension left him exhausted. He took refuge in a
vision always hovering in front of his eyes, and in Oberlin whose
words, whose face were unutterably soothing to him. So he awaited
Oberlin's departure with fear.
The prospect of being left alone in the house at present was
dreadful to him. The weather had turned mild, he decided to go with
Oberlin into the mountains. On the other side, where the valleys
became plains, they separated. He returned alone. He rambled over
the mountains in various directions. Vast surfaces sloped down to the
valleys, little wooded country, nothing but mighty lines and, further
away, the wide, misty plain; in the air, a powerful wind, not a trace
of human life other than an occasional hovel-used by shepherds in
summer, but now deserted-nestling against the slope. He grew calm,
almost, perhaps, as if lost in a dream: everything seemed to melt,
merged in a single line, like a rising and sinking wave between heaven
and earth; he imagined he was lying on the shore of a boundless
ocean that softly rose and fell. Sometimes he would sit down; then
move on, but slowly, dreaming. He did not look for a way.
It was dark when he came to an inhabited cottage, on the slope
leading down to the Steintal. The door was locked; he went to a
