504
PARTISAN REVIEW
"Yes, Marina, and also: a dress ball!"
"Alya! My mother always wanted to die suddenly: to be walk–
ing along the street and suddenly, from a building under construc–
tion - a brick would fall on her head! - and that would be it."
Alya, slightly amused : "No, Marina, I don't really like that
idea, a brick.... Now- if the whole building!!!"
•
• •
Alya, before going to sleep :
"Marina! I wish you the best of everything on earth. Maybe: of
everything left on earth . . ."
•
• •
If
I get through this winter I'll really be
jort comme La mort
-
or
just
morte-withoutjort-with
an
e muet
on the end.
• •
•
Grocery stores now resemble the windows of beauty salons: all
these cheeses - aspics - cakes - not a whit more alive than wax dolls.
That same, slight terror.
• •
•
Oh, "Wahrheit und Dichtung"! And I stop, for in this cry there
is as much rapture as dissatisfaction. Goethe wanted to give the
history of his life and his development simultaneously, but they
didn't blend for him. Whole places seem pasted in: "hier gedenke ich
mit Ehrfurcht eines gewissen X-Y-Z"- and so on for dozens of pages
in a row.
If
he had woven these "treffliche Gelehrte" into his life,
forced them to come into the room, move about, speak, there
wouldn't have been such schematicness (calculation) in places: a per–
son gets it into his head to thank everyone who contributed to his de–
velopment- and so he lists them.
It
isn't boring-everything is sig–
nificant, but Goethe himself somehow disappears, you can't see his
black eyes anymore....
But then - Lord! - the walks, as a boy, through Frankfurt - the
friendship with the little Frenchman - the incident with the artist
and the mouse - the theater - the relationship with his father–
Gretchen ("Nicht kiissen, 's ist was so gemeines, aber lieben, wenn's
moglich ist!") their nocturnal meetings in the cellar- Goethe in
Leipzig - the dance lessons - Sesenheim - Frederika - the moon .. .
