Surroundings and setting do have a great influence upon a person and are part of that which makes a firm and deep impression on the memory [Hukommelse] or, more correctly, on the whole soul, and for this reason cannot be forgotten either. No matter how old I may become, it will nevertheless always be impossible for me to think of Cordelia in surround- ings other than this little room. When I come to visit her, the maid usually lets me in by the door to the large drawing room; Cordelia herself enters from her room, and as I open the door to enter the small drawing room, she opens the other door, so that our eyes meet in the doorway. This drawing room is small, cozy, is almost the size of a private room. Although I have now seen it from many different angles, | am most fond of seeing it from the sofa. She sits there at my side; before us stands a round tea table, over which a tablecloth is spread in rich folds. On the table stands a lamp shaped in the form of a flower, which rises up vigorously and copiously to bear its crown, over which in turn hangs a delicately cut veil of paper, so light that it cannot remain still. The form of the lamp is reminiscent of the Orient, the movement of the veil reminis- cent of the gentle breezes in that region. The floor is covered by matting woven ofa special kind of willow, a work that im- mediately betrays its foreign origin.
At moments, I let the lamp be the motif in my landscape. I sit with her then, stretched out on the ground under the flower of the lamp. At other times, I let the willow matting call up the image of a ship, of an officer’s stateroom—we are sailing out in the middle of the great ocean. When we are sitting far from the window, we look directly into the sweeping horizon of the sky. This, too, augments the illusion. When J am sitting at her I 357 I 358 390 Either/Or, I side, I let such things appear like an image that hastens as elu- sively over actuality as death crosses a person’s grave.
The surroundings are always of great importance, especially for the sake of recollection [Erindring].!°° Every erotic relation- ship must always be lived through in such a way that it is easy for one to produce an image that conveys all the beauty of it. To be able to do this successfully, one must be attentive to the surroundings. If they are not found to be as desired, then they must be made so. For Cordelia and her love, the surroundings are entirely appropriate. But what a different image presents itself to me when I think of my little Emily, and yet, again, were not the surroundings appropriate? I cannot imagine her or, more correctly, I want to recall her only in the little room opening onto the garden. The doors stood open; a little garden in front of the house cut off the view, compelled the eyes to be arrested there, to stop before boldly following the road that vanished into the distance. Emily was lovely but of less signif- icance than Cordelia. The surroundings were also designed for that. The eyes remained earthbound, did not rush boldly and impatiently ahead, rested on that little foreground. The road itself, even though it romantically wandered off into the dis- tance, had no other effect than that the eyes glanced over the stretch before it and then returned home in order to glance over the same stretch again. The room was earthbound. Cor- delia’s surroundings must have no foreground but rather the infinite boldness of the horizon. She must not be earthbound but must float, not walk but fly, not back and forth but eter- nally forward.
'37When a person himself becomes engaged, he is at once ef- fectually initiated into the antics of the engaged. Some days ago, licentiate Hansen showed up with the charming young girl to whom he has become engaged. He confided to me that she was lovely, which I knew before, that she was very young, which I also knew; he finally confided to me that he had chosen her precisely so that he himself could form her into the ideal that had always vaguely hovered before him. Good lord, what a silly licentiate—and a healthy, blooming, cheerful girl.
The Seducer’s Diary 391 Now, I am a fairly old hand at the game, and yet I never ap- proach a young girl other than as nature’s Venerabile [some- thing worthy of veneration] and first learn from her. Then in- sofar as | may have any formative influence upon her, it is by teaching her again and again what I have learned from her.
Her soul must be stirred, agitated in every possible direc- tion—not piecemeal and by spurts, but totally. She must dis- cover the infinite, must experience that this is what lies closest to a person. This she must discover not along the path of thought, which for her is a wrong way, but i1 the imagina- tion, which is the real line of communication between her and me, for that which is a component for the man is the whole for the woman. She must not labor her way forward to the infinite along the irksome path of thought, for woman is not born to labor, but she will reach it along the easy path of the imagina- tion and the heart. For a young girl, the infinite is just as nat- ural as the idea that all love must be happy. Everywhere, wherever she turns, a young girl has the infinite around her, and the transition is a leap,'*8 but, please note, a feminine, not a masculine, leap. Why are men ordinarily so clumsy? When they are going to leap, they have to take a running start, make many preparations, measure the distance with the eyes, make several runs—shy away and turn back. Finally they leap and fall in. A young girl leaps in a different way. In mountainous country, one often comes upon two towering mountain peaks. A chasmic abyss separates them, terrible to look down into. No man dares to risk this leap. But a young girl, so say the natives in the region, did dare to do it, and it is called the Maiden’s Leap. I am fully prepared to believe it, just as I be- lieve everything remarkable about a young girl, and it is intox- icating to me to hear the simple natives talk about it. I believe it all, believe the marvelous, am amazed by it only in order to believe; as the only thing that has amazed me in the world, a young girl is the first and will be the last. And yet for a young girl such a leap is only a hop, whereas a man’s leap always be- comes ludicrous because no matter how far he stretches out, his exertion at the same time becomes minuscule compared 359 392 Either/Or, I with the distance between the peaks and nevertheless provides a kind of yardstick. But who would be so foolish as to imagine a young girl taking a running start? One can certainly imagine her running, but this running is itself a game, an enjoyment, a display of her loveliness, whereas the idea of a running start separates what in woman belongs together; that is, a running start has in itself the dialectical, which is contrary to woman’s nature. And now the leap—who again would be graceless enough here to dare to separate what belongs together! Her leap is a gliding. And once she has reached the other side, she stands there again, not exhausted by the effort, but more beau- tiful, more soulful than ever; she throws a kiss over to us who stand on this side. Young, newborn, like a flower that has shot up from the root of the mountain, she swings out over the abyss so that everything almost goes black before our eyes. — What she must learn is to 'make all the motions of infinity, to swing herself, to rock herself in moods, to confuse poetry and actuality, truth and fiction, to frolic in infinity. Then when she is familiar with this tumult, I shall add the erotic; then she will be what I want and desire. Then my duties will be over, my work; then I shall haul in all my sails; then I shall sit at her side, and under her sails we shall journey forward. In fact, as soon as this girl is erotically intoxicated, I shall have enough to do sitting at the helm in order to moderate the speed so that noth- ing happens too soon or in an unbecoming manner. Once in a while one punctures a little hole in the sail, and the next mo- ment we rush along again.
13°In my uncle’s house, Cordelia becomes more and more indignant. She has requested several times that we do not go there anymore, but it is to no avail; I always know how to think up evasions. When we were leaving there last night, she shook my hand with an unusual passion. She probably has really felt very distressed there, and no wonder. If I did not al- ways find amusement in observing these unnatural affecta- tions, I could not possibly hold out. This morning, I received a letter from her in which she makes fun of engagements with more wit than J had given her credit for. I kissed the let- The Seducer’s Diary 393 ter; it is the most cherished one I have received from her. Just right, my Cordelia! That is the way I want it.
'40It so happens, rather oddly, that on Ostergade there are two coffee shops directly opposite each other. On the second floor, left side, lives a young miss or a young lady. Usually, she is concealed behind a vertical venetian blind covering the window by which she sits. The blind is made of very thin ma- terial, and anyone, if he has good eyes, who knows the girl or has seen her frequently will easily be able to identify every fea- ture, whereas to the person who does not know her and does not have good eyes she will appear as a dark figure. In some measure, the latter is the case with me; the former with a young officer who every day, precisely at twelve o’clock, shows up in the offing and turns his gaze up toward that vene- tian blind. Actually it was the venetian blind that first directed my attention to that fine telegraphic connection. There are no blinds on the other windows, and a solitary blind such as that, covering only one window, is usually a sign that someone sits behind it regularly.
One morning, I stood in the window of the pastry shop on the other side. It was exactly twelve o’clock. Paying no atten- tion to the people passing by, I kept my eyes on that venetian blind, when suddenly the dark figure behind it began to move. The profile of a woman’s head appeared in the next window in such a way that it turned in a strange manner in the same di- rection as the venetian blind. Thereupon the owner of the head nodded in a very friendly way and again hid behind the vene- tian blind. I concluded first and foremost that the person she greeted was a man, for her gesture was too passionate to be prompted by the sight of a girl friend; second, I concluded that the one to whom the greeting applied ordinarily came from the other side. She had placed herself just right in order to be able to see him some distance away, in fact, hidden by the venetian blind, she could even greet him. —Quite so! At pre- cisely twelve o’clock, the hero in this little love episode, our dear lieutenant, comes along. I am sitting in the coffee shop on the ground floor of the building in which the young lady lives 361 394 Either/Or, I on the second floor. The lieutenant has already spied her. Be careful, my good friend; it is not such an easy matter to pay one’s respects gracefully to the second floor. Incidentally, he is not bad—slender, well built, a handsome figure, a curved nose, black hair—the cocked hat is very becoming. Now the pinch. His legs begin to knock a little, to become too long. This makes a visual impression comparable to the feeling a person has when he has a toothache and the teeth become too long for the mouth. If one is going to concentrate all the en- ergy in the eyes and direct them toward the second floor, one is likely to draw too much strength from the legs. Pardon me, Mr. Lieutenant, for halting this gaze in its ascension. It is a piece of impertinence, I know very well. This gaze cannot be said to say very much; rather, it says nothing at all, and yet it promises very much. But obviously these many promises are mounting too powerfully to his head; he is reeling, or to use the poet’s words about Agnes: he staggered, he fell.!41 It is too bad, and if the matter had been left to me, it would never have happened. He is too good for that. It is really un- fortunate, for if one is going to impress the ladies as a gallant, one must never fall. Anyone wishing to be a gallant must be alert to such things. But if someone appears merely as an in- telligent being, all such things are of no importance; one is deeply absorbed in oneself, one droops, and if one actually does fall down, there is nothing striking about it. —What impression did this incident probably make on my little miss? It is too bad that I cannot be simultaneously on both sides of this Dardanelles street. I could, it is true, have an acquaintance posted on the other side, but for one thing I always prefer to make the observations myself, and for another, one can never know what may come out of this affair for me. In such a case, it is never good to have someone in on the secret, for then one must waste a good deal of time wresting from him what he knows and making him puzzled.
Iam really becoming bored with my good lieutenant. Day in and day out, he marches past in full uniform. It is indeed a terrible kind of steadfastness.'*? Is this befitting for a soldier? Good sir, do you not carry side arms? Should you not take the The Seducer’s Diary 395 house by storm and the girl by force? Of course, if you were a student, a licentiate, a curate, who keeps himself alive by hope,'* that would be another matter. '4*But I forgive you, for the girl pleases me the more I see her. She is beautiful; her brown eyes are full of roguishness. When she is awaiting your arrival, her countenance is transfigured by a higher beauty that is indescribably becoming to her. Therefore, I conclude that she must have great imagination, and imagination is the natu- ral cosmetic of the fair sex.
My Cordelia, My Cordelia, What is longing [Lengsel]? Language and poets rhyme [rime] it with the word “‘prison [Fangsel]’’. How unreasonable [uri- melig]! As if only the person sitting in prison could long. As if one could not long if one is free. Suppose that I were free— how I would long! And on the other hand, I am certainly free, free as a bird, and yet how I do long! I long when I am going to you; I long when I leave you; even when I am sitting at your side, I long for you. Can one, then, long for what one has? In- deed, if one considers that the next moment one may not have it. My longing is an eternal impatience. Only if I had lived through all eternities and assured myself that you belonged to me every moment, only then would I return to you and live through all eternities with you and certainly not have enough patience to be separated from you for one moment without longing but have enough assurance to sit calmly at your side.
Your JOHANNES My Cordelia, Outside the door there stands a little cabriolet, to me larger than the whole world, since it is large enough for two, hitched to a pair of horses, wild and unruly like the forces of nature, impatient like my passions, bold like your thoughts. If you wish, I shall carry you off—my Cordelia! Do you command it? Your command is the password [Losen] that lets loose [losne] the reins and the pleasure of flight. I am carrying you away, not from some people to others, but out of the world.
I 363 I 363 396 Either/Or, I —The horses rear; the carriage rises up; the horses are stand- ing upright almost over our heads. We are driving through the clouds up into the heavens; the wind whistles about us; is it we who are sitting still and the whole world is moving, or is it our reckless flight? Are you dizzy, my Cordelia? Then hold fast to me; I do not become dizzy. Intellectually one never becomes dizzy if one thinks of only one thing, and I think only of you. Physically one never becomes dizzy if one looks fixedly at only one object, and I look only at you. Hold tight; if the world passed away, if our light carriage disappeared beneath us, we would still cling to each other, floating in the harmony of the spheres. '#5 Your JOHANNES Your JOHANNES '46]t is almost too much. My servant has waited six hours, I myself two in the wind and rain, just to waylay that dear child Charlotte Hahn. She usually visits an old aunt of hers every Wednesday between two and five. Precisely today would have to be the day she did not come, precisely today when I did so much want to meet her. Why? Because she puts me in a very particular mood. I greet her; she curtseys in a way that simul- taneously is indescribably terrestrial and yet so heavenly. She almost stops; it is as if she were about to sink into the earth, and yet she has a look as if she were about to be elevated into the heavens. When I look at her, my mind simultaneously be- comes solemn and yet desiring. Otherwise, the girl means nothing to me; all I ask is this greeting, nothing more, even if she were willing to give it. Her greeting puts me in a mood, and in turn I squander this mood on Cordelia. —And yet I wager that she has slipped past us in one way or another. Not only in comedies but also in actual life is it difficult to keep watch on a young girl; one must have an eye on each finger. There was anymph, Cardea,!*” who spent her time fooling the menfolk. She lived in a wooded area, lured her lovers into the thicket, and vanished. She was going to fool Janus, too, but he fooled her, because he had eyes in the back of his head.
The Seducer’s Diary 397 My letters are not failing of their intention. They are devel- oping her mentally, even though not erotically. For that pur- pose, letters cannot be used, but notes. The more the erotic emerges, the shorter they become, but all the more unerringly they seize the erotic point. For in order not to make her senti- mental or soft, irony stiffens the feelings again but also makes her crave the sustenance of which she is most fond. Distantly and indefinitely, the notes give a presentiment of the highest. The moment this presentiment begins to dawn in her soul, the connection is broken. Through my resistance, the presenti- ment will take form within her soul as if it were her own thought, the impulse of her own heart. This is just what I want.
My Cordelia, My Cordelia, Somewhere in the city there lives a little family consisting of a widow and three daughters. Two of them go to the royal kitchen to learn how to cook. One afternoon in early summer, about five o’clock, the door to the drawing room opens softly, and a reconnoitering glance surveys the room. No one is there except a young girl sitting at the piano. The door is slightly ajar, so one can listen without being observed. The one play- ing is no great artist, for then the door would surely have been entirely closed. She is playing a Swedish melody; it is about the brief duration of youth and beauty. The words mock the girl’s youth and beauty; the girl’s youth and beauty mock the words. Which is right—the girl or the words? The music sounds so hushed and melancholy, as if sadness were the ar- bitrator that would settle the controversy. —But it is in the wrong, this sadness! What communion is there between youth and these reflections! What fellowship between morning and evening! The piano keys quiver and quake; the spirits of the soundboard spring up in confusion and do not understand one another. —-My Cordelia, why so vehement! Why this passion!
How distant must an event be from us in time in order for us to recollect it; how distant so that recollection’s longing can no longer grasp it? In this respect, most people have a limit; they cannot recollect what is too close in time, nor can they 365 I 366 398 Either/Or, I recollect what is too distant. I know no limit. Yesterday’s ex- perience I push back a thousand years in time and recollect it as if it were experienced yesterday.
Your JOHANNES My Cordelia, I have a secret to confide to you, my confidante. To whom should I confide it? To echo? It would betray it. To the stars? They are cold. To human beings? They do not understand it. Only to you do I dare to confide it, for you know how to keep it. There is a girl, more beautiful than the dream of my soul, purer than the light of the sun, deeper than the springs of the sea, prouder than the flight of the eagle—there is a girl—O in- cline your head to my ear and to my words so that my secret can steal into it. —This girl I love more than my life, for she is my life; more than all my desires, for she is my only desire; more than all my thoughts, for she is my only thought; more warmly than the sun loves the flower, more intimately than grief loves the privacy of the troubled mind, more longingly than the burning sand of the desert loves the rain. I cling to her more tenderly than the mother’s eye to her child, more confi- dently than the entreating soul to God, more inseparably than the plant to its root. —Your head grows heavy and full of thoughts; it sinks down upon your breast; your bosom rises to come to its aid—my Cordelia! You have understood me, you have understood me correctly, literally; not one jot or tittle has escaped you! Shall I strain every nerve of my ears and let your voice convince me of it? Would I be able to doubt? Will you keep this secret? Dare I depend upon you? Tales are told of people who by dreadful crimes initiated each other into mutual silence.'*® To you I have confided a secret that is my life and the content of my life—have you nothing to confide to me that is so significant, so beautiful, so chaste that supranatural forces would be set in motion if it were betrayed?
Your JOHANNES The Seducer’s Diary 399 My Cordelia, The sky is cloudy—dark rain clouds scowl] like black eye- brows above its passionate countenance; the trees of the forest are in motion, tossed about by troubled dreams. You have dis- appeared from me into the forest. Behind every tree I see a feminine creature that resembles you; if I come closer, it hides behind the next tree. Do you not wish to show yourself to me, collect yourself? Everything is confused to me; the various parts of the forest lose their distinctive contours; I see every- thing as a sea of fog, where feminine creatures resembling you appear and disappear everywhere. I do not see you; you are continually moving in a wave of perception, and yet I am al- ready happy over every single resemblance to you. What is the reason—is it the copious unity of your nature or the scanty multiplicity of my nature? —To love you, is it not to love a world?
Your JOHANNES Your JOHANNES It would be of real interest to me if it were possible to repro- duce very accurately the conversations I have with Cordelia. But I easily perceive that it is an impossibility, for even if I managed to recollect every single word exchanged between us, it nevertheless is out of the question to reproduce the ele- ment of contemporaneity, which actually is the nerve in con- versation, the surprise in the outburst, the passionateness, which is the life principle in conversation. Ordinarily, lam not prepared in advance, of course, for this is at variance with the essential nature of conversation, especially erotic conversa- tion. But I continually bear in mente [in mind] the content of my letters, always keep my eye on the mood they may have evoked in her. Of course, it could never occur to me to ask whether she has read my letter. It is easy to ascertain that she has read it. Nor do I ever speak directly with her about it, but I maintain secret communication with them in my conversa- tions, partly in order to fix more firmly in her soul some impression or other, partly in order to wrest it from her and 367 368 400 Either/Or, I make her perplexed. Then she can read the letter again and gain a new impression from it and so forth.
A change has taken place and is taking place in her. If 1 were to designate the state of her soul at this moment, I would say that it is pantheistic boldness. The expression in her eyes be- trays it at once. It is bold, almost reckless, in expectations, as if it asked for the extraordinary at every moment and was pre- pared to see it. Like the eye that gazes in the distance, this look sees beyond what immediately appears to it and sees the mar- velous. It is bold, almost reckless, in its expectancy—but not in self-confidence, and therefore it is rather dreaming and im- ploring, not proud and commanding. She is seeking the mar- velous outside herself; she will pray that it might make its ap- pearance, as if it were not in her power to call it forth. This must be prevented; otherwise I shall gain the upper hand too soon. Yesterday she told me there was something royal in my nature. Perhaps she wants to defer to me, but that absolutely will not do. To be sure, dear Cordelia, there is something royal in my nature, but you have no inkling of the kind of kingdom I have dominion over. It is over the tempests of moods. Like Aeolus,'*? I keep them shut up in the mountain of my personality and allow one and now another to go out. Flat- tery will give her self-esteem; the distinction between what is mine and what is yours will be affirmed; everything will be placed upon her. Flattery requires great care. Sometimes one must place oneself very high, yet in such a way that there re- mains a place still higher; sometimes one must place oneself very low. The former is more proper when one is moving in the direction of the intellectual; the latter is more proper when one is moving in the direction of the erotic.
Does she owe me anything? Not at all. Could I wish that she did? Not at all. Iam too much a connoisseur, understand the erotic too well, for such foolishness. If this actually were the case, I would try with all my might to make her forget it and to lull to sleep my own thoughts about it. When it comes to the labyrinth of her heart, every young girl is an Ariadne;!5° she holds the thread by which one can find the way through— The Seducer’s Diary 401 but she possesses it in such a way that she herself does not know how to use it.
My Cordelia, Speak—I obey. Your desire is a command; your entreaty is an omnipotent adjuration; your every most evanescent wish is a boon to me, for I do not obey you as a ministering spirit, as if I stood outside you. When you command, your will comes into existence, and I along with it, for Iam a disarray of soul that simply awaits a word from you.
Your JOHANNES My Cordelia, You know that I very much like to talk with myself. I have found in myself the most interesting person among my ac- quaintances. At times, I have feared that I would come to lack material for these conversations; now I have no fear, for now I have you. I shall talk with myself about you now and for all eternity, about the most interesting subject with the most in- teresting person—ah, I am only an interesting person, you the most interesting subject.
Your JOHANNES My Cordelia, You find the time I have loved you to be so short; you al- most seem to fear that I could have loved before. There are manuscripts in which the fortunate eye quickly sees faintly an older writing that in the course of time has been supplanted by trivial inanities. With caustic substances, the later writing is erased, and now the older writing is distinct and clear. In the same way, your eye has taught me to find myself in myself. I allow forgetfulness to consume everything that does not touch on you, and then I discover a pristine, a divinely young, prim- itive text; then I discover that my love for you is just as old as I myself.
Your JOHANNES 369 370 402 Either/Or, I My Cordelia, How can a kingdom survive that is in conflict with itself;15! how can I survive if I am in conflict with myself? About what? About you—in order if possible to find repose in the thought that I am in love with you. But how am I to find this repose? One of the conflicting forces will continually convince the other that it is indeed the one most deeply and fervently in love; at the next moment, the other will. It would not concern me so much if the conflict were outside myself, if there were someone who dared to be in love with you or dared to desist— the crime is equally great—but this conflict within me con- sumes me, this one passion in its duplexity.
Your JOHANNES