Vienna, May 14, 1861.
A dry flower, and with it the inscription:
From my unfortunate brother’s grave.
Th. Schurz, sister of Lenau.
I can still remember the acquisition of this leaf of the album. Aunt
Lotti, Elvira, and I had one afternoon gone on a pilgrimage to the
hamlet where rest the ashes of Nikolaus Lenau,[6] for whose melancholy
poems Elvira cherished an enthusiasm. On this occasion we visited the
poet’s sister, who was living in a little country-house not far from the
graveyard. Frau Schurz told us much about the unhappy man’s last years,
spent in incurable insanity, and showed us many relics, silhouettes of
himself and of Sophie Löwenthal, the woman whom he had loved so
passionately with a love not unreturned but unaccepted; and she herself
took us to the graveyard to pick there the twig that I have now before
my eyes.
Is it accident, or did Elvira know that Nikolaus Niembsch once meant to
tear himself away from Sophie Löwenthal and to marry another who was
also one of the great and famous figures of the time? At all events, on
the following page of the album stands the following autograph:
_Ich will, das Wort ist mächtig_
“I will,” the word is mighty;
When spoken staunch and still,
It tears the stars from heaven,
The single word “I will!”