Sternly, remorselessly, fate leads each of us, and only at the first,
absorbed in details of all sorts, in trifles, in ourselves, we are not
aware of her harsh hand. While one can be deceived and has no shame in
lying, one can live and there is no shame in hoping. Truth, not the full
truth, of that, indeed, we cannot speak, but even that little we can
reach locks up our lips at once, ties our hands, leads us to 'the No.'
Then one way is left a man to keep his feet, not to fall to pieces, not
to sink into the mire of self-forgetfulness... of self-contempt,--calmly
to turn away from all, to say 'enough!' and folding impotent arms upon
the empty breast, to save the last, the sole honour he can attain to,
the dignity of knowing his own nothingness; that dignity at which Pascal
hints when calling man a thinking reed he says that if the whole
universe crushed him, he, that reed, would be higher than the universe,
because he would know it was crushing him, and it would know it not. A
poor dignity! A sorry consolation! Try your utmost to be penetrated by
it, to have faith in it, you, whoever you may be, my poor brother, and
there's no refuting those words of menace:
'Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.'
I quoted these lines from _Macbeth_, and there came back to my mind
the witches, phantoms, apparitions.... Alas! no ghosts, no fantastic,
unearthly powers are terrible; there are no terrors in the Hoffmann
world, in whatever form it appears.... What is terrible is that there is
nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting
and degradingly inane. Once one is soaked through and through with that
knowledge, once one has tasted of that bitter, no honey more seems
sweet, and even the highest, sweetest bliss, the bliss of love, of
perfect nearness, of complete devotion--even that loses all its magic;
all its dignity is destroyed by its own pettiness, its brevity. Yes; a
man loved, glowed with passion, murmured of eternal bliss, of undying
raptures, and lo, no trace is left of the very worm that devoured the
last relic of his withered tongue. So, on a frosty day in late autumn,
when all is lifeless and dumb in the bleached grey grass, on the bare
forest edge, if the sun but come out for an instant from the fog and
turn one steady glance on the frozen earth, at once the gnats swarm up
on all sides; they sport in the warm rays, bustle, flutter up and down,
circle round one another... The sun is hidden--the gnats fall in a
feeble shower, and there is the end of their momentary life.