The child of our love lived only one day.
When, a hundred years earlier, it befell my brother Lessing that he
lost his only-born after a single day of life, he bitterly reviled
Christ in his sorrow. With cutting sarcasm be lauded the wisdom of this
child, who would not enter life until he was dragged into it with tongs
of iron, - and the same night departed again.
My brother Lessing was a devout man, but yet not sufficiently devout to
revere the beauty, the majesty and greatness of Human Being amid the
suffering he had to undergo. The true, living Christ had also called
him to testify, and he did not in his testimony spare the Bible-Jesus,
the artificial product of human fancy. But the belief in the future
Glory of Mankind for which the suffering of the individual is not too
high a price, afforded him no solace and did not reconcile him to the
bitterness of life.
I will not laud my strength. I was as weak in my overwhelming sorrow as
one might expect of a poor mortal. As long as my wife survived her
child, my love for her gave me the strength outwardly to show nothing
that might resemble bitterness or despair. When she too was taken from
me, there was nothing or no one to force me to a display of
cheerfulness and resignation, and for a while I was a crushed, beaten
and broken creature, a faded, falling leaf.
But the knowledge, the spiritual, intellectual knowledge, could not
forsake me even though all sensibility had been dulled and stifled by
excess of grief. As long as we contemplate ourselves with the
scientific eye, from the height of our inmost consciousness, so long
too there is something that exists above pain, old age and death. He
who accurately observes himself in suffering and old age, is thereby
exalted above time and sorrow, for that which contemplates is always
more and higher than that which is contemplated. And so in the midst of
ray wretchedness I knew that gladness and eternal youth dwelt within me
through this tiny spark of contemplative power.
I knew and never forgot that the Eternal in which we live does not take
anxious account of a little more or less of suffering and does not
spare his creatures.
It suffers thousands of seeds to perish in order that one of them may
attain perfect growth. I knew that the pain I felt was the after effect
of a craving now grown useless and that I should no longer be sensible
of it as soon as I considered what had been attained, and desisted from
the unessential and unattainable.
And I saw no reason to doubt of the supremacy of blessedness and joy
above all sorrow, because I, insignificant individual, in a few short
years of life had been made to suffer the utmost that I could endure.
I was weak, weak as all human beings, but an inconceivable spark of
knowledge shone out like a bright tiny star above all my dark
infirmities. And it is upon this little twinkling star, dear reader,
that I would fix your attention, and not upon my frailties.
What else is it but weakness, miserable, lamentable weakness, that is
spread out before us in the bitter invective speeches against Life by
those who are called pessimists, by Schopenhauer, Wagner, Ibsen,
dragged along as they were in the ebb of life toward the middle of this
century?
I was born at the shifting of the tide and I know that the rising
waters are bearing me upon them. I know full well that pure blessedness
is not yet in Human Being, but that it must be created and that the
first condition for its advent is the faith and the will, the courage
and the strength of the Originals. Wherever true being obtains there is
pure blessedness, and it is our part to attain this true being - but
the first essential for it is the foreseeing conviction. For willing is
creating and each of us, building in eternity, follows his own plan.
My optimism is truly not the hiding myself from inevitable grief, for
with towering waves the sea of sorrow has pounded against my beacon
towers. The fires were not extinguished and beamed out above it all.
But not a moment longer than I can help it do I allow myself to dwell
on the dark, the gloomy and melancholy side of life. Nor shall I try to
thrill your heart, dear reader, with scenes of melancholy, sad as the
things may be that I have to tell you. The worst of all demoniacal
aberrations is a passion for wallowing in the mire of dreariness, of
melancholy. Guard yourself, guard yourself against the dismal lime rods
that threaten the free flight of your thoughts.
Elsje and I had frequently spoken of dying, but only when a vigorous
mood permitted us to do so without sadness or apprehension. For the
worst thing about death is not the actual dying, but the breath of
horror that it sometimes casts upon our sensibilities.
That our age permits so few to live beautifully is sad, but it is far
worse that it gives to so few the opportunity and the courage to die
worthily. Our generation ill understands how to lives but it knows even
less how to die. Most die, not the quite unappalling death of the hero,
but the horrible Philistine's death, as Goethe called it.
To die beautifully and worthily had been the dearest wish of both of
us, after that of a long life in happy unison. And Elsje attained this
desire as nearly as our wretched circumstances allowed.
"It is good after all now," she said when she felt the certainty of
what was about to take place, "that our darling baby did not live. For
it would have been so hard for you, poor, dear man, to care for the
child alone and at the same time continue with your work."
Eagerly she questioned me every morning about my dreams and it pleased
her exceedingly when I could honestly say that despite my anxieties my
dreams had been of a serene, refreshing splendor. And she always wanted
to know more of this wonderful state, that must be so like what we
shall experience after this body's decay and is so difficult to
describe and to comprehend.
"I think the worst," she said, "is that perhaps we shall never be
certain, when we see each other again, whether it is not a delusive
image, a product of our own imagination, instead of the other's actual
being. For then we no longer, as now, have our senses and thus nothing
to convince us that what we perceive is the same as what we perceived
in life."
"I can't say much in answer to that, dearest, except this - that even
in the brief moments of perception during sleep, I have felt assurance.
Self-deception may indeed be possible, but there is also infinite,
quiet time for consideration, observation, recollection, which in my
sleep is always wanting. And there must also be amalgamation,
dissolution of personality, perception through the medium of still
living beings - a multitude of conditions and faculties now still
wholly incomprehensible to us."
"That sounds sad to me: dissolution of the personality. For it will be
for you, for you as you are now, for your own personal nature, your
dear voice, your gentle eyes that I shall long for ever and ever, and
for that above everything."
"I only know, Elsje, that nothing has been lost or can be lost of all
our impressions, of all the most beautiful and precious things we have
experienced. Nothing perishes, and surely least of all that which is
the constituent element of all that is: feeling. All feeling is
eternal, and the least that we experience is lastingly recorded in the
memory of the Almighty. I can say nothing more nor be more explicit
about it, we must comfort ourselves with this main thought."
"If you are comforted and brave, dearest husband, I am too."
"I am, for even if I must live on ten or twenty solitary years after
our separation, I have my work and my study, and I also have my nights
in which I shall call you. And you'll surely want to come when I call
you?
"Oh, dearest, whether I will want to? If I know that it can comfort
you! Whether I will want to?"
And her dim eyes smiled at the extreme superfluence of my question.
"And when you have your gloomy moments again, dear, will you forgive me
then that I induced you to cause and to experience so much sorrow? - I
know of course that you never think bitterly of me, and that you
forgive me everything in your joyous, vigorous times, when your real,
true nature dominates. But there are periods of dejection too. Will you
not think bitterly of me then?"
"Rather ask me, Elsje, whether I will forgive Christ that he induced me
to cause you so much suffering, that he did not point out my way to me
sooner and more distinctly, and left you to pine and wait so long.
Christ is the Mighty, the Strong, the Wise, who governs us and who
bears the greatest responsibility. We two are poor, blind, little
toilers who have helped one another to the best of our abilities. For
each other we have only gratitude!"
"Yes!" said Elsje, contented; "for each other only gratitude."
And to the last moments of her life she was absorbed and comforted in
the thought that I would still have the nights, in which I would call
her and find strength and encouragement for the lonely day.
"To forgive Jesus," she said another time, "is really absurd, isn't it?
For I would love him at least just as much as you, if only I might
think of him as human."
"Everything we say, Elsje, is absurd. But what we feel is not absurd.
When we have returned to the Source of Life, to the Genitive-soul of
humanity, only then I think shall we realize how absurd were our words,
but how true our feeling."
The last words I heard from her, in her anxious care for me, were a
whispered: "Will you call me!" and once more when her voice had grown
toneless her lips formed the word: "Call!"
Then the blossom withered, and fell. But the mighty stem had grown
richer through the beautiful bloom of her love-breathing life.