Paris, damn it, Schwab! . . .

and instead of putting up with this as if my dream had merely changed its theme and motive (once, ages ago, this was how I had known how to live: effortlessly gliding from the reality of dreams into the unreality of days), I now frantically tried to hold on to the terror of my dream in order to wrest from it the key to the incomprehensibility of my waking existence, and in so doing, I plunged more and more hopelessly into the vortex of the verbal; I transformed image substances into notions, which instantly hijacked those images from their magical realm into logical connections, in which they lost all meaning; I got tangled up in word structures that shredded conscious experience into temporal and spatial processes; I used the polished and prepared surgical kit of concepts (murder, disgrace, conscience) to shoo away the reflections of what I had felt and with which it had provoked the echo of meaning.

Thus I lay awhile, immobile, enfeebled, and discouraged, still throbbing from an assault by deep fright against the center of my essence—and I was already mentally wandering again down side streets and dead ends, after myself—

I thought, for instance, Just what am I? Am I what just now so dreadfully afflicted me in my dreams? This caricature of Raskolnikov: the craven murderer who kills an old crone because she sees through his baseness? Or am I in reality not that . . . not completely at least . . . or but then again am I what is lying here and thinking about itself? The body, which is self-familiar to me with its needs and urges, its gradually commencing disintegration (which makes me love it all the more tenderly), the brain—this clown!—whose monkeyshines and escapades, conjuring tricks and acrobatic feats, I know so well, no willing, reliable, systematic worker like Cousin Wolfgang—like you, dear Schwab!—but a skillful climber of smooth walls, a nimble jumper, a good, swift diver, a fearless reconnoiterer and fabulously cunning thief? . . .

Naturally, I am both the one and the other and all this at once; and, beyond this, a wealth of other possibilities that could take form in certain situations . . . But whatever I may be, it can be uttered, it is articulable: it congeals as something shapable—

except for an ineffable remnant, which is really I—my SELF.

and now I ask: how much textual material does it take to select any one of the human possibilities and present it in words, clear-cut and unmistakable?

It is obvious that the tens of thousands of words in a language allow for an infinitude of combinations, enough to revive even the very finest nuance of a human existence. The great literature of the world has proven it without a doubt. So it is better to ask: How little does it take? If we focus on the gospels individually, we can see that each is barely the length of a brochure. Hence, for young Werther, an almost luxurious extravagance was deployed. Yet King Lear, for example: he’s there in just a few dozen lines. And besides: who wants to go that high? For a normal case, all we need is a brief excerpt from Lao Tzu, and editorials, Art Buchwald, Bambi, and a biblical verse . . . What am I saying! All it takes is simply the utterance of a name or simply and plainly the little word I . . .