The most intelligent and famous female poet that our country has produced in the present century died in a hospital in Rome from the effects of scalds and burns that she must have sustained in her bathtub, according to the authorities. I used to go on trips with her, and on these trips I shared many of her philosophical views, as well as her views on the course of the world and the course of history, which had frightened her all her life. Many attempts on her part to return to her native Austria, however, came to grief because of the shamelessness of her female rivals and the stupidity of the Viennese authorities. The news of her death reminded me that she was the first guest in my then still completely empty house. She was always on the run and had always seen people for what they really were, as a slow-witted, stupid, thoughtless mass that one simply has to break with. Like me, she had early in life discovered the entrance to hell, and entered this hell even though there was a danger of perishing in this hell at a very early age. People are trying to decide whether her death was an accident or whether it was suicide. Those who believe in the poet’s suicide keep saying that she was broken by herself, whereas in reality and in the nature of things she was broken by her environment and, at bottom, by the meanness of her homeland, which persecuted her at every turn even when she was abroad, just as it does so many others.

Withdrawn

WITHDRAWN

In the past few months, three former classmates of mine have committed suicide; they were all friends of mine and kept me company with their arts for almost the whole of my life and were the ones who really made my existence in the least bit possible. The musician killed (shot) himself because people had no ear for his art. The painter killed (hanged) himself because people had no eyes for his art. The scientist, with whom I even went to primary school, killed (poisoned) himself because people, in his opinion, had no head for science. All three had had to withdraw from life because they were in despair over the fact that the world no longer had the feelings or abilities to take in their art and their science.

Like Robert Schumann

LIKE ROBERT SCHUMANN