It’s all right to hesitate, but never out of even the slightest weakness.
Everything is equally important, whether it’s the idea (as a whole) or its smallest constituent. Actually always the simultaneous contemplation of the idea, I must contemplate everything at the same time and train myself in this simultaneity of contemplation in such a way that I come to see everything ever more clearly, nothing less sharply focused than anything else, so that the edifice exists (in my head) and then I must move it out of my head onto the geometric point. The question is, will I achieve my aim in my own way by talking, or not, or will it turn out to be only resignation as a fact, so Roithamer. Resignation, weakness, emptiness, the failure to make it real. It’s all a matter of schooling oneself, a school in which I am both the teacher and the pupil, and in the intensity between the two there’s one’s logical consistency, there’s the Cone. My lucidity peaks at night, an exceptional condition of my head, so Roithamer, then in the morning the Cone falls apart in my head. Always assuming that my idea of the Cone corresponds precisely to my sister’s needs, her character, her nature.
Novalis: the Cone is not what she is at this point, it is rather everything about her, corresponding to her eyes and ears, her hearing, feeling, intelligence, alertness, attention. Corresponding. It is the fact itself which dumbfounds and benumbs, not the rest of it, so Roithamer. And so I’ve never talked with a soul in Altensam (including father) about the Cone, though they all know that I’m building the Cone, they’ve all heard of it. Such a building changes the man who is building it, by the ways in which he speeds the work along and completes it. I used to be open to everything before I had the idea (of building the Cone), but now I’m nothing but the victim of the man who is building the Cone. If my head had known, so Roithamer. It seems that one’s head keeps being draw irresistibly to the most impossible problems, every time, to prove itself, so ‘ Roithamer. If we don’t, every time, involve ourselves in the most problematic undertakings, we’re lost, there’s nothing left, so Roithamer. What then follows is the catastrophe of breakdown, whatever our idea was about deserts us when we sleepwalkers awaken in the middle of what we were doing, so Roithamer.
Once we recognize the process, it’s already broken off, nothing’s left but a man who’s been destroyed, killed. We retreat to an idea, possibly the only idea we know nothing about, so Roithamer. We try to grasp the things we experience mentally. If I don’t work hard enough, ‘m destructive, if I work too hard, I’m destructive, so Roit amer. The question always arises, whether it’s the right moment. We see everything ridiculously interrelated, from England, from Altensam, in the middle of the Kobernausser forest. e have an idea, in the end it’s nothing, so Roithamer. Once he actually went as far as his sister’s door, in order to admit everything about the Cone to her, three o’clock in the morning, so Roithamer, I’ll wake her up and explain. But at four o’clock I laughed out loud and went back to my room. And if another man should faithfully follow my notes, my plans, everything I’ve got in my head, in executing the Cone, it still wouldn’t be the same Cone, so Roithamer. But if I had neglected my scientific work, genetic mutations, I’d also have neglected building the Cone, as it is, by not neglecting my scientific teaching and studies, I also did not neglect the building of the Cone. For I was actually (most intensely) occupied with building the Cone in the Kobernausser forest while I was working my hardest on genetic mutations in Cambridge, and vice versa (March 3). The cause of work for and intensification of the one, the cause of work for and intensification of the other, so Roithamer, I never asked myself whether I am neglecting my scientific work by pushing on with building the Cone, and vice versa, it was a question I dared not ask myself, so Roithamer. The time was as favorable to my Cone building as it was for my scientific work, I achieved all I could, so Roithamer. Now I’ve left science and the Cone to nature, so Roithamer. Just as no one will ever set foot inside the Cone again, so no one will enter into my scientific work. That it’s possible to consider and act simultaneously upon two (seemingly) contradictory opposites, so Roithamer. To make full use of one’s mental state in every case and at every moment and never weaken in that direction, so Roithamer. We may not question our actions, so Roithamer.
Juxtapose my lack of sympathy to my mother’s, my parents’, my brothers’ lack of sympathy, so Roithamer. The Cone cost more to build than any other edifice in Austria, as I hear, I’ve obtained the figures on it, so Roithamer.
Total isolation in Cambridge alternated with total isolation in the Kobernausser forest, where I fixed up a room for myself in the builder’s work hut, for the times when it’s impossible for me to stay in Hoeller’s garret, because I have to be at the building site (March 7), so Roithamer. The secrecy with which I pursued building the Cone in Cambridge, the same secrecy in Altensam, the same secrecy at the Hoeller house, so Roithamer.
But at night I worked on genetic mutations, in the builder’s hut as well as in Hoeller’s garret, even though I was wholly occupied with the Cone, so Roithamer, there was no outward indication by which an onlooker could have recognized that I was working on genetic mutations while overseeing the building of the Cone in the Kobernausser forest, and on the Cone in Cambridge, while I was teaching and studying, so Roithamer. Every day one idea connected neither with building the Cone nor with my natural science, so Roithamer. The highest demands made of the one discipline applied to the other discipline, so Roithamer. To build, and realize, and complete such an edifice means always to hear and see everything connected with the edifice, meaning of course to hear and see everything and to act on one’s experience of all this hearing and seeing, so Roithamer. What if I’d suddenly informed my sister about my building the Cone? which I didn’t do, so saving myself and my plan. We keep silent about what we know, and make good progress, so Roithamer. At night he’d always heard the woodworm in Altensam, the voracity of the woodworms would keep him awake all night, everywhere and naturally most of all at night, because of his keen hearing and that oversensitive head of his, he heard the woodworm, the deathwatch beetle, at work, in the floor planks and under the floor planks, in the wardrobes and chests, in all the chest drawers most of all, so Roithamer, in the doors and in the window frames, even in the clocks and the chairs and overstuffed armchairs, he’d always been able to distinguish exactly where and in which object, which piece of furniture, a woodworm was at work, the woodworm had actually already gnawed its way into his own bed, while lying awake in bed all night long, so Roithamer, he’d watched the woodworm’s progress, had to watch it, with most concentrated attention, he’d breathed in the sweetish smell of the fresh wood meal and felt depressed at the thought that through all the years thousands, possibly tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of woodworms had infiltrated into Altensam in order to devour Altensam, to keep gnawing away at Altensam and devouring it until it collapsed in one moment, a moment that would quite possibly not be too long in coming. There wasn’t a single object in Altensam, so Roithamer, with out the woodworm in it, and even if it happened to be a new object, something recently acquired, the woodworm would have invaded this new object in no time at all, so Roithamer. When I take a piece of underwear out of a drawer, so Roithamer, I have to shake it out, because it’s full of wood meal, overnight my fresh laundry is full of wood meal, so Roithamer, when I take a handkerchief out of the drawer, I have to blow the wood meal off of it, even the dishes in daily use have to be blown and wiped off, so Roithamer, because they’re covered with wood meal, and actually everybody in Altensam is always full of wood meal, their faces are covered with wood meal, their heads and bodies covered with wood meal, so Roithamer. They were all constantly afraid they might break through the floor planks, because the floor planks were already ominously giving way here and there, because Altensam was constantly changing under the influence of the woodworm’s work (and the dry rot, of course!) they lived in chronic anxiety, because in fact the most noticeable and frightening manifestation in Altensam has been the work of the woodworms, so Roithamer. At first everything was tried against the woodworms, but in the end we had to admit that nothing can be done against woodworms, and we stopped trying. All our lives long in Altensam we were confronted with millions of woodworms, without a chance of defending ourselves against these millions of woodworms. Helpless against the woodworms, so my mother, so Roithamer, we fought the woodworms all our lives, but had to give up the struggle in the end, so my mother, so Roithamer. Each generation in turn, so Roithamer, had pitted itself against the woodworm in Altensam, each feared