In the Middle Ages men lived in the very nastiest \vay and
\vasted their efforts on utterly unnecessary edifices \vhich did not contribute to their comfort. But the Middle Ages did not talk about their passion for comfort; on the contrary, the more comfortless their life, the more nearly it approached their ideal; their luxury was in the splC'ndour of the House of God and of their assembly hall, and there they \";ere not niggardly, they grudged nothing. The knight in those days built a fortress, not a palace, and did not select a site with the most convenient road to it, but an inaccessible cliff. Nowadays there is no one to defend oneself against, and nobody believes in saving his soul by adorning a church ; the peaceful and orderly citizen has dropped out of the forum and the Rathaus, out of the opposition and the club; passions and fanaticisms, religions and heroisms, have all given way to material prosperity: and this has not been achieved.
For me there is something melancholy, something tragic, in all this, as though this world were living somehow in expectation of the earth's giving way under its feet, and were seeking not orderliness but forgetfulness. I see this not only in the care\vorn, wrinkled faces but also in a fear of any serious think-
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ing, in an aversion from any analysis of the situation, in a convulsive craving to be busy, and for external distractions. The old are ready to play with toys, 'if only to keep from thinking.'
The fashionable mustard-plaster is an International Exhibition. The remedy and the illness together form an intermittent fever centred first in one part and then in another. All are rushing about sailing, walking, flying, spending money, striving, staring and growing weary, living even more uncomfortably in order to run after success-what? vVell, just that: successes. As though in three or four years there can be so much progress in everything; as though, when we have railways to travel by, there were such an extreme necessity to carry from place to place things like houses, machines, stables, cannon, even perhaps parks and kitchen gardens.
And when they are sick of exhibitions they will take to war and begin to be diverted by heaps of corpses-anything to avoid seeing certain black spots on the sky.
B E Y O :\ D T H E A L P S
THE ARCHITECTURAL, monumental character of Italian towns, together with their neglected condition, eventually palls on one.
A modern man is not at home in them., but in an uncomfortable box at a theatre on whose stage thP scenery is magnificent.
Life in them has not become balanced, is not simple, and is not convenient. The tone is elevated, and in everything there is declamation-and Italian declamation too (anyone who has heard Dante read aloud knows what that is like). In everything there is the strained intensity which used to be the fashion among Moscow philosophers and German learned artists ; everything is looked at from the highest point, vom hohern Standpunk!. This state of being constantly screwed up rejects all abandon, and is for ever prepared to give a rebuff and to deliver a homily in set phrases. Chronic enthusiasm is exhausting and irritating.
Man does not ahvays want to be marvelling, to be spiritually exalted, to feel virtuous, to be moved and to be floating about mentally far back in the past; but Italy will never let him drop below a certain pitch and incessantly reminds him that her street is not simply a street but a monument, that he should not only walk through her squares but ought to study them.
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At the same time everything in Italy that is particularly elegant and grand (possibly it is the same everywhere) borders upon insanity and absurdity-or at least is reminiscent of childhood . . . . The Piazza Signoria is the nursery of the Florentine people; grandfather Buonarroti and Uncle Cellini presented it with marble and bronze playthings, and it has planted them at random in the square where so often blood has been shed and its fate has been decided-without the slightest consideration for David or Perseus . . . . There is a town in the water so that pike and perch can stroll about the streets . . : .
There is a town of stony chinks so that one must be a wood-louse or a lizard to creep and run along a narrow passage on the sea bottom left between the cliffs which are composed of palaces
. . . and then there is a Belovezh Forest of marble. What brain dared create the draft of that stone forest called Milan Cathedral, that mountain of stalactites? What brain had the audacity to carry out that mad architect's dream? . . . And who gave the money for it, the huge, incredible sum of money?
People only make sacrifices for what is unnecessary. Their fantastic aims are always the dearest to them; dearer than daily bread, dearer than self-interest. In selfishness a man must be trained, just as he must in humaneness. But imagination carries him away without any training, enthrals him without argument. The ages of faith were the ages of miracles.
A town which is rather more modern but less historical and ornamental is Turin.
'It simply swamps one with its prosaicness.'
'Yes, but it is easier to live in, just because it is simply a town, a town that exists not only for its own memories but for everyday life, for the present; i ts streets are not archaeological museums, and do not remind us at e\'ery step: memento mori; but look at its working population, at their aspect, keen as the Alpine a ir, and you will see that they are a sturdier stamp of men than the Florentines or the Venetians, and have perhaps even more staying power than the Genoese.'
The Genoese, however, I do not know. It is very difficult to get a proper look at them, for they are always flitting before one's eyes, running, bustling, hurrying, scurrying. The lanes leading to the sea are swarming with people, but those who are standing still are not Genoese; they are sailors from all the seas and oceans, skippers and captains. A bell rings here, a bell rings th('re: Partcn:.a!-Partcn:.a!-and part of thP. ant-heap begins fussing about, some loading, others discharging.
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Z U D E U T S C H
IT HAS BEEN POURING for three days. I cannot go out and I don't feel like working . . . . In the bookshop \vindow the two volumes of Heine's Correspondance� wPre displayed. Here was salvation. I bought them and proceeded to read them till the sky should clear.
Much water has flowed away since Heine was "writing to Moser, Immermann, and Varnhagen.
It is a strange thing: since 1 848 we have kept backing and retreating; we have thrown everything overboard and curled ourselves up like hedgehogs; and yet something has been done and everything has gradually changed. We are nearer to the earth, we stand on a lower, that is a firmer, level ; the plough cuts more deeply, our work is not so showy and it is more like manual labour-perhaps because it really is work. The Don Quixotes of the reaction have ripped open many of our balloons, the smoky gases have evaporated, the airships have come down, and we no longer move like the spirit of God over the waters with reed-pipe and prophetic Psalm singing, but catch at the trees, the roofs, and damp Mother Earth.