The Assassin's Cloak. Группа авторов
aged so very much – and yet, as my own body declines, I love her ever more ardently, d’amour say the French.
Hopeful, although threatened by catastrophe. Charge because room not blacked out. That can mean a fine of so many 100M that I am forced to sell the house; it can also be disposed of with 20M. There are examples of both; I assumed the worst for a whole day, I am calmer now.
It was truly a misfortune, liability through negligence, as can happen with a car. We are usually both extremely careful with regard to the blackout, on our evening walks we often grumble about illuminated windows, say the police should really do something. And now we ourselves are caught in the act. On the Monday (the tenth) all kinds of things came together, which made me lose the thread. During the day I usually return from shopping at about half past four. Unpacking, hauling coal, a glance at the newspaper, blackout, going out for supper. On Monday I found Frau Kreidl, whom both of us greatly dislike, here. She wanted to be consoled: The whole house had been inspected by the Gestapo – new tenants? Confiscation of the house? (Cupboards opened in our rooms also – there was rather too much tobacco in the house! But they saw only five packets, as a precaution four others are already with Frau Voss.) It grew late. So blackout after the meal. In the Monopol the food so bad that Eva didn’t eat it. I wanted to get her something else at the station. Nothing there either. So I was very out of humor and distracted when we returned, immediately hurried into the kitchen to make tea. Against the night sky, once the light has been switched on, it is impossible to tell whether the shutters have been closed. When the policeman rang the doorbell at nine, we were quite unsuspecting, we led him to the window so that he could see for himself that it was blacked out. The man was courteous and sympathetic; he had to charge me because neighbours had reported the light. I had to state income and property: afterward ‘the chief of police’ will determine the level of the penalty. Until yesterday I was only expecting the worst; yesterday Frau Voss told me of a case in which someone had only paid 12M; admittedly the someone was the Aryan wife of a general, and I have a J on my identity card. Now I must wait, my mood going up and down.
Victor Klemperer
1951 [writing East of Eden]
Lincoln’s Birthday. My first day of work in my new room. It is a very pleasant room and I have a drafting table to work on which I have always wanted – also a comfortable chair given me by Elaine [his wife]. In fact I have never had it so good and so comfortable. I have known such things to happen – the perfect pointed pencil – the paper persuasive – the fantastic chair and a good light and no writing. Surely a man is a most treacherous animal full of his treasured contradictions. He may not admit it but he loves his paradoxes.
Now that I have everything, we shall see whether I have anything. It is exactly that simple. Mark Twain used to write in bed – so did our greatest poet. But I wonder how often they wrote in bed – or whether they did it twice and the story took hold. Such things happen. Also I would like to know what things they wrote in bed and what things they wrote sitting up. All of this has to do with comfort in writing and what its value is. I should think that a comfortable body would let the mind go freely to its gathering. But such is the human that he might react in an opposite way. Remember my father’s story about the man who did not dare be comfortable because he went to sleep. That might be true of me too. Now I am perfectly comfortable in body. I think my house is in order. Elaine, my beloved, is taking care of all the outside details to allow me the amount of free untroubled time every day to do my work. I can’t think of anything else necessary to a writer except a story and the will and the ability to tell it.
John Steinbeck
1962
Had supper at the Savoy. Ted Heath was of the party. A complete bachelor, with great qualities. I wonder whether he could become Prime Minister one day – he is one of those mentioned. He has a funny schoolboyish habit of giggling and shaking his shoulders up and down when he laughs – rather endearing, but odd. Yet perhaps no odder than Rab’s [Butler] strange hooting.
Cynthia Gladwin
13 February
1684
Dr. Tenison communicating to me his intention of Erecting a Library in St. Martines parish, for the publique use, desird my assistance with Sir Chr: Wren about the placing and structure thereof: a worthy and laudable designe: He told me there were 30 or 40 Young Men in Orders in his Parish, either, Governors to young Gent: or Chaplains to Noble-men, who being reprov’d by him upon occasion for frequenting Taverns or Coffè-houses, told him, they would study and employ their time better, if they had books: This put the pious Doctor upon this designe, which I could not but approve of, and indeede a greate reproach it is, that so great a Citty as Lond: should have never a publique Library becoming it: There ought to be one at St Paules, the West end of that Church, (if ever finish’d), would be a convenient place . . .
John Evelyn
1874
Yesterday I spent the whole day in the studio of a strange painter called Degas. After a great many essays and experiments and trial shots in all directions, he has fallen in love with modern life, and out of all the subjects in modern life he has chosen washerwomen and ballet-dancers. When you come to think of it, it is not a bad choice.
It is a world of pink and white, of female flesh in lawn and gauze, the most delightful of pretexts for using pale, soft tints.
He showed me, in their various poses and their graceful foreshortening, washerwomen and still more washerwomen . . . speaking their language and explaining the technicalities of the different movements in pressing and ironing.
Then it was the turn of the dancers. There was their green-room with, outlined against the light of a window, the curious silhouette of dancers’ legs coming down a little staircase, with the bright red of a tartan in the midst of all those puffed-out white clouds, and a ridiculous ballet-master serving as a vulgar foil. And there before one, drawn from nature, was the graceful twisting and turning of the gestures of those little monkey-girls.
An original fellow, this Degas, sickly, neurotic, and so ophthalmic that he is afraid of losing his sight; but for this very reason an eminently receptive creature and sensitive to the character of things. Among all the artists I have met so far, he is the one who has best been able, in representing modern life, to catch the spirit of that life.
The Brothers Goncourt
1902
Before me on my table there are Christmas roses in a chased metal bowl. Although this clearly sounds a very stylish note and though I have always imagined it as something very pretty I feel nothing, nothing at all.
And it’s the second day that the Christmas roses have stood before me.
Robert Musil
1926 [Berlin]
At one o’clock, just as my dinner-party guests were gone, a telephone call from Max Reinhardt. He was at [Karl Gustav] Vollmoeller’s and they wanted me to come over because Josephine Baker was there and the fun was starting. So I drove to Vollmoeller’s harem on the Pariser Platz. Reinhardt and Huldschinsky were surrounded by half a dozen naked girls, Miss Baker was also naked except for a pink muslin apron, and the little Landshoff girl was dressed up as a boy in a dinner-jacket. Miss Baker was dancing a solo with brilliant artistic mimicry and purity of style, like an ancient Egyptian or other archaic figure performing an intricate series of movements without ever losing the basic pattern. This is how their dancers must have danced for Solomon and Tutankhamen. Apparently she does this for hours on end, without tiring and continually inventing new figures like a child, a happy child, at play. She never even gets hot, her skin remains fresh, cool, dry. A bewitching creature, but almost quite unerotic. Watching her inspires as little sexual excitement as does the sight of a beautiful beast of prey.
Count Harry Kessler
1951
It must be told that my second work day is a bust as far as getting into the writing. I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first