a new butterfly, all the foregoing was blotted
out; there was no longer any suffering, nor dying. Timeless! There was
nothing but spring air, lovely, hopeful spring air. And truly, the evil
days of old age, of mockery, and of the railroad, of autumn tempests on
the road, of a pulse that slackened in the veins--nothing of this could
stand its ground. It was all a mere dream.

For he felt as weak and as happy as on the day when he had almost
sacrificed his glorious youth for a cask of wine. And look, here were
the moist, dark-red spots in the sunlit dust of the road, and the ruby
red on his Sunday shirt flamed even more intensely.

So an unexampled happiness reeled through the Styrian wine-carter's
mind, because his life's greatest day and his deed of heroism were
still upon him. He sobbed in pain and joy, "Leave me and catch the
precious wine. It must not run out. People, the sacred wine!"

And with the happiness of intoxication he sank into the roseate dream
of eternity.

EMIL STRAUSS

* * * * * *

MARA (1909)

TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM GUILD HOWARD
Assistant Professor of German, Harvard University

It was in a Brazilian city. One morning I awoke early and felt my heart
so full of repugnance to all life that I shut my eyes again and
wondered what sort of dream could have left me in this feverish state
of mind. But I could not recollect that I had had any dream; in the
middle of the night, aroused by a creaking casement, I had started up
out of a dreamless slumber. Whence came, then, for the second and the
third time this darkness in me, this torturing feeling of oppression at
every breath, this piteous longing never to have waked up and never
again to have to wake up? I had gone contentedly to bed, and had slept
a deep and peaceful sleep.

Confidingly and unguardedly you yield to fatigue and give yourself over
to rest--what demon is it that then enters through the open portal,
inoculates your heart with a black drop, stirs up and discolors and
poisons with it all your blood until, foul and heavy as lead, it forces
its way through your heart?

Or is it I--I who am that demon! As the dark bottom of a deep well
is lighted up and revealed by the perpendicular rays of the sun only
when the water above is quiet and clear as crystal--is it thus
that the true color of my being stands forth from