ected, just because
the wood is master, as well as my hand. Varnish, blessed friend in
need, covers both beauties and defects.

*

We create nothing. We merely shape and discover that which already
exists and which, without our assistance, cannot release itself from
chaos.

Oh, I feel as if I at last understand the whole world and all of art
and work. I feel that my longings for the infinite are satisfied.

I now know the cause of the clashing between our lofty thoughts and our
lives of petty detail.

Hansei, Walpurga, the king, the queen, Gunther, Emma--what are they
all? Mere drops in the ocean of humanity. When I think of myself as a
part of the whole, I forget them all. That destroys love for
individuals; desire and enjoyment cease, and, with them, passion and
heartache.

And what am I? What still remains to me? We can conceive the great and
complete whole, while our love can only be for the individual, for that
which is nearest to us. And the nearest of all is God, the great idea
of universal law.

*

Walpurga is quite anxious about me. She often comes to me, and it seems
as if she wished to say something. She looks at me so strangely, and
yet says nothing. She tells me, again and again, how lovely it will be
at the shepherd's hut, and how quiet and happy I will be up there. She
wishes the mountains were already cleared of snow. She would like me to
be away from here, and says that I would soon become strong. And yet I
do not feel ill, but she always says: "You shine so!"

I feel as if I had settled my accounts with the world. I am perfectly
calm, and it may be that this feeling casts its radiance about me. I
could no longer fear the world. I could again live among human beings,
for I feel myself free. Nothing more can wound me.

*

I feel a desire for more perfect solitude. Shall I find greater
seclusion, profounder silence, up there? It seems as if I were ever
hearing the words, "lonely as death." (mutterseelenallein.) Oh, thou
blessed, German tongue! What a blessing it is that, without effort, I
bear the rich stores of my mother-tongue within me, and that, when
thoughts gush forth from every nook and cranny of the brain, I have
some word-vessel at command with which to receive the idea. It seems to
me as if I must be always speaking and writing and rejoicing because of
this possession.

I mus