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The Journey to the East

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The Journey to the East

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“Words do not express thoughts very well; everything immediately becomes a little different, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another.”

“He who travels far will often see things Far removed from what he believed was Truth. When he talks about it in the fields at home, He is often accused of lying, For the obdurate people will not believe What they do not see and distinctly feel. Inexperience, I believe, Will give little credence to my song.”

The whole of world history often seems to me nothing more than a picture book which portrays humanity’s most powerful and senseless desire — the desire to forget.

It was a phrase by the poet Novalis, “Where are we really going? Always home!”

Repentance alone does not help. Grace cannot be bought with repentance; it cannot be bought at all.

Once in their youth the light shone for them; they saw the light and followed the star, but then came reason and the mockery of the world; then came faint-heartedness and apparent failure; then came weariness and disillusionment, and so they lost their way again, they became blind again.

I then discovered how a long time devoted to small details exalts us and increases our strength.

For our goal was not only the East, or rather the East was not only a country and something geographical, but it was the home and youth of the soul, it was everywhere and nowhere, it was the union of all times.

When something precious and irretrievable is lost, we have the feeling of having awakened from a dream. In my case this feeling is strangely correct, for my happiness did indeed arise from the same secret as the happiness in dreams; it arose from the freedom to experience everything imaginable simultaneously, to exchange outward and inward easily, to move Time and Space about like scenes in a theatre.

I asked the servant Leo why it was that artists sometimes appeared to be only half-alive, while their creations seemed so irrefutably alive. Leo looked at me, surprised at my question. Then he released the poodle he was holding in his arms and said: “It is just the same with mothers. When they have borne their children and given them their milk and beauty and strength, they themselves become invisible, and no one asks about them any more.”

“The law of service. He who wishes to live long must serve, but he who wishes to rule does not live long.”

Yet we had within us something stronger than reality or probability, and that was faith in the meaning and necessity of our action.

never to rely on and let myself be disconcerted by reason, always to know that faith is stronger than so-called reality.

Next to the hunger to experience a thing, men have perhaps no stronger hunger than to forget.”

“It was only possible for me to do it,” he said, “because it was necessary. I either had to write the book or be reduced to despair; it was the only means of saving me from nothingness, chaos and suicide.

That is just what life is when it is beautiful and happy — a game! Naturally, one can also do all kinds of other things with it, make a duty of it, or a battleground, or a prison, but that does not make it any prettier.

You ask if I know you. Well, what person really knows another or even himself?

Finally, he could no longer hide and contain himself. His suffering became too great, and you know that as soon as suffering becomes acute enough, one goes forward.

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