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Noordwijk, August 2, 1910
Dear friend,
I am writing you just after a glowing red sunset from the breezy balcony of our apartment in the Pension Noordzee, where we arrived yesterday morning after we three1 had drawn the other members of the family to us. My sister-in-law stayed in Hamburg, where our old mother is slowly expiring from marasmus, behind which an intestinal carcinoma is also concealed.2 Despite all our recognition of the inevitability of dying, this brings about a serious mood and disturbs the contentment which would normally accompany a sojourn such as this. For years I have been following a certain pattern in a vacation: in the first days after stopping work very cheerful and well, then after about two weeks I get into the real misery of exhaustion that understandably goes along with the end of the work year, and I also behaved this way recently and am writing you today in this very mood. It is an unedifying condition, something like when one can't fall asleep and is still too tired to wake up. I feel as though the remnants of work leave me no peace; what I would need is to collect myself in order seriously to get to work, but I am completely incapable of accomplishment. I think, certainly, that walks in the beautiful, dense woods would allow me to collect myself, but that is probably a deception, for I have sea and dunes in front of me and can blame my laziness on their influence. In reality I can't do anything now, not even enjoy the rest which the situation really requires, and I have to wait and see.
So I haven't done a thing to confirm our trip on the Yorck. Excuse: if Grandmother's death coincides precisely with our departure, my wife would have to go to Hamburg and the children would be alone when we would have to move out of our lodgings. There could even be something in this; the main thing, in any case, is my reluctance to do anything, to decide, for instance, whether to continue this letter now, for which the increasing darkness again offers go