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Vienna, August 6, 1873
Dear Friend,
Your Jeremiads please me greatly, the more so as I could dream up a Chapter II to add to your Chapter I.1 Your resignation is most laudable—after all, no one has yet invented a lantern to light up God's dark ways. Though, unlike you, I have not taken to philosophy out of despair, I have other vices that threaten my salvation. If this were to go on, I shall get the “English disease”2 rather late in life. I read English history, write English letters, declaim English verse, listen to English descriptions, and thirst for English glances. To be sure, the main thing, my trip to England, is off; I am bound by contractual, indissoluble ties to the Viennese swimming club. And even if I were not, I doubt whether a favorable wind would waft me across the Channel. I dare not go on lest I write a chapter of Job, mutatis mutandis.
One reproach I cannot spare you. You forget that man must be himself.3 Get up into the mountains by yourself and let books and society rot. Get into the mountains, I say, and eat strawberries. Eat strawberries, I say, and forget you are by yourself.—A few days ago, when I myself picked strawberries and raspberries on the Sofienalpe near Dornbach,4 I was overcome with nostalgia. Since you went away, I have been up in the mountains four times; but my heart's in the highlands,5 down here I find not one step is worth the trouble. A single muddy rill in exchange for three mountains, how ridiculous! The vegetation sparse, not a berry for miles, what a contrast! Not a single pine or fir, only beeches and willows, what a terrible shame! But bear in mind that I must either spend forty kreuzer or else must cover a most unrefreshing stretch of road before I escape, and that an entire day is usually required for an insignificant outting—