You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Vienna, August 13, 1874
Dear Friend,
Barely ten minutes have passed since the postman delivered your exotic letter, and here I am already sitting and writing in order to fulfill your request faithfully. I am by no means at a loss for material with which to pad a letter, for I have not seen any friends for a week and have been unable to get anything off my chest. I think it expedient, however, to subdivide the raw material with which I intend to construct this letter into three floors through which you can amble at your leisure one after another. So:
First Floor.1
Of literary and friendly correspondence in general and of our own in particular.
Had I a dictionary I should very much have liked to write to you in Spanish, but without one I do not quite dare to venture, unarmed against all eventualities, onto Spanish soil. Were you to make the first move—and since all Spanish words follow like soldiers in your train, that would cause you no difficulty—then I should follow suit, attempting to keep my end up with my modest forces.
I am no less hesitant about granting other nations the right to appear in their native dress on the marketplace of our epistolatory commerce, for instance in English, Italian, and other sentences and periods—the French, as everyone knows, do not enjoy especial esteem in Europe. But it is up to you, as the more linguistically proficient (i.e., the more widely traveled), to decide to whom our market should be opened or closed. I have tried to set an example in a different field, namely in respect of the form in which a letter should