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Grinzing
August 13, 1937
My dear Marie
I can answer you without delay, for I have little to do. Two days ago “Moses II” was finished and laid aside, and the best way to forget one's minor ailments is by exchanging thoughts with friends.
To the writer immortality evidently means being loved by any number of anonymous people. Well, I know I won't mourn your death, for you will survive me by years, and over mine I hope you will quickly console yourself and let me live in your friendly memory-the only form of limited immortality I recognize.
The moment a man questions the meaning and value of life, he is sick, since objectively neither has any existence; by asking this question one is merely admitting to a store of unsatisfied libido to which something else must have happened, a kind of fermentation leading to sadness and depression. I am afraid these explanations of mine are not very wonderful. Perhaps because I am too pessimistic. I have an advertisement floating about in my head which I consider the boldest and most successful piece of American publicity: “Why live, if you can be buried for ten dollars?”
Lün1 has taken refuge with me after having been given a bath.