June 23
If only there were some discernible plotline to my life. I tried comic, then tragic. But now it seems one long denouement. People live by the stories they tell. I am all out of stories. My master told me another story today which seemed to be his and yet widely applicable—perhaps mythic. Maybe it was a dream. At any rate, a young man was walking at night in the woods near a large town and heard an alarm. Someone needed rescuing, but it was not clear whether the person in trouble was in the woods where the young man was walking or in the slightly distant city. Soon people were combing the woods with torches looking for a body—it was already too late to help. Then an old woman appeared. She knew where the body of the young woman who had called for help could be found. The young man looked down at his feet and there she lay, but she was not dead. She was only sleeping. He lifted her up and they walked out of the woods together in the opposite direction of the searching crowd. The old woman had disappeared. I think my master wonders what sort of future there is for him without his bride. I feel like the old woman who knows where to look for lost loves—who disappears the instant they are found.
Matt 17:14–21. Mental illness as evil spirits—exorcism as healing. The disciples ask, “Why were we unable to drive it out?” The suffering of casting oneself into fire and water—alternating extremes of mania and depression perhaps? Or more literally a predisposition to self-destructive behavior by whatever medium happens to be at hand. Here the obstacle is not littlebelief but rather unbelief. Here even a tiny grain of belief accomplishes the impossible, because a little belief will transform into bigbelief and move mountains.28 The difference is not quantitative but qualitative. And then this proviso: “But this kind clears away only by means of praying and fasting.” And yet there are so many ways to pray and so much one can do without, that this path is not so narrow as one might imagine. My master is a wealthy man who indulges himself in many ways and yet does without earthly love, for example.
June 24
A string of cloudy days slows me down so much that Mrs. H. wonders aloud what I am good for and sets me to polishing silver as a rebuke for my lack of cheerfulness. That is her primary virtue, despite her worries, which are personal as well as professional. An eccentric master keeps everyone guessing, and her grown children do preoccupy her at times, despite their absence. Everything is delivered with a smile and a laughing voice (only an occasional sigh), however, which helps to keep darker thoughts at bay.
Emil I hardly think to write about, he is such a fixture here. His loyalty is remarkable. I wonder if in recommending me to the household he thought I might serve his friend in a way that few servants are equipped to do. I do not know yet in what my service really consists, but it does seem that my place is secure, that my master, Mrs. H., Emil, and I form a unit, a family, if you will. My master, who will not marry, is not close with his brother, and yet comes from a large family, so his happiness depends on having family which he lacks. How is it that our happiness can depend on the very thing we lack? Can we be destined for unhappiness?
Matt 17:22–23. “And they became quite melancholy.” Jesus will be handed over to those who will kill him. (The disciples do not hear what Jesus says about resurrection because to them it has no meaning. It is gibberish.) The importance of hands: blessing, breaking, baptizing, betraying. The controversy over handwashing—keeping one’s hands clean as hypocrisy. What is important is not the state of one’s hands but what one does with them. Where would Jesus have come down on the “faith versus works” controversy? My master is at work on a book that may answer this question, or not, as he is more in love with questions than answers.
June 25
Mrs. H. said that on the evenings my master is out of the house I may play the piano and sing. I gave up singing some years ago and find I have lost my voice through lack of use, but perhaps with practice it will come back. My master is very fond of music, especially simple hymns and opera during the season, I am told. One of the most delightful things is to come upon him humming an aria to himself—he is too much of a perfectionist to sing aloud, knowing his voice is neither trained nor suited to performance. His true voice is his writing, in which everything is performance. Perhaps I should say “voices,” as I understand from Emil that my master adopts different personae in his writing and often publishes under the names of characters he has created without having actually fleshed them out. They are known to his readers only through their points of view, which are equally elusive. How does a person write in this way and not lose all sense of himself, I wonder? But then perhaps this is the goal. Most writers write to lose themselves, and then publish to gain it all back, but not my master. He truly wishes to be rid of himself, and not entirely in a holy way, I fear. But then he is godly enough not to do himself any actual physical harm. There is no law (either of God or man) against a kind of social suicide, however, in which one repeatedly tells people exactly what they do not wish to hear. Does this violate Paul’s precept against giving offense? While in prison for preaching the gospel, Paul wrote to his disciples at Philippi that he carried his shackles for Christ, as was well known and which had emboldened his brothers and sisters in Christ to speak God’s word without hesitation. Then the following: “Indeed some preach Christ on account of hatred and contentiousness, but others out of good intention. Those announce Christ out of a desire for strife . . . But these do it out of love, for they know that I lie here answering for the gospel.” Paul experiences Todeslust: “For Christ is my life, and death is my victory”—or is he simply persecuted as he once persecuted others and seeing death as the only way out? He answers this with: “I have a strong desire to leave and be with Christ.” It is not what he is trying to get away from, apparently, as he is quite used to and content with suffering for Christ—this is his rut, you might say. It is what he is going toward, his longing simply to be happy at Christ’s side. But it is necessary to go on living “for your sakes,” he writes.29
A key word for Paul is lauter:30 “that you remain pure and without offence,” “those who seek strife are not sincere.” To become holy is to remain genuine, and so Paul instructs the Philippians to avoid strife even in his absence: “so that you become holy, with fear and trembling,” as though God himself were present, which God is. “For it is God who brings about in you both the wish and the fulfillment of his pleasure. Do everything without grumbling or doubt so that you may be without flaw and genuine, God’s children, innocent among a corrupt and perverse generation.”
This emphasis on purity, a telltale sign of Paul’s former career as a law-enforcing Pharisee, is completely internalized in his Christian ministry. Which is more oppressive, I wonder? And yet his intentions are good. Clearly the Philippians are especially dear to him. If he could lay down a royal carpet to heaven for them, he would do so. But then Christ has already done that. So perhaps Paul’s problem is one of redundancy. All ministers, by virtue of their very ordination, are redundant, and redundancy is always oppressive. My master fights against this oppression, and though he wounds the oppressor, he does not give offense in the proper sense of setting up a stumbling block for sincere Christians.
June 26
Noticing birds much more lately—their personalities, some fierce, others meek, according to species, I assume. Back to Auerbach’s Cellar.31 Mephistopheles’ parody of the wedding at Cana has an effect opposite to the miracle: Mephisto demonstrates his power over the phenomenal world in order to raise doubt. Mephisto is urged on by the tavern regulars to turn wood into wine, which then becomes fire. Jesus reluctantly consents to perform his first public miracle, turning water into wine, at his mother’s insistence. If Mary had not been so insistent, when would Jesus have launched his career in wonderworking? Would he ever have engaged in such showmanship? Was it really necessary? Mephisto is quite passive, on the other hand. What is Goethe saying about evil? It seems clear to me he thinks its “power” is highly overrated—that evil consists in the ills we stupidly bring upon ourselves. Faust’s case is not comparable to the ordinary men in