You are ill, and yet still running about? Better if you didn’t go to the doctor but stayed at home and rested. I wish I could look after you.
In any case, we both need a rest; what would be more natural than that we, who both have the same need, should go to the same place?
You shouldn’t ask whether I love you. Sometimes I feel as though everything, everything were deserted, and you alone were sitting on the ruins of Berlin.
I must admit your letter of Friday is not yet answered, but in answer to it I am preparing a treatise which is not yet ready. Not actually from lack of time, but from weakness and an unsteadiness of the head which has been refusing to obey for a long time.
By a coincidence the notice about Löwy is lying in front of me, and here it is. The recital went off rather badly, but at least Löwy has a little money now, there is no other way of helping him at present. I should like to let you listen to him talking. He is better at that than at any reading, reciting, or singing; at such moments his fire is infectious.
The “Judgment” cannot be explained. Perhaps one day I’ll show you some entries in my diary about it. The story is full of abstractions, though they are never admitted. The friend is hardly a real person, perhaps he is more whatever the father and Georg have in common. The story may be a journey around father and son, and the friend’s changing shape may be a change in perspective in the relationship between father and son. But I am not quite sure of this, either.
Today I am sending you the Stoker. Receive the little lad kindly, sit him down beside you and praise him, as he longs for you to do.
Tomorrow I expect an accurate report about the silly things the doctor said. By the way, who is he? Your family doctor? What’s his name?
Look, I don’t want this letter to prevent you from coming to Prague. Come, just come! You are so eagerly expected.
Franz