[Letterhead: Hotel Sandwirth, Venice. Postmark: September 16, 1913]
Felice, your letter is neither an answer to my last letters, nor is it in accordance with our agreement. I won’t reproach you for it; after all, the same applies to my letters. We had meant to meet some-where on my return, in order, wretched as we are, to try and draw some strength from each other. Do you still not realize, Felice, how matters stand with me? In the miserable state I am in, how can I possibly write to your father? Imprisoned by inhibitions with which you are fami-liar, I am unable to move, I am utterly, but utterly incapable of suppressing the inner obstacles; the only thing I am still just capable of is to be immensely un-happy about it. I could write to your father in a fashion of which you would thoroughly approve, and entirely from my heart, but at the faintest approach to the faintest reality, I would inevitably be beside myself again, and quite ruthlessly, under an irresistible compulsion, I would try to regain my independence. That could only lead to even deeper misery than we have so far experienced, Felice. I am here alone, talk to hardly a soul except the hotel staff, am overflowing with unhappiness, and yet I think I feel this condition to be appropriate to myself, assigned to me by some super-human justice, a condition not to be transgressed but borne by me to the end of my days. What hinders me is not having to “give up too much of myself”—though, in a limited sense, this may be true—it is rather that I am prostrate, like an animal that one cannot get at (not even I) either by coaxing or by per-suasion, although I cannot quite resist either, least of all the latter. But I am unable to go forward, it is as though I were ensnared; when I jerk myself forward, I am jerked back with renewed force. That is the one clear and honest statement that can be expected of me at the moment. While gazing at the clear Venetian sky from my bed this morning with these thoughts passing through my head, I was ashamed and unhappy enough. But what am I to do, Felice? We shall have to part.
Franz