LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET

can the questions of love be resolved publicly and by this or that
compromise ; that they are questions, intimate questions from
one human being to another, which need in every instance a
new, particular, purely personal answer—: but how should
those who have already confounded themselves and are no
longer bounded or separate, who therefore no longer possess
anything individual, be able to find a way out of themselves,
out of the depth of their already shattered solitude :

They act out of mutual helplessness, and if then they want,
with the best of intentions, to avoid the convention that catches
their eye (say that of marriage), they end up in the clutches of
a less clamorous but equally deadly conventional solution ; for
there everything all round them is—convention ; where it is a
question of a hastily fused, turbid communion, ever};" possible
action must be conventional ; every relationship to which such
entanglement leads has its convention, be it as unusual as it may
(that is, in the ordinary sense immoral) ; why, even separation
would in such a case be a conventional step, an impersonal
random decision without strength and without effect.

Anyone who considers it seriously will find that for difficule
love, as for death, which is difficult, no explanation, no solution,
neither sign nor path has yet been made known ; and for both
these tasks which we carry secretly and hand on without un-
covering them, no universal rule based on agreed principles can
be discovered. But in proportion as we begin to make individual
trial of life, these great things will meet us as individuals at
closer quarters. The claims which the difficult work of love lays
upon our development are more than life-sized, and as be-
ginners we are not equal to them. But if we continue to hold out
and take this love upon ourselves as a burden and apprenticeship,
instead of losing ourselves in all the light and frivolous play
behind which mankind have concealed themselves from the
most serious gravity of their existence,—then perhaps some small
progress and some alleviation will become perceptible to those
who come long after us; that would be much.

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